Religious Environmental Activism in Asia Case Studies in Spiritual Ecology Printed Edition of the Special Issue Published in Religions www.mdpi.com/journal/religions Leslie E. Sponsel Edited by Religious Environmental Activism in Asia Religious Environmental Activism in Asia Case Studies in Spiritual Ecology Special Issue Editor Leslie E. Sponsel MDPI • Basel • Beijing • Wuhan • Barcelona • Belgrade • Manchester • Tokyo • Cluj • Tianjin Special Issue Editor Leslie E. Sponsel University of Hawaii USA Editorial Office MDPI St. Alban-Anlage 66 4052 Basel, Switzerland This is a reprint of articles from the Special Issue published online in the open access journal Religions (ISSN 2077-1444) (available at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions/special issues/Religious Environmental Activism Asia). For citation purposes, cite each article independently as indicated on the article page online and as indicated below: LastName, A.A.; LastName, B.B.; LastName, C.C. Article Title. Journal Name Year , Article Number , Page Range. ISBN 978-3-03928-646-1 (Pbk) ISBN 978-3-03928-647-8 (PDF) c © 2020 by the authors. Articles in this book are Open Access and distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows users to download, copy and build upon published articles, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications. The book as a whole is distributed by MDPI under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND. Contents About the Special Issue Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Preface to ”Religious Environmental Activism in Asia” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Leslie E. Sponsel Introduction to “Religious Environmental Activism in Asia: Case Studies in Spiritual Ecology” Reprinted from: Religions 2020 , 11 , 77, doi:10.3390/rel11020077 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Radhika Borde New Roles for Indigenous Women in an Indian Eco-Religious Movement Reprinted from: Religions 2019 , 10 , 554, doi:10.3390/rel10100554 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Kelly D. Alley River Goddesses, Personhood and Rights of Nature: Implications for Spiritual Ecology Reprinted from: Religions 2019 , 10 , 502, doi:10.3390/rel10090502 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Michael Reading The Anuvrat Movement: A Case Study of Jain-inspired Ethical and Eco-conscious Living Reprinted from: Religions 2019 , 10 , 636, doi:10.3390/rel10110636 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Jennifer Lemche and James Miller Global Capital, Local Conservation, and Ecological Civilization: The Tiejia Ecology Temple and the Chinese Daoist Association’s Green Agenda Reprinted from: Religions 2019 , 10 , 580, doi:10.3390/rel10100580 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Martin Sch ̈ onfeld and Xia Chen Daoism and the Project of an Ecological Civilization or Shengtai Wenming 生态文明 Reprinted from: Religions 2019 , 10 , 630, doi:10.3390/rel10110630 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Lily Zeng Dai Identity in the Chinese Ecological Civilization: Negotiating Culture, Environment, and Development in Xishuangbanna, Southwest China Reprinted from: Religions 2019 , 10 , 646, doi:10.3390/rel10120646 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Chris Coggins Sacred Watersheds and the Fate of the Village Body Politic in Tibetan and Han Communities Under China’s Ecological Civilization Reprinted from: Religions 2019 , 10 , 600, doi:10.3390/rel10110600 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Elizabeth Allison The Reincarnation of Waste: A Case Study of Spiritual Ecology Activism for Household Solid Waste Management: The Samdrup Jongkhar Initiative of Rural Bhutan Reprinted from: Religions 2019 , 10 , 514, doi:10.3390/rel10090514 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Susan M. Darlington Buddhist Integration of Forest and Farm in Northern Thailand Reprinted from: Religions 2019 , 10 , 521, doi:10.3390/rel10090521 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 Fachruddin Majeri Mangunjaya and Gugah Praharawati Fatwas on Boosting Environmental Conservation in Indonesia Reprinted from: Religions 2019 , 10 , 570, doi:10.3390/rel10100570 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 v About the Special Issue Editor Leslie E. Sponsel is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Hawai‘i. He has taught at seven universities in four countries, two as a Fulbright Fellow. He joined the Anthropology faculty at the University of Hawai’i in 1981 to develop and direct the Ecological Anthropology Program. Although retired as a Professor Emeritus in 2010, he usually teaches one course each semester, including on Sacred Places, Spiritual Ecology, and Anthropology of Buddhism. The rest of his time is devoted to research and publications. Sponsel has published numerous journal articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia entries as well as four edited books. His recent