NowActivism: The Transcendental Brinjal

by Nirali Shah

A few months ago, the Minister of State for Environment and Forests held public hearings to determine the future of BT Brinjal in India. When I attended talks and read the research about Genetically Modified (GM) seeds, I became concerned about the irreversible damage it would inflict on the health of humans and animals. (See www.iamnolabrat.com).

In the last two years, I had spent considerable time living in remote villages, learning organic farming and reforestation. I lived with many farmers in their mud homes and developed meaningful relationships with them. I saw, firsthand, that farming is a lot about ‘soil building’, but that GM seeds would kill the microbial activity in the soil, leaving it infertile. GM seeds could contaminate thousands of traditional species of the same crop, endangering the rich biodiversity of nature. This would enormously threaten the economic stability of farmers, who are already struggling hard to survive. It was while spending time in Vidarbha, Maharashtra, that I also became more aware of the causes of farmer suicides. I felt deeply moved to do something.

I started writing articles, mobilizing resources, holding public meetings and awareness campaigns to sensitize people about GM seeds in Ahmedabad. At the time, I had typhoid fever and was not in the best of health. However, since the issue was so grave and the threat so imminent, I felt called to go out and put in as much energy as I could, to inspire more people to attend the public hearing and take a firm stand against BT Brinjal. It was an intense period of my life. After the month of campaigning against BT Brinjal and the subsequent public hearing, I took time to slow down.

In the past five years, I have spent a few weeks every year in complete silence, with no contact to the outside world, in places as diverse as a forest monastery in the deep crevices of the Himalayas to a closed room near a city where the food is dropped inside my room from a small window. This time of solitude has helped me direct my attention inward. I saw that I was feeling a lot of anger towards Monsanto (the corporation that supplies GM seeds), the politicians and the big farmers. Through my daily work routine, I had not realized that I was experiencing all this noise and negativity in my mind, but when I would sit alone in silence, the hopelessness and discontent revealed itself more clearly.

I could also see that this hatred and cynicism was draining me and making my mind unhealthy. For today, if we were struggling against BT Brinjal, two months later, it could be against a new pesticide, or a forest that could be cut, or a chemical factory that might grab fertile land from poor farmers. The old insensitive politicians will retire, and new ones will step in to play the same game. I had begun wondering, how many times would we as activists find the energy to fight against issues, one after another, in isolation?

I have friends who have been dedicated activists for many years. Most of them feel burnt out today! I sense that these problems were prevalent thousands of years ago and might continue for thousands more.

Now the question had intensified for me. What was I supposed to do? How should I use my energy, so that I don’t get drained, but can channel it to bring more goodness and peace in my life and in the world? At one level, I felt that it was crucial for me to engage with the GM issue. At the same time, I do not want to carry the burden and pain of negative emotions towards people or corporations in my being.

When I spent time in meditation and solitude to observe the subtle workings of my mind, I was able to get a deeper glimpse into the subconscious layers of my inner ecology. It became clearer to me that all problems that our world is facing today, such as environmental destruction, economic injustice, terrorism, animal cruelty, are all intertwined branches stemming from the seeds of fear, greed or ignorance of our collective minds. I realized that, while it is imperative to work rigorously on issues from the outside, we cannot afford to ignore the correlation of these issues to their roots.

I started to look more closely at my own anger, hatred and discontentment towards the corporations and politicians. It struck me that in order to address any imbalance in the outer ecology, the internal disturbances and negativities within my mind needed to be resolved first. I could not solve the problem from the same inner space that created it. I realized that I needed to make a radical shift from fear to faith, from anger to acceptance, and from restlessness to stillness.

I have come to believe that, as an activist, I am affecting the world at multiple stratums. One layer is through the physical and intellectual energy that I put into my projects. An even more profound layer is that of thoughts. The internal matrix of emotions, feelings and awareness in our minds is forcefully radiating into the world, reflected in our actions and vibrations that touch others. Many of us are drawn to change the outer circumstances, but a deeper transformation can flower only through an inner spiritual activism that holds the true power to awaken, love and heal our earth.