Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Warn­ing that cli­mate change and en­vi­ron­men­tal de­struc­tion are the mod­ern-day Ra­vana threat­en­ing hu­man­i­ty, High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad is en­cour­ag­ing every­one to do their part to con­serve and pro­tect the en­vi­ron­ment.

Speak­ing at the Ram­leela cel­e­bra­tions at Palmiste Park in San Fer­nan­do on Sun­day, Seep­er­sad urged cit­i­zens to take lessons from the life of Lord Ra­ma by liv­ing in har­mo­ny with na­ture and treat­ing the en­vi­ron­ment with the same rev­er­ence shown in the Ra­mayan.

“From time im­memo­r­i­al, Moth­er Earth has pro­vid­ed us with all that we need not on­ly to sur­vive, but to thrive. How­ev­er, it is un­de­ni­able that in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, we con­tin­ue to abuse her. This is in stark con­tradis­tinc­tion to the lessons which we are ex­hort­ed to learn from the life of Prab­hu Shri Ram—name­ly, that we have a sa­cred oblig­a­tion to pre­serve and pro­tect Moth­er Earth and our en­vi­ron­ment,” he said.

“It is un­de­ni­able that, like the de­mon-king Ra­vana, we are ul­ti­mate­ly de­stroy­ing our plan­et, and all that Moth­er Earth has blessed us with. Cli­mate change is re­al, and pol­lu­tion of our air and wa­ter­cours­es pose a clear and present dan­ger to life in this, the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry.”

He urged every­one, in­clud­ing those who ad­here to the teach­ings of Sanatan Dhar­ma, to fash­ion their lives af­ter Lord Ram and dis­charge their du­ties with min­i­mal com­plaints.

“In do­ing so, we must love and re­spect our en­vi­ron­ment, and we must make a con­sci­en­tious ef­fort to re­duce our con­sump­tion and use of items which harm the en­vi­ron­ment.”

En­cour­ag­ing every­one to be­come con­ser­va­tion­ists, he said the bat­tle be­tween Lord Ra­ma and the de­mon King Ra­vana could be un­der­stood to be a con­sis­tent bat­tle be­tween the forces of preser­va­tion and pro­tec­tion against de­struc­tion and dec­i­ma­tion.

“As a coun­try, we are de­pen­dent on fos­sil fu­els to dri­ve our eco­nom­ic vi­a­bil­i­ty. But we must ad­here to the best prac­tices, which fo­cus up­on lim­it­ing the im­pact on the en­vi­ron­ment. We must ul­ti­mate­ly dis­charge the oblig­a­tions thrust up­on us by our sta­tions in life, con­sci­en­tious­ly, and we must re­mem­ber that what we do af­fects oth­ers. We can­not ig­nore our com­mu­ni­ties and the hu­man be­ings who re­side in our towns and vil­lages, for they all form part of the nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment.”

He added that this year’s ten nights of the­atri­cal cel­e­bra­tions, which be­gan on Fri­day, were the re­sult of the hard work of the non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion, For the Love of the Chil­dren Move­ment.

Seep­er­sad said the pro­duc­tion is vi­tal to T&T be­cause it pre­serves a rich cul­tur­al tra­di­tion for a large num­ber of cit­i­zens, fos­ters youth de­vel­op­ment through in­tra-com­mu­ni­ty growth and de­vel­op­ment, nur­tures spir­i­tu­al growth, and ul­ti­mate­ly stands as an ide­al ex­am­ple of self­less com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice.

He added that Ram­leela cel­e­bra­tions are a form of com­mu­ni­ty ex­pres­sion that needs to be mar­ket­ed do­mes­ti­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly, and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.