monograph, Spiritual Ecology: A Quiet Revolution, won the science category of the Green Book Award in San Francisco in 2014. It was translated in 2017 for a French edition. The companion website is: http://spiritualecology.info. Sponsel continues field research on Buddhist ecology and environmentalism, and in particular on sacred caves, on annual summer trips to Thailand. vii Preface to ”Religious Environmental Activism in Asia” Environmental issues and problems are serious, some are getting worse, and periodically new ones are still being discovered. A multitude of diverse secular approaches to environmental concerns from the local to the global levels certainly have made important progress and are vitally indispensable, such as in the environmental sciences, technology, and conservation as well as in the environmental agencies, laws, and regulations of governments. Nevertheless, secular approaches have proven to be insufficient, this in spite of, among many other things, more than four decades of annual Earth Day celebrations to enhance environmental information, awareness, sensitivity, and responsibility in the USA and other countries. Most secular approaches only treat specific superficial symptoms, rather than the underlying root causes of the unprecedented global environmental crisis as a whole. Also, secular approaches have been insufficient because most ignore the fact that ultimately the environmental crisis as a whole is a spiritual and moral crisis, and that it can only be resolved by radical transformations in the ways that industrial capitalist societies in particular relate to nature. This must involve a profound shift in environmental consciousness and actions which has variously been called the Great Awakening or the Great Turning. During this new era recognized by geologists, ecologists, and others as the Anthropocene, with so many grave and urgent environmental problems from the local to the global levels, there are also a multitude of diverse practical initiatives in religious environmentalism addressing the challenges which offer significant potential, hope, and achievements. This special issue of Religions focuses on providing a set of captivating essays on the specifics of concrete cases of environmental activism involving most of the main Asian religions from several countries. Particular case studies are drawn from the religions of Animism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, Hinduism, Islam, and Jainism. Countries include Bhutan, China, India, Indonesia, South Korea, and Thailand. Thereby this issue offers a very substantial and rich sampling of religious environmental activism in Asia. This is a relatively neglected subject in the journal and anthology literature which deserves far more attention. Thus, this issue of Religions begins to help fill a strategic gap. It reveals collectively a fascinating and significant movement of environmental initiatives in engaged practical spiritual ecology. Accordingly, this issue should be of special interest to a diversity of scientists, academics, instructors, and students as well as communities and leaders from a wide variety of religions, environmentalism, and conservation. Leslie E. Sponsel Special Issue Editor ix religions Editorial Introduction to “Religious Environmental Activism in Asia: Case Studies in Spiritual Ecology” Leslie E. Sponsel Department of Anthropology, University of Hawai‘i, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA; sponsel@hawaii.edu Received: 19 January 2020; Accepted: 3 February 2020; Published: 7 February 2020 Environmental issues and problems are serious; some are getting worse, and occasionally new ones are still being discovered (Flannery 2010; Meyers and Kent 2005; Ripple et al. 2017). A multitude of diverse secular approaches to environmental concerns from local to global levels have certainly made important progress and are vitally indispensable, such as in the environmental sciences, technology, and conservation, as well as in the environmental agencies, laws, and regulations of governments and through the activities of nongovernmental organizations (Hawken 2007; Shabeco ff 1993, 2000; Uhl 2013 ). Among many other things, since 22 April 1970, annual Earth Day celebrations have enhanced environmental information, awareness, sensitivity, responsibility, and activism in America and other countries (Nelson et al. 2002). By now, more than one billion people participate each year, about one in every seven humans on the planet. Nevertheless, in spite of all of these positive activities, secular approaches have proved insu ffi cient, although necessary. 