Twelfth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

The mainstream history of Indian environmentalism and environmental discourse has often excluded the environmental engagements of marginalized communities. For instance, the Muslim environmental engagements with Islamic idioms have remained under-theorized in the studies on environmentalism in India. This paper explores the salient features of Islamic environmentalism in Kerala by analyzing Muslim activism through examining the application of Islamic teachings on the environment, justice, and ethics within the political landscape of Kerala. The study focuses on the Chaliyar struggle (1972), the first environmental struggle in Kerala with a popular base. The dominant strands of civil society and the state institutions portray Islamic environmentalism as a farce mask or a survival tactic of Islamic fundamentalism to gain public legitimacy for specific religious values and are less concerned with environmental justice. Instead, this paper argues that Islamic environmentalism is a political response to the contemporary ecological crisis that actively emanates from the sources of the Islamic faith and communities. An over emphasize on the civil society framework in the approach to environmentalism limits the view of the subtleties associated with Islamic environmentalism by deploying the secular and religious binary. This paper proposes a theoretical reorientation using post-secularism studies to understand the specificities of Islamic environmentalism in times of global climate change. The paper is based on fieldwork conducted among different Muslim organizations in Kerala and the natives of Vazhakad in north Kerala (India), affected by the pollution of Chaliyar River. The study uses semi-structured interviews to collect data and gather evidence through material artifacts.