Treachery in Aarey

The BJP exploits Indian history, sings its glory, but has no real understanding of Indian culture. As Rabindranath Tagore once said, India’s culture is rooted in its forests. Ours is an Aranya sanskriti.

But the BJP has no respect for this culture. So, the first thing it did on the first day of returning to power in Maharashtra was to take over parts of the Aarey forest on the outskirts of Mumbai for the metro rail project.

This is in total defiance of a strong movement of citizens. Aarey has now become a rallying point for all, not just citizen-activists but common people as well.

Also Read: Aarey Colony: A green patch that faces threat

The decision reversed the one taken by the Uddhav Thackeray government to protect the forest region of Aarey, which essentially is Mumbai’s green lungs. The decision came on a particularly inappropriate day for another reason. It was the first day of the month of Aashaadh, celebrated as Kalidasa Day, which honours the Sanskrit poet-dramatist Kalidasa. He wrote about the beauty of nature and environment and forests as few others have, through his immortal works like Meghaduta, the classic poem, and the play Shakuntala.

As Tagore pointed out, contemporary western civilisation is built of brick and wood. It is rooted in the city. But Indian civilisation has been distinctive in locating its source of regeneration, material as well as intellectual, in the forests, not the city.

India's best ideas have come where man was in communion with trees and rivers and lakes, away from the crowds. The peace of the forest has helped the intellectual evolution of man. The culture of the forest has fuelled the culture of Indian society. The culture that has arisen from the forest has been influenced by the diverse processes of renewal of life, which are always at play in the forest, varying from species to species, from season to season, in sight and sound and smell. The unifying principle of life in diversity, of democratic pluralism, thus has become the principle of Indian civilisation.

Not being caged in brick, wood and iron, Indian thinkers were surrounded by and linked to the life of the forest. The living forest was for them their shelter, their source of food. The intimate relationship between human life and living nature became the source of knowledge. The experience of life in the forest made it adequately clear that living nature was the source of light and air, of food and water.

As Tagore wrote in The Religion of the Forest, the ideal of perfection preached by the forest dwellers of ancient India runs through the heart of our classical literature and still influences our minds. The forests are sources of water and the storehouse of a biodiversity that can teach us the lessons of democracy; of leaving space for others whilst drawing sustenance from the common web of life.

The BJP and metro rail authorities are busy denying that Aarey is a forest. They say it is just a grassland come up on the land of the Aarey milk dairy in the 1950s to feed the cattle. A recent video also makes such a claim but unwittingly, it mentions there are lakhs of trees on the land which will not be untouched by the Metro car shed sought to be built there.

Also Read: Green activists up in arms again as Maharashtra decides to move Metro-3 car shed back to Aarey Colony

But the real fear is that the authorities, with their nexus with the builders, will gradually convert the forest into a real estate bonanza, sooner or later. The Metro rail connection will be a boon for this land grab.

We should have no doubt that Aarey in Mumbai was and is a forest. Homi Taleyarkhan, a former Maharashtra minister and a nature lover, wrote about Aarey way back in the 1950s, “One could hardly believe that there could be so much forest so near Bombay, so wealthy in its variety, in its sights and sounds.”

Taleyarkhan, who was also a former Governor of Sikkim, wrote this and much more in his book Escape from the City, published in 1954.

If you are looking for something off the beaten track, then make this delectable trip from Aarey to Kanheri National Park through the woods, he says. The road winds and twists through the thick forest. Interestingly, Taleyarkhan gives the credit for discovering the track to “our nature-loving and aesthetic-minded minister for education and parks, Dinkarrao Desai.”

He also gives directions about approaching the trek. You should get off at Goregaon station and then take an “anna bus” (an “anna”, earlier in use, was the small currency, 1/16th of a rupee) to Aarey and then start walking. The road was then not fit enough for a car; it was OK for a jeep.

He writes about the tall trees, wild flowers, bushes and shrubs, birds singing and colourful and numerous little surprises.

This is a fascinating book. My copy is a bit moth-eaten but I now realise it is a bit of a treasure because the writer is not a touristy-type but a real traveller. He says rightly that the real delight of an outing lies in a good walk at the end of your vehicular journey.

The new Chief Minister Eknath Shinde should have a better sense of the environment as he comes from Satara district, with its lovely Koyna dam and the forest area.

Satara has a rich tradition. It was in this district that Krantisimha (the revolutionary lion) Nana Patil formed a parallel government during British rule. The honorific title was given to Patil out of love by the people for his revolutionary fervour. As against his revolution, what Shinde has done can be termed a ‘counter revolution’.

Maratha history is full of incidents of treachery, so the word ‘Fitur’, treachery, constantly figures in Marathi writing on the period. People from Satara district are generally thought to be simple and hardy. Shinde must have been a simple man once, but politics can change one completely. Otherwise, you would not build two helipads in your village which lacks basic amenities.

(The writer is a senior journalist and culture critic) (Syndicate: The Billion Press)