1 Most secular approaches only treat specific superficial symptoms, rather than the underlying root causes of the unprecedented global environmental crisis as a whole. Moreover, secular approaches have been insu ffi cient, because most ignore the fact that ultimately the environmental crisis as a whole is a spiritual and moral crisis and that it can only be resolved by radical transformations in the ways in which industrial capitalist and consumerist societies, in particular, relate to nature (Foster et al. 2010; Gottlieb 2019; Rockefeller and Elder 1992). This has been variously called the Great Awakening or the Great Turning. This transformation from the Industrial Age (Anthropocene) to the Ecological Age (Ecocene) involves fundamental changes in world views, values, attitudes, behaviors, and institutions relating humans to nature in far more sustainable and green ways. If it is not accomplished voluntarily and incrementally, then it may be suddenly forced at far greater expense and su ff ering for societies, especially by global climate change as the primary catalyst (Best and Nocella 2006; Bourne 2008; Korten 2006; Raskin 2016). In addition to vital secular approaches, spiritual ecology is responding to environmental crises, especially since the 1990s. It is generating a quiet revolution, meaning nonviolent but growing exponentially in a multitude of ways. As an umbrella term, spiritual ecology may be recognized as a vast, complex, diverse, and dynamic arena of intellectual and practical activities at the interfaces of religions and spiritualities with nature, ecologies, environments, and environmentalisms. It embraces other narrower fields, such as dark green religion, deep ecology, earth spirituality, earth mysticism, ecomysticism, ecopsychology, ecospirituality, ecotheology, green religion, green spirituality, nature mysticism, nature religion, nature spirituality, religion and ecology, religion and nature, religious ecology, religious environmentalism, religious naturalism, and sacred ecology. The qualifier spiritual is used instead of religious, because it is far more inclusive. Religion usually includes the spiritual, but 1 Usually, it is obvious that the secular and the spiritual are quite separate. However, there can be instances of some overlap between them. Earth Day celebrations are mostly secular, although some individuals and organizations are spiritually or religiously motivated. The book by Bron Taylor (2010) and that by Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim (Tucker and Grim 2016) are examples of overlap between the secular and religious / spiritual. Another example of overlap is the parallels between aspects of modern Western science and Buddhism identified by David P. Barash (2014). Religions 2020 , 11 , 77; doi:10.3390 / rel11020077 www.mdpi.com / journal / religions 1 Religions 2020 , 11 , 77 some spirituality is not associated with any particular religion (Sponsel 2012, 2014, 2019). Even some atheists are spiritual (e.g., Crosby and Stone 2018). The core principles of spiritual ecology are the following: (1) It is necessary, and potentially pivotal, in engaging many environmental problems and issues from local to global levels. (2) It recognizes the unity, interconnectedness, and interdependence of all things, beings, and forces, as does Buddhism as well as the Western sciences of ecology and quantum physics (Barash 2014; Wolf 1999). (3) Spiritual ecology relates to the spiritual, moral, and intrinsic values of nature . (4) It cultivates respect, a ff ection, and reverence for nature with caring stewardship and benevolent coexistence. These four core principles are among the commonalities of spiritual ecology underlying the diversity of many religious and spiritual traditions (see Appendix A for key resources on spiritual ecology). Religious organizations such as the Vatican, secular ones such as the Worldwatch Institute, and hybrids such as the former Alliance of Religions and Conservation in association with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) explore and implement into action ideas about the relevance of religion and spirituality in dealing with environmental issues and problems (Dudley et al. 2005; Palmer and Finlay 2003 ; Posey 1998). This new approach of spiritual ecology may help to at least reduce, if not entirely resolve, many environmental concerns, thereby turning global environmental crises around for the better. It is also applicable at the individual level (Hecking 2011; Pfei ff er 2013; Vaughan-Lee and Hart 2017). Clearly, religion and spirituality can be extraordinarily influential in positive ways on many levels with their intellectual, emotional, and activist components (Gottlieb 2013; Lerner 2000; Smith 2001). 