A PIONEER AMONG ENVIRONMENTALISTS

A PIONEER AMONG ENVIRONMENTALISTS 

Swami Yuktananda (Panu Maharaj) who spoke about environmental issues in the early 1970s when the world at large was sleeping on it. After he was evicted from the Ramakrishna Mission on ideological grounds in which his concern for the environment played the critical part, he founded his own organisation called 'Vivekananda Nidhi' where he kept up a sustained campaign on global warming and allied issues. A visionary who was not understood by his compatriots for he was way ahead of his times, Swami Yuktananda nonetheless went ahead with his far-reaching programmes of environmental awareness which have today assumed seminal significance in the public imagination as the world warms up to its catastrophic culmination.

I knew him personally and was blessed with his unalloyed affection. I offer him my heartfelt salutations at this distant day for he has passed away from our midst decades ago. But his message remains -- 'Wake up before it is too late, for the earth will soon become uninhabitable unless you act now and start cooling it.'

Written by Sugata Bose