Gopal Patel in 2015. Courtesy picture
MONTCLAIR, New Jersey (RNS) — Almost twenty years in the past, on the age of 21, Gopal Patel moved into an ashram on the banks of the River Ganges to review the Bhagavad Gita, one in every of Hinduism’s foundational Scriptures.
One among only a handful of Indian college students at a “very racist” highschool in England, he stated, Patel, now 39, discovered consolation within the epic dialog between the sacred textual content’s warrior prince Arjuna and the god Krishna.
“It made me go into myself and attempt to discern who I used to be as an individual, my id and my cultural background,” Patel stated. “By the point I completed studying it, I used to be like, ‘I need to give my life to this.’”
At present Patel lives in Montclair, New Jersey, a brief commute from New York Metropolis, and travels the world because the founding father of Bhumi International, an interfaith environmental motion rooted in Hindu ideas. The group, named for the Hindu goddess who represents Earth, focuses on the “triple disaster” of local weather change, biodiversity loss and air pollution.
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Tulasi Srinivas, a professor of anthropology and faith at Emerson Faculty, says Patel’s expertise as a diasporic Indian and “old-school Hindu” born within the U.Ok. and dwelling within the U.S., bridges, that means he applies each Jap and Western approaches to the local weather disaster.
“You want an enormous tent to do this type of work. And to mobilize individuals globally, one can’t have technocratic solutions solely,” Srinivas stated. “You want Indigenous solutions, Hinduism, animism, stuff that we’re coming again to in a scientific method — yoga, circulation and stability. Options can come from these areas.”
On the U.N. Biodiversity Convention in Montreal in December, Patel will work to provoke faith-based teams round biodiversity — the number of life on Earth — which he stated usually will get drowned out within the bigger local weather dialog.
Gopal Patel participates on a panel at COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, in Nov. 2022. Courtesy picture
The shared purpose of the assembly is to go away Montreal with what has been known as a “Paris second” for nature, a world biodiversity framework that Patel and his allies have been working on.
“The religion group has been robust on local weather for a few years, however on biodiversity they haven’t,” Patel stated. “That is the primary time there was a concerted effort by religion teams to have interaction.”
This yr, a world analysis effort known as the Forest Declaration Assessment discovered that whereas deforestation is slowing worldwide, the tempo of change is not fast enough to realize world leaders’ purpose of web zero tree loss by 2030.
The World Wildlife Fund lately reported an almost 70% decline since 1970 within the wildlife populations it tracks, “which,” he stated, “comes at a time once we are lastly starting to grasp the deepening impacts of the interlinked local weather and nature crises and the basic position biodiversity performs in sustaining the well being, productiveness and stability of the numerous pure techniques we and all life on Earth depend upon.”
Patel makes it clear that Hindu environmentalists have identified this all alongside. “Jap traditions and Indigenous traditions are far more comfy speaking in regards to the sacredness of a tree or a plant or a river,” he stated. “That’s why I gravitate to biodiversity work. I felt like within the local weather house I wasn’t in a position to deliver my entire Hindu self into that. All these bushes and every little thing, I can take a look at them and speak about them in a method that within the local weather house, you’ll be able to’t have these sorts of conversations.”
Patel is an initiated pupil within the Vaishnav lineage of Hinduism. His trainer is Radhanath Swami, an American monk and non secular activist.
Sitting at an Ethiopian restaurant in Montclair earlier this yr, Patel recalled his trainer initiating him with a brand new title, Gopal Lila Das.
“Das means servant,” he defined. “Gopal is a reputation that you just give to Krishna as he takes care of cows, and Lila means ‘the actions of.’ In Hindu theology, the cow is the illustration of the earth. So he gave me that title, ‘the servant of somebody who takes care of the planet.’”
At the moment, Patel had simply begun organizing the venture that finally grew to become Bhumi International, which he based in 2009. “Typically it’s stated that when the guru offers you a reputation, it means there’s a future there ready so that you can dwell as much as, however I don’t suppose he knew that. It’s type of fascinating that my life has become attempting to take care of the surroundings.”
Gopal Patel on the 4th UN Atmosphere Meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, in March 2019. Courtesy picture
In late October, Bhumi International hosted its first worldwide summit, a digital two-day occasion in partnership with the U.N.’s Religion for Earth Initiative. Patel known as the gathering a proof of idea for having the ability “to convene quite a lot of voices and views” and hopes to host in-person summits in future years.
Iyad Abumoghli, director of the initiative, underscored the “convincing and convening energy” of spiritual leaders within the local weather motion.
“Member states can’t alone obtain the Sustainable Growth Objectives or the targets on local weather change and biodiversity, so we’d like all palms on deck,” Abumoghli stated. “One can find religion leaders in each nook of the world. There’s a Hindu in each nation. There’s a Muslim in all places. So you might have an agent of change wherever you go that’s unmatched.”
He continued, “Religions really speak to the hearts of the individuals earlier than they speak to the minds of the individuals. No matter spiritual leaders say, we are saying amen, we bow and we settle for and we observe.”
With 1.2 billion adherents worldwide, Hinduism is the religion of roughly 15% of the world’s inhabitants. Abumoghli identified that among the world’s largest firms at the moment are led by CEOs of Indian origin, lots of them Hindu, who maintain affect over how inexperienced their organizations will likely be.
Gopal Patel, heart. Courtesy picture
Patel stated he’s aware of rising Hindu nationalism in India however has gone to nice lengths to separate his work and that of the Bhumi group from these politics.
“I’ve made a acutely aware determination to not deliver the politics of India into the politics of the diaspora,” he stated. “I actually strongly consider Hindus within the West, and wherever they’re on the planet, should outline themselves primarily based on the place they’re dwelling, not what’s happening in one other a part of the world the place they might not have any connection apart from ancestrally.”
“And so, I’m involved about: How does the Hindu group present up in america? How does it present up in Europe? How does it present up in different elements of the world? For me, I used to be born in England, I’m at the moment dwelling within the U.S., I’m probably going to die within the West. Proper? India is a spot of pilgrimage, primarily, for me.”
Karenna Gore, founder and government director of Heart for Earth Ethics at Union Theological Seminary, met Patel in 2014 whereas she was a seminary pupil. They appeared on panels collectively over the following few years, and Patel finally joined the middle as a senior adviser.
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“He’s excellent at understanding how the U.N. works, how the NGO ecosystem works and the place the chance is for change,” Gore stated.
She stated Patel has a fame for staying true to himself and his Hindu values whereas navigating the paradoxes of a world improvement group nonetheless dominated by the West and a lingering colonial legacy of conquest and exploitation.
“He has a readability of thoughts and coronary heart about what’s vital on this work. He doesn’t enable that to be commandeered by the politics of the motion,” stated Gore. “Basically, he loves reality. You possibly can inform his accountability is finally to a better dimension, and he’s not one for machinations that may betray that.”
This story was produced partially by the Religious Exemplars Undertaking led by College of Southern California’s Heart for Faith and Civic Tradition. Gopal Patel based Bhumi International, an interfaith environmental motion rooted in Hindu ideas and named for the Hindu goddess who represents Earth. His focus is on the “triple disaster” of local weather change, biodiversity loss and air pollution.