2 Many religious organizations possess vast resources such as moral capital; persuasive, motivating, and mobilizing power; large populations and social networks; sacred texts with environmentally pertinent points; print publications and other media; and land and various other assets. Religions can generate hope and mobilize followers to make a significant di ff erence. They can arouse and guide emotions as well as reason through their powerful leaders, sacred texts, rituals, and symbols to a much greater extent than secular approaches to environmentalism (Gardner 2002, 2006). The Anthropocene is the new era recognized by many geologists, ecologists, and others, as human impact on the environment is leaving substantial evidence on the accumulating geological record ( Ellis 2018 ; Schwagerl 2014). An example is layers of plastic debris in sediments, sometimes solidified with sand or other rock (plastic conglomerate or plastiglomerate). Obviously, massive mining projects such as mountain top removal coal mining in Appalachia and the tar sands of Alberta also leave evidence on the geological record. Nevertheless, the Anthropocene remains a controversial issue (Moore 2016). Yet, it serves to emphasize just how far reaching human activities can be in their impact on the environment. With so many very grave and urgent environmental problems from local to global levels, including everything in between, there is also a multitude of diverse practical initiatives in religious environmentalism addressing the challenges. They o ff er significant potential and actual concrete achievements (e.g., Gottlieb 2006). This Special Issue of Religions focuses on providing a set of captivating essays on the specifics of concrete cases of environmental activism involving most of the main Asian religions from several countries. Regrettably, authors were not available for important religions such as Shintoism and countries such as Mongolia, something inevitable with any collection short of an encyclopedia. Here, particular case studies in spiritual ecology activism are drawn from the religions of Animism, Buddhism, Daoism, Hinduism, Islam, and Jainism. The countries discussed include Bhutan, China, India, Indonesia, and Thailand. Thereby, this Special Issue o ff ers a very substantial and rich sampling of religious environmental activism in Asia. Importantly, the articles are grounded in extensive original 2 It should be mentioned that, among other issues on this subject, some authors have pointed out that religion may not be e ff ective in dealing with environmental concerns or may even have negative environmental consequences (e.g., Taylor 2015, 2016; Taylor et al. 2016; Wexler 2016). 2 Religions 2020 , 11 , 77 field research. Each article begins with an abstract, so they will not be summarized further here (on Asian religions in general, see Esposito et al. 2018). Religious environmental activism in Asia is a relatively neglected subject that deserves far more attention in the periodical, anthological, and other literature. 3 Thus, this Special Issue of Religions begins to help explore a strategic gap. Collectively, the articles reveal a fascinating and significant movement of environmental initiatives engaged in practical spiritual ecology in Asia. Accordingly, this Special Issue should be of special interest to a broad diversity of scientists, scholars, instructors, and students, as well as communities and leaders from a wide variety of religions, environmentalism, conservation, and countries. Funding: I received no external funding and no remuneration for this project. Acknowledgments: As guest editor, I am most grateful to the general editor Bingjin He and her associates for their outstanding professional and e ffi cient assistance, the several external reviewers for each article, and the authors themselves for their high-quality contributions. Any constructive comments and criticisms would be most welcome and helpful: sponsel@hawaii.edu. Conflicts of Interest: I declare no conflict of interest. Appendix A. Spiritual Ecology: A Brief Resource Guide The first general textbook on the subject is: Kinsley, David. 1995. Ecology and Religion: Ecological Spirituality in Cross-Cultural Perspective. Englewood Cli ff s: Prentice-Hall, Inc. The most recent general text is: Grim, John, and Mary Evelyn Tucker. 2014. Ecology and Religion. Washington, D.C.: Island Press. http: // www.youtube.com / watch?v = 15v6f2moleE, http: // www.youtube.com / watch?v = yGJ_r-pEH64. Among related complementary books are these: Bauman, Whitney A, Richard R, Bohannon II, and Kevin J. O‘Brien, eds. 2017. Grounding Religion: A Field Guide to the Study of Religion and Ecology. New York: Routledge (Second Edition). Berry, Thomas. 2009. The Sacred Universe: Earth, Spirituality, Religion in the Twenty-First Century. New York: Columbia University Press. Bohannon, Richard, ed. 2014. Religions and Environments: A Reader in Religion, Nature, and Ecology. