practices prevailed over India for several centuries ensuring that India remained an ocean of trees teeming with wildlife till the community management was destroyed under British colonial exploitation.
Social strife
Although Indian people may have been at peace with nature, they were by no means at peace with each other. There was tremendous strife within the society as illustrated by the burming of the Khandava forest where modern Delhi is located today. In this famous incident from Mahabharata, Krishna and Arjuna patrolled around the periphery of the forest killing every tribal Naga along with other animals trying to escape the flames. This was an example of how India’s iniquitous, hierarchical society was constituted. It was Gautam Buddha, a rationalist and a humanist who opposed all such inequities including monopoly over knowledge of the upper classes. Regretfully, his influence over the Indian society did not last for long and the Indian society relapsed into an iniquitous, divided society full of strife and monopolies, including over knowledge. Knowledge and reason must underpin all our decisions, but these are not sufficient by themselves. Ultimately it is values that decide our actions. As Indian citizens all of us ought to accept the fundamental values of equality, fraternity and social justice enshrined in our progressive Constitution. But these values are negated by the two philosophies that dominate the discourse relating to nature conservation in India today. First of these is a ‘wildlife first’ philosophy, advocating that we protect
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