Bellal Bin Quashem & Mohammad Emamul Islam :
Love for the nature, finding the supernatural entity in nature and romantic poets’ spontaneous thirsts for the nature and natural elements may pedagogize the people about the vastness of natural world. It is very imperative to eliminate the wantonness, brutality and cruelty against the nature and to build an amicable amity with it for our own survival and subsistence. Recently the extinction of the innumerable species has created the nature as an imbalanced and a vulnerable ‘lebensraum’ for our generation. The reckless slaying and slaughtering of the langurs, monkeys, donkeys, foxes, elephants, deer, dolphins, birds and other flora and faunas in our country and the neighbouring counties are emitting the cursing sighs towards ourselves. We are able to discern the affectionate caress of the nature during the wrathful aggression of the natural disasters as storms, flood and typhoons invade us without any prophecy. The Sundarbans, the largest mangrove forest of the world, protect us from this wrath by placing its kind chest against these monstrous disasters to shield us. Every year its chest is pierced for us but we forget its sacrifices after the predicament is over.
Friendly approaches to the nature and the environment are the obligatory rubrics in the implementation of any plan and infrastructural development. The world leaders are paying their sincere attention to the nature in the preservation of natural world, environment, flora and fauna, water resources and the nature as a whole. They are also concerned about the adverse impacts of climate change, global warming, carbon emission, deforestation, urbanisation, rapid growth of Industrialisation and the absence of environment friendly commodities. So friendly approach to the nature and environment, friendly policies are mandatory for our survival. In a nutshell, we, the integral part of the nature, are trying to build a friendly tie with nature. In the Rime of the Mariner, S.T. Coleridge depicts a world where human beings befriend with nature, show dire cruelty against nature and the falling into the catastrophic misfortunes for the curse of the nature. The old mariner and the albatross are the exemplary symbol of perfect friendship. The albatross became tame and the old mariner treated it as his friend. It talked like a human being, ate human food and became the closest with the old mariner. In altruistic point of view, it can be mentioned that the relationship among the components of the nature must be friendly.
By breaching the intimate ties with nature, we are encircled with the untold sufferings; our greed for natural resources makes us commit brutal and horrible activities. In modern time, we are committing horrific jobs to the nature by cutting trees recklessly, killing animals without any fair reason, emitting carbon, testing nuclear weapons in harming the living nature, urbanising by devastating the natural world. In the discourse of Coleridge’s poem, the old mariner killed the albatross, the symbol of friendship, one of the vital components of nature, wantonly and without any fair reason. So he did injustice to the nature by slaughtering the bird. Thus we are slaying the rare species of our forests forgetting the necessity of their fair and extant presence.
Nature gives a feedbak of untold sufferings and intolerable agonies when we are doing unjust activities to it. Ignoring the friendly ties with the nature, we always do the affecting, tormenting and detrimental jobs to the nature. As a result the nature’s groaning sighs such natural disasters, climate changes, global warming, typhoons, storms, earthquakes attack us.These types of sufferings, we have to bear for our wantonness, recklessness and unwiseness.The sufferings and agonies of the old mariner and his comrades in the aforementioned discourse had to bear for the wanton slaying of the bird. During the slaying of the bird, the comrades of old mariner did not prevent him from committing such crurlty. He breached the cordial relationship with the nature by slaughtering the bird. So, harming the nature is to harm ourselves.
Rescue from sufferings by rebuilding the friendly relation with the nature is the most effective way. The world leaders realise the nature’s friendliness, they take environment friendly and future generation friendly approaches for our survival and for the survival of our generation. The old mariner rebuilt intimate ties with the nature by loving, became repentant for his wanton job, realised the nature’s essence and got the blessings of the nature. Apparently, love for the nature must be mandatory for our better survival.
In romantic discourses ‘pantheism’ is illustrated in searching the existence of God. God is omnipresent in every pros and cons of the nature. I want to tell an enticing story about the nature as a whole. The illiterate father asked his educated son about the existence of God. The son replied in paying his glance at the sky that God exists in the sky. Then the father asked again if God does not exist in the world. The son became wordless and didn’t respond anything more. The father ordered him to bring one kilogram of salt and a bucket of water and to mingle the salt with the water. The son mingled salt with water. Then the father asked the son, “Where is the salt?” The son replied, “the salt exists in the whole water of the bucket. The father told the son, “the God exists in the entire nature, in the every component of nature.” Thus the nature and God are synonymous. To love nature is to love God. It can be mentioned truly and transparently, the best way to serve the God and the humanity is to love the nature, the flora and fauna of the nature and its natural flow.
(Bellal Bin Quashem, Deputy Director, Islamic Foundation, Ministry of Religious Affairs & Mohammad Emamul Islam, Lecturer, Department of English, Global University Bangladesh)
