Vrindavan: The human sanctuary

Abstract

This critical essay explicates several key ideas associated with Vrindavan environmentalism and the hypothesizing of the holy pilgrimage town as a Human Sanctuary. The nature and rationale of environmental fieldwork spanning more than 17 years is outlined along with the foundation of the resultant philosophy which is labelled the Vrindavan Ecological Concept (VEC). Several connections between idealized scriptural depiction of the town of Vrindavan as the center of Vraj pilgrimage and actual modern environmental manifestations are made which lead to a posing of Vrindavan as place and ecological idea(l) as a reconciliation of past, current, and possible environmental futures. Self-introspection (sadhana) lies at the (human focused) center of this resolution and harmonization. Vrindavan is unusual, and faces special ecological problems...it is also a specifically religious problem for the devotee of Krsna... Pilgrims come to Vrindavan with the hope of seeing Krishna’s land, that is, having darshan of God in the form of his ponds and forests... Devotees have cited the appearance of the region as causing despair... The conflict between descriptions in ancient devotional texts and the reality of Vrindavan today is stark.