Noted Angami Naga author, Easterine Kire Iralu, describes a “dead” village through the eyes of her protagonist, Pele, in this manner:
He had never seen such desolation in all his travels. Before him stretched miles of barrenness. The earth was so dry that the soil no longer looked like soil. It had cracked apart, every brittle vein and ligament exposed, looking more like a sun-dried sponge with big holes running through the sod. The brown colour had gone from the soil and if the traveller were to describe it, he would call it grey, death-grey. It had long given up the struggle to sustain any form of life. His eyes scanned the horizon for people, though he asked himself how anyone could possibly survive here. (Iralu, 2016, p. 17)
This vivid description sums up the barren land symbolising the death of a culture which once upon a time prioritised living amidst nature. The abandoned village in Kire’s story suggests the urgent need to reclaim the Angami Naga oral tradition and the Indigenous way of life. In this context, Sayan Dey’s timely monograph, Green Academia: Towards an Eco-Friendly Education System (2023), explores how the Indigenous knowledge system can throw open remedies for climate changes and environmental hazards. Dey’s book adds to the corpus of existing knowledge on the requirement of sustainable practices in the Global South and may be read in the context of works, albeit in diverse fields, such as R. Doughlas Hurt’s The Green Revolution in the Global South: Science, Politics, and Unintended Consequences (University of Alabama Press, 2020) and Sustainable Green Development and Manufacturing Performance through Modern Production Techniques (CRC Press, 2021) by Chandan Deep Singh and Harleen Kaur. Drawing upon discourses on green cultural studies, perspectives on eco-aesthetics, and his own observations by being closely associated with the Green School System in Bhutan and other such projects, Dey puts forward his views on the necessity to adopt sustainable measures in the modern education system.
Malcolm Miles, while discussing ecosystems and webs of interdependence, highlights the idea presented in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) of “an ecosystem in which all agents are interdependent: to extract any one of them renders the system as a whole unstable” (Miles, 2020, p. 33). Miles takes Carson’s idea forward while summarising his thoughts on interdependence and states that “[t]hese attitudes, from localism to eco-centrism and the call for global environmental justice, are green, but the term green equally suggests wildlife conversation, wilderness protection and, in Buddhist terms, kindness to all sentient beings” (Miles, 2020, p. 47). Dey’s book, divided into five chapters, highlights similar notions on this “web of interdependence” in the ecological system and presents the urgent requirement of juxtaposing “green” practices in our education system. He presents the various ways in which our Indigenous knowledge system was violated, tracing it to the effect of European colonisation. Forcing Indigenous natives to cut down forests, stripping off natural resources, and the shameless destruction of biodiversity are the legacy of colonialism. Dey’s book highlights the theft of our ancient Indigenous knowledge system by the colonisers and the way such knowledge has been claimed, patented, and passed off as belonging to the Westerners. In order to prove his point, he gives examples of the export of medicinal plants from India and the commodification and commercialisation of Ayurveda sciences and medicine.
In this light, the book, Green Academia, records the continuation of the colonial bureaucratic methodology in our education system even several years after independence. The pedagogical pattern, curricular structure, and academic disciplines showcase a lethargic attitude towards ecological and sustainable ways of living, the need of the hour. Anti-nature methodologies are institutionalised in present-day academia. Dey offers examples of several texts which are being taught to school children in India that are colonial in spirit. In this context, Kenyan author and academic, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, had pointed out that in connection to colonialism, “[e]conomic and political control can never be complete or effective without mental control. To control a people’s culture is to control their tools of self-definition in relationship to others” (Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, 1986). Stories like Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, taught as a part of the English curriculum under various Indian school boards, present exploitation of natural resources as a normal course of action. Dey also categorically talks about the English textbook, Beehive, taught to CBSE students in ninth grade, which lacks focus on “the importance of ecological knowledges in the context of India and abroad” (Dey, 2023, p. 14). In such a situation, Dey argues that our system of education, obsessed with marks and grades, assessments, and the treatment of students as clients/customers, cannot deal with present-day crises, such as the recent COVID-19 situation or various environmental crises occurring worldwide.