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing. Foltz, Richard C., ed. 2003. Worldviews, Religion, and the Environment: A Global Anthology. Belmont: Wadsworth / Thomson Learning. Gottlieb, Roger S. 2006. A Greener Faith: Religious Environmentalism and Our Planet’s Future. New York: Oxford University Press. https: // www.wpi.edu / people / faculty / gottlieb#profile-faculty_ profile, http: // users.wpi.edu / ~{}gottlieb, http: // www.youtube.com / watch?v = BVpxdd1Oosg. Rockefeller, Steven C., and John C. Elder, eds. 1992. Spirit and Nature: Why the Environment Is a Religious Issue . Boston: Beacon Press. Sponsel, Leslie E. 2012. Spiritual Ecology: A Quiet Revolution. Santa Barbara: Praeger. http: // spiritualecology.info. Taylor, Bron. 2010. Dark Green Religion: Nature, Spirituality and the Planetary Future. Berkeley: University of California Press. http: // www.brontaylor.com, http: // www.brontaylor.com / blog / , http: // www.youtube.com / watch?v = uxIvBZEBS1M8, https: // www.youtube.com / watch?v = 2UtmRLL5e8A. 3 There is, however, substantial literature on particular religions of Asia in relation to nature, ecology, and environment, but with relatively little attention to environmental activism. Especially noteworthy here are the substantial anthologies in the series coedited by Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim called Religions of the World and Ecology (Tucker 2010; Tucker and Grim 2017). These are in association with the Forum on Religion and Ecology now at Yale University, and they were published by Harvard University Press. They are a historical benchmark and foundational for this field: Chapple (2002), Chapple and Tucker (2000), Foltz et al. (2003), Girardot et al. (2001), Tucker and Berthrong (1998), and Tucker and Williams (1997). Also noteworthy is the growing recognition in recent decades of the connection between sacred places and biodiversity conservation including in Asia (Verschuuren and Furuta 2016). 3 Religions 2020 , 11 , 77 Tucker, Mary Evelyn, and John A. Grim, eds. 1993. Worldviews and Ecology. Maryknoll: Orbis Books. Vaughan-Lee, Llewellyn, ed., 2013. Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth: Point Reyes: The Golden Sufi Center. By now there are also several major reference works: Crosby, Donald A., and Jerome A. Stone, eds. 2018. The Routledge Handbook of Religious Naturalism. New York: Routledge. Gottlieb, Roger S., ed. 2006. The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Ecology. New York: Oxford University Press. Hart, John, ed. 2017. The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Ecology. Boston: Wiley-Blackwell. Jenkins, Willis, and Whitney Bauman, eds. 2010. Berkshire Encyclopedia of Sustainability: Volume I: The Spirit of Sustainability. Barrington: Berkshire Publishing Group LLC. Jenkins, Willis, Mary Evelyn Tucker, and John Grim, eds. 2017. The Routledge Handbook of Religion and Ecology. New York: Routledge. Taylor, Bron, ed. 2005. Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature. New York: Continuum Press, Volumes 1-2. There are also two academic journals focused on this subject: Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, and Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology. The Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale University has extensive resources and also publishes a monthly email newsletter: http: // fore.research.yale.edu. (There is a similar organization-in Europe). Finally, there is the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture: http: // www.religionandnature.com. References Barash, David P. 2014. Buddhist Biology: Ancient Eastern Wisdom Meets Modern Western Science . New York: Oxford University Press. Best, Steven, and Anthony J. Nocella II, eds. 2006. Igniting a Revolution: Voices in Defense of the Earth . Oakland: AK Press. Bourne, Edmund J. 2008. Global Shift: How a New Worldview is Transforming Humanity . Oakland: New Harbinger Publications, Inc. Chapple, Christopher Key, ed. 2002. Jainism and Ecology: Nonviolence in the Web of Life . Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Chapple, Christopher Key, and Mary Evelyn Tucker, eds. 2000. Hinduism and Ecology: The Intersection of Earth, Sky, and Water . Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Crosby, Donald A., and Jerome A. Stone, eds. 2018. The Routledge Handbook of Religious Naturalism . New York: Routledge. Dudley, Nigel, Liza Higgins-Zogib, and Stephanie Mansourian, eds. 2005. Beyond Belief: Linking Faiths and Protected Areas to Support Biodiversity Conservation . Gland: World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and Alliance of Religions and Conservation. Ellis, Erle C. 2018. Anthropocene: A Very Short Introduction . New York: Oxford University Press. Esposito, John L., Darrell J. Fasching, and Todd T. Lewis. 2018. Religions of Asia Today , 4th ed. New York: Oxford University Press. Flannery, Tim. 2010. Here on Earth: A Natural History of the Planet . New York: Atlantic Monthly Press. Foltz, Richard C., Frederick M. Denny, and Azizan Baharuddin, eds. 2003. Islam and Ecology: A Bestowed Trust Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Foster, John Bellamy, Brett Clark, and Richard York. 2010. The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth . New York: Monthly Review Press. Gardner, Gary T. 2002. Invoking the Spirit: Religion and Spirituality in the Quest for a Sustainable World . Washington: Worldwatch, Paper 164. 