Volume 40, Issue 1/4, 2024
Signs of Rebirth and Renewal
Seema Khanwalkar
Pages 53-70
https://doi.org/10.5840/ajs2024401/42
Shrinking Frameworks of Human-Nature Continuities in India
What comes from the earth goes back into the earth, springing forth a new life in a continuous cycle of rebirth and renewal. Indian civilizational and its environmental belief in cyclic continuity¡ªaccording to some of the ancient Indian concepts like karma (a sum total of our past deeds), dharma (the right moral conduct), and Artha (resourcefulness)¡ªwere some of the significant signposts of human ecologic continuity. Today, they serve purely anthropocentric concerns, all while being a large part of the non-urban struggles to maintain the traditional, non-dualistic, pastoral, and agricultural sentient ecologies. In the context of a growing environmental crisis, how can countries such as India continue to negotiate complexities between the past and the present belief systems, animistic frameworks, the capitalist degradation of ecology, or micro-frameworks of rural and tribal communities? Has the continuity of Palingenesis between humans and nature remained a mere textual semiotic? This paper echoes the crisis in addressing its concerns while traversing between gender, eco-semiotics, animism, environmental eco-feminist activism, and mythology, all in order to understand the complex semiotics of the human versus nature ¡°semiocide¡± in India.