The most interesting part of Dey’s monograph is dedicated to the details of a few academic systems that are eco-friendly and as the title of the chapter states, their “Journey to the Roots”. Dey’s observations are not limited to any country or region, but he selects apt academic systems all over the world that weave ecology and environment as a habitual teaching-learning practice. He draws several examples of sustainable ways of life from the Green School System of Bhutan, the Sarang School of Kerala, the Barefoot College in Rajasthan, the Green Belt Movement, Tagore’s experimental pedagogies, the Students’ Education and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SEMCOL), and Gandhi’s Nai Taleem to drive home the point that the best systems of education are those that juxtapose the modern/Western knowledge systems with the Indigenous ones. What is important in these academic systems is that they do not disrupt and dehumanise “the Indigenous constellations of knowledges” (Dey, 2023, p. 24). Various important expertise required for the preservation of water, improving the fertility of agricultural lands, production of energy, and other conservational practices, are a part of these educational systems where students are taught life skills by assimilating Indigenous and modern/Western knowledge systems.
Dey’s monograph highlights a very pertinent and interesting aspect of the sustainable education systems that he draws examples from. Termed as “Happiness Curriculum”, the project is driven by “Gandhi’s philosophy of inclusive education or Nai Taleem” (Dey, 2023, p. 54) and has been implemented in several government schools in New Delhi and a few other Indian states. Based on the philosophy of happiness, collaboration, and ethics, this curricular framework is rooted in our traditional way of life. In terms of Indian thoughts and practices, the Indigenous knowledge system has always been connected to ethics and a moral code of conduct and therefore, it has been observed that “[k]nowledge thus has never been divorced from justice. In fact, it has always been imbricated with ethics, with the dominant ethical value of dharma. All disciplines of knowledge, vidya, have this social-ethical imperative” (Kapoor, 2005, p. 26). Such kinds of innovative curriculum rooted in our Indigenous knowledge systems are what Dey’s Green Academia points out as the need of the hour. Dey gives further examples of ecologically sustainable knowledge systems by pointing out at the way that the Green School System of Bhutan and the other education systems that he talks about all throughout the monograph, dealt with teaching-learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Transforming the lack of a physical classroom experience from being an impediment to an advantage, these schools provided learners with self-sustainable eco-centric learning experiences at home and community-building activities. Dey highlights some more important sustainable practices adopted in these education systems, such as collaborative curriculum prepared by both teachers and students, pedagogical fluidity, ecologically sustainable curricular framework, and most importantly, an academic environment that upholds inclusivity, diversity, and creativity.
Dey’s monograph, Green Academia, in short, addresses the biggest problem of our modern-day education system which he terms as a “one-size-fits-all” policy. The book is in line with the ideas of the National Education Policy (NEP 2020) which gives due importance to the legacy of our ancient past and therefore, states:
[t]he rich heritage of ancient and eternal Indian knowledge and thought has been a guiding light for this Policy. The pursuit of knowledge (Jnan), wisdom (Pragyaa), and truth (Satya) was always considered in Indian thought and philosophy as the highest human goal.
Green Academia is also a clarion call for the adoption of an education system rooted in our ancient knowledge system. Titled as “Non-Conclusion”, the last chapter of Dey’s book very poignantly draws the attention of the readers to the fact that his work “does not intend to build an unquestionable ivory tower of all-pervading solutions against the conspiracies of capitalism” (Dey, 2023, p. 108). Rather, Dey’s monograph highlights a few possibilities for practising ecological sustainability in a global context and wishes the readers to participate in “expanding the opportunities and weaving a planetary project of ‘green academia’” (Dey, 2023, p. 108). Written in a lucid manner, Dey’s use of vocabulary is evocative; his style is persuasive, using opinions, arguments and justifications drawn from his own rich personal experiences. True to his purpose of writing this monograph, Dey’s arguments for adopting green practices are not to be restricted to discussions within the four walls of the classrooms or other academic platforms, such as conferences, workshops, book launches, and so on, but to open up multiple avenues of discourses and eco-centric practices.