Mataji on Covid 19 Pandemic

Shraddha Mataji

The entire humanity is suffering from a worst kind of disaster in the form of Covid-19 (Corona virus disease) Pandemic. There is suffering everywhere, hunger everywhere, and death everywhere. For the first time in the living memories we all are witnessing a situation where the entire earth is closed. No businesses are working, social life has come to an end, and many people are suffering from problems related to mental health due to it.

It is for the first time we see, humans locked inside their homes and nature and animals enjoying the natural bliss they are entitled to without the intervention of us humans. Many intellectuals are considering this to be a phenomena of divine justice, where we are suffering because of our misdeeds that we have been doing against our mother nature. It has become a very common discourse in public, be it a discourse of intellectuals and scholars or be it a discourse of general public on social media.

Environmental pollution is not a new phenomenon. It has been a harsh reality since the advent of Industrialization. The harm done to environment in past three hundred years since the advent of modernism is way larger than the total harm done to the environment in three thousand years prior to advent of modernism.

The common trend that can be observed in the collective response of humans to this harsh situation is the hypocrite behaviour where everyone is talking about environmental issues, the causes of the same and the need for a solution, but sadly the same human is not ready to change his/her life style of excessive comforts and luxury to actually do something to solve the issue of environmental degradation. It is known fact that we are putting excessive burden on natural resources to make our life easy and many organizations have been warning for past 40 years of the unsustainability of such behaviour.

Calamities like the one we are going through are a signal for us to understand and more importantly to realize and accept the harm we are doing to the nature. Many people may argue here that there is no direct relation between the pollution and this virus, but the point to note here is not the relation but the fact that this lock down has shown to us that when human activities are controlled the environment blossoms again in pure bliss.

Most of us further argue that it is not a viable option at our disposal to stop what we are doing, to stop industries, to stop travelling etc. To this I agree that it is not viable to stop what we are doing, but it is possible to change how we are doing it. Humans exist on this planet with many other beings and is under moral obligation to conserve and protect the environment.

Our scriptures and Vedic teachings always taught us to respect nature, to protect and conserve our nature. They thought us to love nature and to be in harmony with it. Vedic rituals taught us to worship all the elements of nature like, Indra, Agni, Vayu, Surya etc. They taught us to respect and venerate rivers, trees and lakes. No doubt it protected our nature, because according to normal psychology if we venerate something, we protect it instead of polluting it.

It is high time that we need to indulge in a public discourse on finding out the ways in which we can ensure that the teachings mentioned above are followed in modern context catering to the needs of present times. This calamity has given us the opportunity to realize what pure air means, what pure rivers look like, and how our overall life change when the pollution is low. It is one wonderful chance for us to rethink which way we are going? What future we are ensuring for our future generations?