Respecting the Non-human: Environmental Ethics in Jeevakarunya Niroopanam by Vidyadhiraja Chattampi Swamikal

This paper is a reading of the Malayalam text Jeevakarunya Niroopanam by Vidyadhiraja Chattampi Swamikal, a prominent leader of the socio-religious reformation of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the Southern Indian state of Kerala, from the perspective of environmental ethics. The basic premise of this text is that reverence for all forms of life—human and non-human—is not only significant for an ethical life, but also becomes an essential precondition for spiritual growth leading to realization and moksha. Through writings such as Jeevakarunya Niroopanam and through the compassion that he personally showed towards all forms of life, Chattampi Swamikal conveyed the ethical possibilities of the ahimsa tradition for establishing appropriate relationships with the entire natural world. Jeevakarunya Niroopanam can be viewed as an attempt to formulate an indigenous environmental ethic grounded in the tradition of ahimsa, which has deep roots in the Indian cultural ethos. Such attempts suggest the possibilities of conversations between Indian environmental traditions and the scientific, ecological ethic, in creating meaningful “multicultural environmental ethics” (to borrow the term used by the philosopher Callicott (Daedalus, 130 (4): 77–97, 2001)), for the twenty-first century.