4 Religions 2020 , 11 , 77 Gardner, Gary T. 2006. Inspiring Progress: Religions’ Contributions to Sustainable Development . New York: W. W. Norton. Girardot, N. J., James Miller, and Liu Xiaogan, eds. 2001. Daoism and Ecology: Ways within a Cosmic Landscape Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Gottlieb, Roger S. 2006. A Greener Faith: Religious Environmentalism and Our Planet’s Future . New York: Oxford University Press. Gottlieb, Roger S. 2013. Spirituality: What Is It and Why It Matters . New York: Oxford University Press. Gottlieb, Roger S. 2019. Morality and the Environmental Crisis . New York: Cambridge University Press. Hawken, Paul. 2007. Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming . New York: Viking. Hecking, Rebecca James. 2011. The Sustainable Soul: Eco-Spiritual Reflections and Practices . Boston: Skinner House Books. Korten, David C. 2006. The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community . Bloomfield: Kumarian Press, Inc. Lerner, Michael. 2000. Spirit Matters . Charlottesville: Hampton Roads Publishing Company. Meyers, Norman, and Jennifer Kent, eds. 2005. The New Atlas of Planet Management . Berkeley: University of California Press. Moore, Jason W., ed. 2016. Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism . Oakland: PM Press. Nelson, Gaylord, Susan Campbell, and Paul Wozniak. 2002. Beyond Earth Day: Fulfilling the Promise . Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Palmer, Martin, and Victoria Finlay. 2003. Faith in Conservation: New Approaches to Religions and the Environment Washington: World Bank. Pfei ff er, Bill. 2013. Wild Earth, Wild Soul: A Manual for an Ecstatic Culture . Winchester: Moon Books. Posey, Darrell, ed. 1998. Cultural and Spiritual Values of Biodiversity . Leiden: Leiden University Press. Raskin, Paul. 2016. Journey to Earthland: The Great Transition to Planetary Civilization . Boston: Tellus Institute. Ripple, William J., William J. Ripple, Christopher Wolf, Thomas M. Newsome, Mauro Galetti, Mohammed Alamgir, Eileen Crist, Mahmoud I. Mahmoud, and William F. Laurance. 2017. World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice. BioScience 67: 1026–28. [CrossRef] Rockefeller, Steven C., and John C. Elder, eds. 1992. Spirit and Nature: Why the Environment Is a Religious Issue Boston: Beacon Press. Schwagerl, Christian. 2014. The Anthropocene: The Human Era and How It Shapes Our Planet . Santa Fe: Synergetic Press. Shabeco ff , Philip. 1993. The Fierce Green Fire: The American Environmental Movement . New York: Hill and Wang. Shabeco ff , Philip. 2000. Earth Rising: American Environmentalism in the 21st Century . Washington: Island Press. Smith, Huston. 2001. Why Religion Matters: The Fate of the Human Spirit in an Age of Disbelief . San Francisco: HarperCollins. Sponsel, Leslie E. 2012. Spiritual Ecology: A Quiet Revolution . Santa Barbara: Praeger. Sponsel, Leslie E. 2014. Feature Article: Bibliographic Essay—Spiritual Ecology: Is it the Ultimate Solution for the Environmental Crisis. CHOICE 51: 1339–42, 1344–48. Sponsel, Leslie E. 2019. Ecology and Spirituality. In The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion Edited by John Barton. New York: Oxford University Press. [CrossRef] Taylor, Bron. 2010. Dark Green Religion: Nature, Spirituality and the Planetary Future . Berkeley: University of California Press. Taylor, Bron. 2015. Religion to the Rescue (?) in an Age of Climate Disruption. Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 9: 7–18. [CrossRef] Taylor, Bron. 2016. The Greening of Religion Hypothesis (Part One): From Lynn White, Jr. and Claims That Religions Can Promote Environmentally Destructive Attitudes and Behaviors to Assertions They Are Becoming Environmentally Friendly. Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 10: 268–305. [CrossRef] Taylor, Bron, Gretel Van Wieren, and Bernard Zaleha. 2016. The Greening of Religion Hypothesis (Part Two): Assessing the Data from Lynn White, Jr., to Pope Francis. Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 10: 306–78. [CrossRef] 5 Religions 2020 , 11 , 77 Tucker, Mary Evelyn. 2010. World Religions and Ecology. In Berkshire Encyclopedia of Sustainability: Volume I the Spirit of Sustainability . Edited by Willis Jenkins and Whitney Bauman. Barrington: Berkshire Publishing Group LLC, pp. 439–43. Tucker, Mary Evelyn, and John Berthrong, eds. 1998. Confucianism and Ecology: The Interrelation of Heaven, Earth, and Humans . Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Tucker, Mary Evelyn, and John Grim, eds. 2016. Living Cosmology: Christian Responses to Journey of the Universe Maryknoll: Orbis Books. Tucker, Mary Evelyn, and John Grim. 2017. The Movement of Religion and Ecology. In Routledge Handbook of Religion and Ecology . Edited by Willis Jenkins, Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim. New York: Routledge, pp. 3–12. Tucker, Mary Evelyn, and Duncan Ryuken Williams, eds. 1997. Buddhism and Ecology: The Interconnection of Dharma and Deeds . Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Uhl, Christopher. 2013. Developing Ecological Consciousness: The End of Separation . Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Vaughan-Lee, Llewellyn, and Hilary Hart. 2017. Spiritual Ecology: 10 Practices to Reawaken the Sacred in Everyday Life . Point Reyes: The Golden Sufi Center. Verschuuren, Bas, and Naoya Furuta. 2016. Asian Sacred Natural Sites: Philosophy and Practice in Protected Areas and Conservation . London: Routledge. Wexler, Jay. 2016. When God Isn’t Green: A World-Wide Journey to Places Where Religious Practice and Environmentalism Collide . Boston: Beacon Press. Wolf, Fred Alan. 1999. The Spiritual Universe: One Physicist’s Vision of Spirit, Soul, Matter, and Self . Needham: Moment Point Press. © 2020 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http: // creativecommons.org / licenses / by / 4.0 / ). 6 religions Article New Roles for Indigenous Women in an Indian Eco-Religious Movement Radhika Borde Department of Social Geography and Regional Development, Charles University, Prague 128 00, Czech Republic; radhika.borde@gmail.com Received: 12 August 2019; Accepted: 22 September 2019; Published: 26 September 2019 Abstract: This article aims to study how a movement aimed at the assertion of indigenous religiosity in India has resulted in the empowerment of the women who participate in it. As part of the movement, devotees of the indigenous Earth Goddess, who are mostly indigenous women, experience possession trances in sacred natural sites which they have started visiting regularly. The movement aims to assert indigenous religiosity in India and to emphasize how it is di ff erent from Hinduism—as a result the ecological articulations of indigenous religiosity have intensified. The movement has a strong political character and it explicitly demands that indigenous Indian religiosity should be o ffi cially recognized by the inclusion of a new category for it in the Indian census. By way of their participation in this movement, indigenous Indian women are becoming figures of religious authority, overturning cultural taboos pertaining to their societal and religious roles, and are also becoming empowered to initiate ecological conservation and restoration e ff orts. Keywords: India; sacred natural sites; indigenous; women; new religious movements; mobilizations 1. Introduction This article examines a new religious movement with strong ecological articulations that is gaining ground among the indigenous or Adivasi 1 people of east-central India. The movement accords a uniquely pivotal role to women—as legitimately channeling the Earth Goddess via possession trances. As a result of this movement the sacred groves in which the Earth Goddess is believed to reside are being rejuvenated, the Adivasi women who function as her mediums are being given a new and elevated status, and Adivasi religiosity as a whole is gaining a platform from which it can voice demands for politico-legal recognition. For clarification, a sacred grove is a small patch of forest that is protected for the reason that it is believed to be sacred (see Gadgil and Vartak 1975) and it is often a site of ancestral or deity worship (see Ramakrishnan et al. 1998). This article will examine the various elements of this movement in detail. It contends that the movement intersects with the important political issues of the day—be it environmental conservation, women’s empowerment, or the recognition of indigenous people’s rights, demands, and ecological agency. The movement is aimed at internal and external reform—external reform is solicited by the voicing of demands for rights and recognition, and internal reform is facilitated by overturning taboos related to the role of women in Adivasi society, spearheading small-scale, socio-economic development in villages, and by sensitizing the Adivasi population in general to the dangers of ecological destruction. The linking of di ff erent issue areas has been noted in other social movements involving indigenous people—for example, linkages of this kind are reported to have taken the form of the “‘ethnicization of ecological 1 Indigeneity is a contested identity in India (see Karlsson 2003), though one claimed by almost 10% of the Indian population (see Rycroft 2014). The term ‘Adivasis’ (which this paper will employ), derived from Sanskrit and meaning ‘original dwellers’, is generally used, to denote what are argued to be India’s indigenous peoples (see Kela 2006). Religions 2019 , 10 , 554; doi:10.3390 / rel10100554 www.mdpi.com / journal / religions 7 Religions 2019 , 10 , 554 destruction’ as well as the ‘ecologization of ethnic subordination’” (Parajuli 1996, p. 16). In India, the role of women in environmental conservation movements is well established, and was first legitimized by way of the Chipko Movement in which many rural women famously protected trees from being felled in Himalayan forests (see Jain 1984). However, within Adivasi society, traditionally, political roles for women have been delegitimized, and this has been coupled with a suspicion of women’s ethno-botanical knowledge, for the reason that it is understood to