Exploring an Indian Discourse on the Planetary: Climate Crisis and the Imperative of Traditional Ecological Knowledge

Abstract

Dwelling on the cultural power of Indian philosophy, theory and knowledge-practices, the present article attempts to explore the plausibility of an Indian discourse on the planetary. The global climate crisis has driven the economic and military powers of the world to reluctantly realize that the global warming-induced crisis poses serious threats for one and all. The project of deep industrialization and its techno-scientific remedies clearly have failed to tackle the life-threatening industrial pollution and carbon dioxide emissions, which have brought the planet to the doorstep of ecological disequilibrium. Writing in 1989, Felix Guattari had feared that ‘after a century of unparalleled scientific and technological progress, we have made our presence known to the planet in the most dramatic and self-defeating fashion’. Today, the post-Western hegemonic world is perhaps most evident in the pluriversal assertion of knowledge-cultures that (a) challenge the universalism of Western modernity and its anthropocentric worldview, and (b) emphasize the need for multiple knowledge epistemologies in our planetary existence. From classical Indian thought to contemporary postcolonial theoretical interventions for cultural pluralism, to that of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) based lived practices in India’s ‘scheduled’ regions, these constitute the distinctive Indian knowledge traditions that can, as this article argues, help India come up with an Indian discourse on the planetary. For, in addressing the inherent weaknesses of an anthropogenic and universal knowledge subjectivity of Western modernity, multiple knowledge epistemologies indeed seem to have become inevitable in the intellectual field of a post-Western hegemonic climatic time.