As I tread my path My shadow falls.
The earth never Shores it up.
Why stuff your notebook With useless words? Set them free,
Let them mingle with the dust (Our Santiniketan 62).

Another 22 April, another Earth day, and alas, another urge to stuff the notebook with useless words! The www.earthday.org/history earmarks the twenty second day of April to be the ‘largest secular day of protest in the world’. No denying this! We wonder, however, how we can just shut our eyes to myriad such protests in the interest of the earth. Each single gesture that has hitherto taken the earth to be the greatest priority is a harbinger for Earth day. From the Sanskrit madhu naktam uto aso madhumat pãrthiva raja , through George Gamow’s ‘You are more than the Earth, though you’re/ such a dot’, to the recently concluded COP29’s key pledge for ‘investing in a liveable planet for all’ – everywhere the basic concern is earth.

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Rabindranath Tagore owes his conscience, consciousness and disillusionment to none but mother earth in the poem ‘Prithibi’, written on 16 October 1935. Around 1910, Tagore is writing the Santiniketan series of essays, and there, too, he underlines how he sees no distinction between his own self and the larger nonhuman around. Ingratitude, for him, is the most unforgivable, especially if it is meted out to nature. As a theme, ingratitude has massively recurred in ‘Kunti O Nishadi’, a short-story by Mahasweta Devi, in which Kunti, the mother of the Pandavas, is exhorting earth to lend ears to her daily confessions: ‘O MOTHER EARTH, protector of the forests-hillswaters and all living things, hear what Kunti has to say!’ Kunti gradually realizes her shortcomings as being far removed from the smell of the soil, the profundity of the rocks, the spontaneity of the waters, and, in a word, the soulfulness of the place. Unlike her, the elderly Nishadin has accepted nature in both shine and shower, smile and woe, prosperity and adversity.

In the denouement, mother Kunti’s arrogance dissipates—the arrogance of the rajavritta, the rajmata, and most importantly, the anthropocene: ‘Thus this lonely forest, this closeness to nature, the daily sunsetsall this shows me how petty and ignoble human beings are.’ This conviviality towards nature is a prime focus with Mahasweta Devi, and given her approaching birth-anniversary, it is imperative to commemorate the Earth day with her writings. For instance, if we take a look at Kavi Bandyaghati Gnayir Jiban O Mrityu, we find how Bandyaghati rises to eminence as a poet.

Nevertheless, the crowning success so deludes him that he altogether denies his own community, his own belonging, and the vast forestland of his growing-up. By denying and discarding the nonhuman around, poet Bandyaghati, in fact, disavows his own identity and, the moment he does it, he courts his death. Devi’s novel Aranyer Adhikar revolves round Birsa Munda and Birsa’s Ulgulan, which is no less than a roaring protest against injustice of various sorts. Unlike a typical bildungsroman, Aranyer Adhikar manoeuvres almost from epiphany to epiphany, underscoring but the ‘significant times’ in the protagonist’s life. Right from his childhood, Birsa’s deep involvement with flora and fauna around sparks wonder among his folks.

He summons the birds of the forests and the antlers by strumming tuila. One inclement night, when the pouring sky wreaks upon the earth with consecutive bursts of thunder, Birsa feels that it is no common rain. Rather, it is the mother earth crying, for humankind has desecrated it. Mother earth feels defiled. So does Birsa. Mother earth feels strangulated. So does Birsa. He feels, thinks and acts more as the surrounding nonhuman environment than as a self-conscious human being. His affective ability gets such a height that he perceives his corporeal frame to be the land of Chotonagpur, the Tajne and the Kanchi rivers to be his madly churning blood and the vast forest to be his lamenting, writhing, staggering mother earth.

To call it ‘transcorporeal’ will be apt, after what one finds in Ecology and Equity: The Use and Abuse of Nature in Contemporary India by Madhab Gadgil and Ramachandra Guha. The same idea finds resonance in Jonathan Bate’s The Song of the Earth, where the author shows how the pleasures and desires involved in the love of nature have the potential to produce a radical critique of dominant values. Interestingly, Mahasweta Devi’s character passes through not just a radical critique but a radical transformation – from anthropocentric Birsa to anti-anthropocentric dharti aba, a term that connotes a charming oneness between himself and the nonhuman around.

One significant point of resemblance between Birsa and poet Bandyaghati (apart from the fact that they both are tribals) is that both of them are engaged in a quest of their own self. The quest ends with a significant anagnorisis – the approach to the nonhuman environment must necessarily be more ethical than human. This very anti-anthropocentric attitude will enable the future generations to uphold the sustainability-ethos in their life and living. The change is vital and, for mother earth, the change in attitude is the only hope, indeed!

(The writer is postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of English, Lincoln University College, Malaysia and can be reached at pdf.tanmoyb@lincoln.edu.my)