be superior to that possessed by men. The article contends that the legitimization of the new roles for Adivasi women as legitimately channeling the Earth Goddess, and as spearheading an ecological movement, is the result of an act of geographic imagination. It will examine this act of imagination in the context of the emphasis that scholars of Adivasi mobilizations have placed on the application of non-rationalistic interpretative frameworks to arrive at an understanding of Adivasi social movements—for example, in many of the Adivasi peasant insurgencies against British rule, the insurgents expressed that they felt motivated by a God (see Chaudhuri 2010). Ranajit Guha, an important postcolonial studies scholar, cautions against ignoring ways of understanding the self and the world that may not necessarily fit into rational discourse (see Guha 1988). The fieldwork for the exploration of women’s issues in this movement, which combined participant observation and interviews, has been conducted intermittently for over a decade since 2008 primarily in the Indian state of Jharkhand in east-central India—and the article will relate its arguments and empirical findings mostly to this geographical context. It was possible for the researcher to conduct research that spanned such a long period of time for the reason that the researcher grew up in a rural area in the state of Jharkhand and returns to the area on a regular basis. This, as well as the fact that the researcher maintains close contacts with participants in the Sarna Movement, has facilitated the study that this article presents. In every instance of an individual movement participant or supporter being cited, names have been changed, except for those cases in which the speaker held or has sought public o ffi ce. 2. The Power of Geographic Imagination Gayatri Spivak, a postcolonial scholar who has studied the processes by which development may create marginalizations, indicts mainstream developmentalism as a cartographic practice resulting in the exclusion of pre-capitalistic and indigenous communities to “make way for more traditional geographic elements of the map and the world today” (Spivak 1998, p. 338). To counter this, what would be needed is a new cartographic practice—one that imagines the geographic elements of the world di ff erently. Spivak’s understanding of mainstream developmentalism and the exclusions it perpetuates, is relevant to the situation in Jharkhand as the state was conceived as a homeland for the Adivasi communities of east-central India who claim an indigenous identity and some of whom continue to be oriented towards a subsistence model of economy rather than the production of surplus. The power of geographic imagination is evinced by several ecological struggles from around the world. In the United States of America, native Americans protested against the geological burial of nuclear wastes at the Yucca Mountain in Nevada, with the explanation that they understood radioactivity to be an ‘angry rock’: “a spiritual being that has been taken from its home without its permission, used in ways it does not agree with, and is being returned to the land without reducing its anger” (Sto ffl e and Arnold 2003, p. 235). Another example of how geographic imagination can fuel environmental protest is the struggle of the Columbian U’Wa tribes-peoples against Occidental Petroleum’s oil mining project on their territory—they argued that oil was the blood of the Earth which they held sacred. Consequently, mining the Earth for its blood would be a violation of the deity which they venerated (see Martinez-Alier 2004; Arenas 2007). It is interesting to note that these acts of geographic imagining that oppose mainstream developmentalism, do not just imagine the Earth alternatively, they also make use of an alternative rationality while doing so. Such a strategy has in fact been recommended by the theorist Jean Baudrillard. According to him, the solution to the problems caused by mainstream development is to make use of non-rationality and the imagination to 8 Religions 2019 , 10 , 554 posit critiques and alternatives, till a point where a breakdown in mainstream thinking is achieved (see Coulter 2004). The power of geographic imagination does not stop at its capacity to inspire protest—it has been the basis for high-level environmental policy reforms in several states as well as at the global level. At the state level, two such examples would be the enshrinement of the rights of Nature in the Ecuadorian constitution in 2008 and the passage of the ‘Law for the Defense of Mother Earth’ by the Bolivian government in December 2010. The championing of eco-centric rights by the Ecuadorian constitution is an a ffi rmation of the importance of ‘Buen Vivir’, a Spanish term that can be translated as ‘a good way of living’ and which is based on the eco-communitarian cosmovision of the Andean indigenous peoples. The president of Ecuador’s Constituent Assembly, Alberto Acosta, is reported