Hasdeo Arand is one of India's largest contiguous forest regions, where the Narendra Modi government has marked 95,000 plus trees for chopping. Many have already been chopped along with 800 hectares of forest being diverted for mining activities that will benefit his friend and donor Gautam Adani, in whose plane Mr Modi campaigned for various elections in his early years before he became India's Prime Minister. This close relationship between Narendra Modi and Gautam Adani is evident in how projects get rewarded to his company or how his rivals just before being takenover from Adani receive notices from government agencies. We are in fact, in the 12th year of his payback time. Gautam Adani was born in a Gujarati Jain family. People who follow Jainism claim that they do not harm any organism, they do not even eat plant products that are grown underground so as not to harm soil organisms.

Recently, during Eid, they rescued animals slated for Eid sacrifice. On the contrary, I could not find any major Jain organisation publicly opposing Adani's Hasdeo projects. He is destroying such a large forest and with it not just killing tiny soil organisms but also large animals as well who will not just lose their home and habitat but also their life as forests get cleared.

In 2023, Chhattisgarh got a new government headed by Narendra Modi's party, and soon followed a government “decision approving forest clearance for a mining project - that potentially paves the way for the felling of 4.5 lakh trees.” Narendra Modi, RSS and BJP all together claim to represent and protect Hindu interests. There is an overarching belief among Hindus that they respect and, in fact, pray to Mother Nature and trees. And yet the Hindu-Hriday-Samrat, the most loved and greatest Hindu on planet earth right now, is doing everything under his power to destroy the very things his religion claims to revere. And despite these anti-religious activities, he gets re-elected claiming he is their only hope in protecting their religious interests. Which begs the question, what exactly are the Hindu religious interests and how do they align with making money for Adani by hook or crook?

More read: Rajasthan judge who ruled against Adani-led firm transferred the same day

A view of the Hasdeo Arand forest. Photo: Supriya Sharma for scroll.

In forests of Gadchiroli are largely occupied by Naxalites, or so it was until recently, when the government cleared these forests from their control. Some 80 Naxalites were hunted down by government forces. These forests have been inhabited for ages by tribals and adivasis. Rightfully, it is to them that these jungles belong. But who were these forests land given after the Naxal clearance? I mean, why was the government spending so many resources, money and also bodies of armed forces and police? Why was the government so invested in clearing these forests of Maoists? Was it to bring development to locals? Nope. The government has gifted the forest and mines under it to the Lloyds group owned by the Sharmas. Some one lakh trees are cut from the area to help them mine the resources. If the forest could vote, surely the trees would side with the Naxals and not the Sharmas and Hindus who claim to revere and pray to Mother Nature but are always at the forefront of cutting them down at short notice.

Char Dham Highway Project is more direct and so more absurd in its goal and how that goal is being achieved. It is akin to killing the poor by driving over them to reduce poverty. It will rightfully reduce the number of poor and statistically achieve the goal of reducing poverty. The union government's ambitious Char Dham road project - that will link the shrine towns of Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri and Yamunotri through widening and strengthening of Himalayan roads - is leading to the felling of over 56,000 trees in the ecologically fragile mountain ranges. Hindus worship trees, Hindus also worship statues inside a temple and now to reach these temples they need more wider roads because existing roads are inconvenient to them or are getting them to these temples with slight delays and so as to reach sooner they are now killing the living trees who they say they also worship. Make sense of it.

It's comic how the most trees are cut by Hindus (and a Jain) in India - Modi, Adani, Fadnavis, etc. - who also claim to worship trees, nature and so on. Muslims and Christians who somehow don't claim to do tree worship end up not featuring on forest-levellers list. Same with rivers - Hindus claim to worship it but also pollute it the most, while the Christian world somehow manages to have clean rivers. This contradiction resembles India's continuing refusal to criminalise marital rape – an institution that publicly celebrates sacred marriage, a religion that tomtoms its female gods while also legally permitting what many democracies recognise as rape. Rape is exploitation in a way, and in marital rape, you do it to your partner, someone you claim to love, someone you vowed to protect and guard in front of a large crowd in a wedding involving religious invocations. So if you think about it, it is customary in India to abuse or exploit whatever you claim in public to worship or love about.

From Varanasi to Kedarnath to Gangotri, most of the religious sites have had major infrastructure overhauls aimed at attracting more tourists and arranging amenities for these new arriving tourists. We are, in fact, building and building to attract tourists and give rise to tourism at these places. It is expected of governments to do this to raise revenue for the state. It only sees profits like any corporation. But the BJP government was supposed to be a government of the Hindus elected to protect and further Hindu interests. It was understood that these were people who understood religion, respected it and were here to protect the ancient heritage and culture around it. What is the purpose of religious places? What did you hear before 2014 from people who visited or desired to visit Varanasi or Haridwar? 

