Researcher discusses religion, environmentalism

Associate Professor of Religious Studies David Haberman addressed about 75 people Thursday night in his lecture "River Goddesses and Indian Environmentalism."\nThe lecture grew out of a project that Haberman said combined his interest in the environment with 10 years of frequent travels in India, where he has done a variety of theological and ethnographic research.\nHaberman said he studied religious life along the Yamuna and Ganges rivers in India. In the course of his studies he said he noticed an undercurrent of environmentalism that closely tied religion to the rivers.\n"Every year I would go back to do research along these rivers," he said. "And every year I watched the (environmental) deterioration of those rivers. I'm a Colorado nature boy and that was hard for me to swallow. I began to wonder about the conflict between religious and environmental interests and the reality of the pollution."\nJohn McRae, an associate professor of religious studies, said Haberman's work and life are in perfect unity.\n"To David (Haberman), being an academic is like being a missionary," McRae said. "He cares deeply about both his studies and concerns about the environment."\n"In America, the environmental movement is dominated by this philosophy that we need to preserve nature for our own benefit," Haberman said. "There is a pervading fear of environmental catastrophe."\nBut in India, he said, environmentalists are motivated by love rather than fear.\n"Hinduism is a nature-loving religion," he said. "Rivers are viewed and worshiped as sacred."\nHaberman said the Yamuna and Ganges rivers are believed to be goddesses in Hindu theology. Flowing water is a living entity in this view, and pollution and damming kill the shakti, or life-force, of the river, he said.\nHaberman included in his lecture a slide show of some of his travels along the rivers. Photographs traced the source of the Yamuna, which flows from a glacier in the Himalayas, and a course that leads it through cities and rural communities, ultimately feeding into the Bay of Bengal. By the time the river reaches the bay, Haberman said its once pristine waters are choked with pollution.\nSarah Smith, a senior, said the slide show was her favorite part of the presentation.\n"(The slide show) made everything he said more concrete," said Smith. "It was easy to see why the people of India have so much emotion invested in these rivers."\nHaberman said urbanization was one of the primary causes of the degradation he has witnessed. As people move to the cities and become immersed in a more global and secular culture, they lose many of the religious motivations tradition has preserved, he said.\n"Too many people have stopped thinking of the rivers as divine," Haberman said. "Only when people see the Yamuna as a goddess again will they stop polluting her."\nHaberman told a story about an 80-year-old woman who has bathed in the river every day of her adult life. She still worships the Yamuna, and said her ablutions are vital to her health. But she refuses to admit that it is polluted. She said the river has the divine power to purify itself, and it wouldn't allow itself to become corrupted.\nHaberman said devotional love is the means and end to the environmental movement in India. He said the fear that motivates many environmentalists in the United States simply fosters greater problems, and that U.S. citizens can learn a great deal from the Indian model.\nGraduate student Joshua Martin said the talk hit home to him.\n"The presentation was about a country I've never been to, but it made me understand and love my own environment here at home that much more"