The Rigveda addresses rivers by name. Saraswati. Sindhu. Ganga. Yamuna. Not as water bodies. As beings deserving of reverence.
The tradition addresses the sun — Surya — as a teacher. The moon — Chandra — as a nourisher. The fire — Agni — as a messenger. The earth — Prithvi — as a mother. The sky — Akasha — as a container of all.
In the Vedic worldview, nature is not a backdrop to human life. It is family.
You don’t exploit your family. You don’t throw garbage at your family members. You don’t systematically extract every resource from your family until they are empty and then move on.
The environmental crisis we are living through is, at its deepest level, a crisis of relationship. We forgot that the earth is our mother. We started treating her as a mine.
Mission Dharini — our environmental initiative — is a relationship repair program. It begins with the recognition that the trees we plant are not projects. They are relatives we are welcoming back. The water we protect is not infrastructure. It is a being that has sustained every generation of every family in this land.
Dharini means earth — from the Sanskrit root that also gives us the word dharana, to hold. The earth holds everything. Everything. Not just the living but the dead. Not just the beautiful but the decayed. With total, uncomplaining acceptance.
We are asking the earth to hold us a little longer while we learn to be better relatives. While we learn to give back some of what we have taken. While we learn, slowly, to remember her name.