1,700-1,800 trees are proposed for removal in the Tapovan area in preparation for the Nashik Kumbh Mela. Similarly there's the case of proposed felling of 1,12,722 trees for the proposed 111-km Kanwar Yatra route along the Upper Ganga Canal in Uttar Pradesh. Both are purely Hindu religious events and trees are being cut for what is essentially not a permanent structure. The trees are cut here to make the devotees comfortable when they visit these areas. The idea behind is that the devotees have problem with trees here and they are inconvenienced by presence of trees while performing their religious functions. The religious functions are of course to please the gods and by that logic the inherent understanding is cutting of trees does not displease gods. But Hindus, we are repeatedly told love trees and also worship nature. The fine print here though is that this worship requires killing of those very trees they worship.

If you look closely everything Hindus tomtom about loving and worshiping in fact gets destroyed or damaged the most - think of trees for Kumbh Mela or Chardham yatra or River Ganga or the women when you think about how Hindu India has successively pushed back against criminalising marital rape while Muslim Pakistan criminalised it way back in 2006. So when a Hindu starts to worship anything or anyone, be really worried for their love is evidently lethal and devours the very thing it proclaims to worship.

If Hindu civilisation truly sees rivers, forests and mountains as sacred, then the question is not whether India should develop or not. The question is how are we developing and why development so often begins by destroying precisely those landscapes that Hindu tradition describes as divine. If reverence for nature is central to Hindu identity, should a government claiming to defend that identity not be held to an even higher environmental standard than any other?

#forests #India #NarendraModi #Adani #Environment

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Iqbal Bano has sung select verses from Faiz's ghazal. Full ghazal and its English translation are below. The translation is from me and is, of course not perfect or anywhere close to the poetic brilliance of Faiz, but is only offered for those who don't understand Urdu and can get some idea about what Faiz is trying to say.

सभी कुछ है तेरा दिया हुआ सभी राहतें सभी कुल्फ़तें कभी सोहबतें कभी फ़ुर्क़तें कभी दूरियाँ कभी क़ुर्बतें All comforts, all hardships, everything is granted by you Moments of togetherness, separation, at times distance and intimacy

ये सुख़न जो हम ने रक़म किए ये हैं सब वरक़ तिरी याद के कोई लम्हा सुब्ह-ए-विसाल का कोई शाम-ए-हिज्र की मुद्दतें The pages that I have filled are in your memory Some moments of morning's union, some of evening's separation

जो तुम्हारी मान लें नासेहा तो रहेगा दामन-ए-दिल में क्या न किसी अदू की अदावतें न किसी सनम की मुरव्वतें What will remain in this heart if I cede your counsel Not the rage of enemy nor the kindness of love

चलो आओ तुम को दिखाएँ हम जो बचा है मक़्तल-ए-शहर में ये मज़ार अहल-ए-सफ़ा के हैं ये हैं अहल-ए-सिद्क़ की तुर्बतें Come lemme show you what remains in the blood soaked city the shrines of revered saints here, in dirt the truthful people there

मिरी जान आज का ग़म न कर कि न जाने कातिब-ए-वक़्त ने किसी अपने कल में भी भूल कर कहीं लिख रखी हों मसर्रतें Don't cry over today's agony my love maybe the writer of destinies By chance in his past has written happiness somewhere

Notice the tenderness of Faiz's words, his complaints and requests. This is not someone who does not completely believe in god. There is no sarcasm in his tone. There is no snarkiness in the complaint. Only when you believe in god so much, to an extent that you completely and unabashedly submit yourself, will you end up being disillusioned with his existence or extent of his power. It is in the moments when life pushes you to its extremities, to the limits of your being and to the verge of your strength and sustenance, in the moment when nothing appears to work or comes to your aid, you seek his intervention, you raise your hands in prayer, but no such solace comes. In those moments comes the realisation, the sense of abandonment, the apathy, more than disregard.

To believe a Faiz or Ghalib did not believe in god would be an oversimplification. They did not care enough to bother themselves about that question. Whether god existed or not ceases to matter when you're at your wits' end and you do not see any help that is on your way. The realisation that you are by yourself in this life, that you only have yourself to blame or rely on, moots that question. For even if so and so exists, to him you do not matter, your struggles do not matter, at least not enough to intervene and help. And so Faiz and Ghalib lived their lives without desiring or inventing the imaginary intervention. They simply did not bother. They instead believed in taking complete control of their life and its means. They relied on themselves and the people around them. But still, beyond their means, beyond their ability to sprout change, they hoped for help to come, but above and beyond what they could do to the best of their abilities. They did not relax and sit themselves down in prayer and wasted theirself instead; they put themselves to use by writing poetry which even today wakes up the tired and sleepy and moves them to action.

And they called him an unbeliever, an atheist, a communist and all sorts of names.

