Reminiscences (part-II) – Encounter with an Environmentalist:

Amarnath cave is one of those serene places where you can feel the presence of God.  This place detaches you from the world & makes you feel at peace with nature. It was an exhilarating experience when we (me, my wife & our daughter) went there on a pilgrimage in 1998. The cave is located at around 12700 feet in the Kashmir Valley. This cave finds mention in the Rajtarangni, by Kalhan, the great book on the history of Kashmir. Amarnath cave has two routes, one via Pahalgam & the other via Baltal. Route from Baltal is shorter & you can go up to the cave & come down to the base camp on the same day with enough time to spare at the cave & witnessing the wonders of nature en-route. On the day of our visit the ‘Snow Shiva Lingam’ was fully formed & you could practically feel the footfalls of the ‘yogis’ who might have travelled to this place over thousands of years in search of peace & tranquillity. Swami Vivekananda is also understood to have come to this cave.

In 2008 this cave & the yatra became a political issue in the Valley as the ‘Amarnath Shrine Board’ that looks after the management of Amarnath yatra was denied a plot of land for constructing temporary dwellings for the pilgrims who travel to this place from all over India for ‘darshan’ of the Holy Cave & ‘Shiva Lingam’. J&K State was on the boil for considerable period of time.

These were tumults times, which are not a rarity in J&K.

It was during this period that a colleague of mine called me up in Jammu from Srinagar to meet a renowned environmentalist of the Valley, in Jammu, with a request to help our organization in getting environmental clearances for a newly up-coming transmission line in the Valley. The gentleman is no longer in this world & as such I am not disclosing his identity.

I reached the house of the environmentalist in Jammu & as the luck would have it he had just arrived from New Delhi & was shuffling into his house with his baggage. It was a hot day & the gentleman, an elderly person, was not in a good mood partly because of the summer heat of Jammu & partly because of my unannounced visit to his residence. I introduced myself to him & he seemed not particularly happy with my name nor with the organization was I working for. This I came to realize later that he presumed that I was an outsider, person not from J&K state, working with the power sector utility that did not belong to J&K State. However, I must add here, to put the record straight that this was my first & last encounter of this kind in J&K state to which I actually belong.

At the outset he rubbed me on the wrong side by telling me that I was talking about environmental clearances for my project but was not even bothered about the environmental degradation taking place in the Sindh Valley & right up to the Amarnath cave because of Amarnath Yatra. I tried to reason with him but he was in no mood to listen.

I thought that my case for environmental clearance for my project is probably now entangled to the Amarnath Yatra row & I may not get anything out of this meeting & in fact it might prove to be counterproductive.

But then the environmentalist also started speaking in rather ‘tough language’ against the agitation launched in Jammu region of J&K for non-provision of land to the Amarnath Shrine Board Trust in the Valley for housing the pilgrims. He also spoke about the intransigent attitude of the Hindus from Jammu & rest of the country in this context. I was taken aback. I was not prepared for this diatribe. I knew J&K state & Kashmir Valley very well & I thought that this issue would also blow off over a period of time.

In my heart I also started wondering as to why religion eventually becomes a reason for division between humanity & communities. All religions of the world speak of one God, however when it comes to the crunch every one speaks about a competitive God, Who is deemed to be their own personal property with intransigent copyrights on that. In the lay man’s language, as per this philosophy, Hindus should be having their own God with similar claims by Christians & Muslims on a God of their own. And imagine if every religion had its own God really than what would happen if the Gods of different religions started claiming proprietary rights on the resources of the universe. As an example, Hindu God initiates a claim on the sun or the moon & the other Gods belonging to different religions start initiating claims on Venus, Mercury, Moon, Jupiter etc. Does it really happen? Sun, moon & the stars shine for everyone alike irrespective of whether they are from one religion or the other. Trees give fruits to everyone & rivers do not ask for the religion of a person for providing water for irrigation of fields. Hinduism, as a philosophy, does not say that their God is the greatest. It, in fact, says that there is only one God though the paths for reaching Him could be different. It is for this reason that you have highly acclaimed saints in Hinduism, Islam & Christianity as well as all other similar denominations of the world. These people realized God by following a path of their own choosing, not through any kind of competition.

