Environmental Concerns and Rabindranath Tagore

Abstract

Man’s history of civilisation, broadly speaking, is his history of emancipation from Nature. It is an ongoing process of exercising his power ofreason to conquerNature.Bymeans of his technological and rational astuteness, he is trying to emancipate from the compulsion of natural necessity. His power ofreasoning leads himtomake a distinction between the human nature and the non-human nature and on the basis of power of reasoning he denies the strength and integrity of every living and non-living being and dominates over the Nature too. As a result man alienates himself from the whole Nature. But the great divorce between man and Nature is threatening now the entire humanity. Man now is forced to ‘rethink’about Nature.As a consequence, various environmental issues are emerged and thoughts are developed. But most of these are raised from the interest of our own spices. The aim of these thoughtsisto protect environment in order to protect the human being. Such a view is anthropocentric and ultimately leads usto think of man as an individual detached from Nature. It treats Nature as‘other’than human being and environmental degradation is going on in the interest of man.