#Ghazal #Urdu #FaizAhmadFaiz #IqbalBano #Atheism #God #Pakistan #India

As per the Indian government, India is teeming with infiltrators (ghuspaithi). These illegal people have entered across India in Bihar, Jharkhand, Bengal, Kerala and so on. And they are in large numbers. They, as per the Home Minister, the Prime Minister and other important people in the Indian government, come from Bangladesh, Pakistan and elsewhere. They are, according to the Indian government again, a threat to India. Most of the problems that India faces today are because of them. I'm using the Indian government here to refer to statements or information shared by Prime Minister Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah and other important people part of the Indian Government. After all, if the Prime Minister and Home Minister's word isn't a word from the nation itself, then whose word would be said as a word from the nation?

Infiltrators to become majority in Jharkhand in 25–30 years if unchecked: Amit Shah He also criticised the state government for “vote bank” politics and vowed that if the BJP comes to power, it would chase “each” illegal immigrant out of the state.

'Will make Bihar ghuspaithiya mukt': Amit Shah says infiltrators will be deported within 5 years from Seemanchal Amit Shah questioned whether the infiltrators should be removed from the voters' list or not, and asserted that they would have to return to their countries and would have no place in Seemanchal.

Amit Shah directs officials to identify 100 'infiltrators' in every State and deport them The Union Home Minister asked intelligence officials to continue with the targeted crackdown even if the neighbouring countries do not accept the undocumented migrants.

These are just samples. If you dig more, you will find an even larger number of intruders, in thousands and lakhs, roaming in India currently. People in the Indian government know the number; they also know in what states they exist. People in the national media also know about these intruders. All of this makes you wonder, how did these intruders get into India? Who facilitated their entrance? While such a question gets difficult to answer since each intruder might have followed a different path and agent to get in, the other question becomes important. Whose job is to guard our borders? Whose job is to ensure intruders don't intrude on our borders? It is the job of the Indian Army and the Home Ministry, headed by Amit Shah himself. And these repeated statements from the Home Minister reveal a startling reality. People guarding our borders, that is, the Indian armed forces, are no more following orders from the Home Ministry. They are on their own. It is they who are letting these intruders enter India. I'm not saying this thing. It is said, and inferred by the Indian government via the Prime Minister, Home Minister and even the national media.

So there are two things here. Either intruder after intruder is let in by the Indian army. Or these intruders are smarter than the Indian armed forces. These intruders who are illiterate, living on meagre incomes, going inside India to do daily wage labour are cleverer than the Indian armed forces. Essentially, Amit Shah, Modi and the entire machinery of RSS and BJP are saying that the Indian Army is incompetent. That they have failed India, that the Indian army has let in this huge influx of intruders. Given all these facts, does it make sense to even have these men holding guns at the borders? What are they drawing their salaries for? Why are we paying them if they are such failures at their jobs? What's there to take pride in these incompetent men who cannot stop poor intruders from entering our borders? And not one or two, but in such large numbers? And it has been more than ten years since the Modi government has had such reliable information about these intruders, but the Indian army has failed to find any of these enemies from other countries. Just how incompetent are our supposedly brave soldiers? I'm not raising these questions. India's Prime Minister Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah are raising these fingers on our armed forces. And so far, at least I'm not aware of any army commander or regiment clarifying anything on these statements. Meaning? These statements by the Indian government are right, and they agree they are losers who cannot protect our borders or, and I fear to suggest this, for these are the men who brought Ram to Ayodhya, they cannot be liars, for the whole Ram's story is about the truth, Amit Shah and Modi are not lying. Those who follow the message of Ram could never lie. Modi and Shah would never resort to lies. I cannot for once imagine believing such a thing. But then again, years of Congress propaganda have made it harder to disrespect the Indian armed forces. They are a professional force we have been told again and again. It is hard to believe they would let intruders into our borders or even that such a large number could intrude under their watch.

If people who brought Ram to Ayodhya are liars, then how come Maryadapurushottam Ram, whose entire life was a message of adhering to truth, blessed and decided to come to Ayodhya on their request? How did the great seers, learned minds and devotees of Prabhu Ram allow these liars who are so far from the principles of Ram's teachings to inaugurate his abode? Has the lord Ram corrupted himself over the years? Is lord Ram now one among the supporters and cheerleaders of rape and lying? No? Meaning Modi and Shah are not the liars? I can't. I respect Prabhu Ram too much to think of Modi and Shah, soldiers who gave us Ram in Ayodhya, to be liars. That spells the other statement, the one that the Shah and Modi have been repeating without any counterclaim from the army. The Indian army is indeed an incompetent pool of men with arms. Utterly shameful that Indians are paying for their upkeep and more using their hard-earned salaries via taxes.

#NarendraModi #RSS #BJP #Aliens #migrants #refugees #India #Army #hate #propaganda