Coming back to my discussions with the environmentalist in Jammu who was still not happy with my presence in his house & who was trying to give environmental issue a religious twist I requested him to provide me a piece of paper & a pencil. I requested him to sit down. I placed the piece of paper on a table located in between us & drew two points on this sheet of paper, separated from each other by about three inches. In between these two points I drew a balloon. The environmentalist sat intently looking at my drawing, a very simple one he murmured. I told him that the point on the left represented the time of birth of a person in this world & the point on the right represented the time of his departure to his ‘heavenly abode’. Before the time of the birth of an individual & after his death no one till date has come up with a scientific clue as to what was there for him before his birth & what was going to happen to him after his death. The balloon in the drawing represented the only ‘quality time’ an individual had in this world to prove himself, in whatever field he wanted to. I told him that from the time of the birth of an individual he is brought up with a perception of this world & the world beyond (before his birth & also about the world after his death) based upon the religion into which he is born, in the selection of which he has no role. It is a pure accident or an incident, if you like, that a person is born in a family that is Hindu, Muslim, Christian or any other denomination.

So for a Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist or Jain it is ‘Karma’ of his previous birth & incremental good or bad things he does in the existing life that defines his destiny. For a Muslim, Jew or a Christian birth is a fact of life. For the religions that were born in India a person may find his place in hell or heaven depending upon how he spends his life on this earth during the period he lived here & may also find a place alongside God & may never be reborn if the sum total of his good deeds crosses a certain benchmark determined by God. For religions that were born in the Middle East it is the philosophy of ‘dooms day’ or the ‘day of judgement’ when ‘it is presumed’ that all the dead would rise again & will be assessed on the basis of their deeds in the world & then dispatched to heaven or hell as per the judgement of the  Angels Hafaza.

I told the environmentalist that all these philosophies are based upon the perceptions that a man or woman gathers during his life in the ‘balloon’ between the two points of birth & death. All good deeds or bad are performed during the period between these two points. It is your choice alone to choose the kind of life you want to lead. Lord Rama, Lord Krishana, Jesus Christ, Guru Nanak, Guru Gobind Singh, The Prophet & Buddha chose a life that had a profound impact upon the human society & in many ways elevated it to a new high as per the bench mark of the times in which they lived. They were such great people that millions upon millions of people still follow the path shown by them even after thousands of years of their passing away. I believe that we are not even a speck of dust of their feet to make any comment on these people.

But then why do we bring in competition between these great souls. Who are we to say that who is great & whose God is greater than that of the other when primarily there is only one God? The environmentalist was not impressed.

Sensing this I told him that, finally, I had a very mundane question for him. I asked him that if during the period of the ‘quality life’ that a man spends on this earth a Hindu decides to convert to Islam & than what is the end going to be for him? Would he be reborn, as he was a Hindu by birth or will he wait for the day of judgement for his final deliverance? Similarly if a Muslim converts to Hinduism (the chances of which are very remote) during the course of his life on this earth, will his deliverance be subject to the principle of the ‘day of judgement’ or will he be reborn as per Hindu philosophy as per the law of  ‘karma’? And I told him that whatever perception we might have, but there is no way of confirming the future of the departed as he never comes back to tell his part of the story. He protested & said that a Muslim, a convert or naturally born, shall face the day of judgement. I said it is a perception that Muslims are taught & they grow up with. Similarly Hindus too grow up with a perception that they have been taught & eventually grow up with. That perception is the theory of ‘Karma’.

There was total silence in the room in which we were sitting. I thought that the temperature of the room & Jammu city had risen alarmingly.

I picked up my papers, bade the gentleman a goodbye, the response was almost cold & I left for my office, thinking that the environmental clearance for my project is almost doomed.

After a few months this gentleman called me up. Somehow he seemed to have retained my visiting card. I was surprised beyond belief when he informed me that the environmental clearance for our project had been granted. Today when I remember him I do salute him from the core of my heart.