Saving Trees Is Hinduism. Cutting Them for the Kumbh Is Pure Politics.
The irony would be hilarious if it weren’t so tragic. A festival meant to purify the soul has somehow become an excuse to pollute the city’s conscience. Nashik’s preparations for the upcoming Kumbh Mela should have been about spiritual rejuvenation, cultural pride and orderly planning. Instead, they have descended into a grotesque civic ritual where thousands of mature trees await execution because someone in a government office decided that Hindu devotion requires wider roads, shinier riverfronts and unobstructed VIP routes. If this is how we honour holiness, one wonders what desecration looks like.
Hinduism’s relationship with trees is not complicated. It reveres them. Worships them. Protects them. The Peepal is sacred, the Banyan is divine, the Neem is medicinal, and entire groves have traditionally been safeguarded as abodes of gods. Our ancestors did not study ecology, biodiversity or microclimate regulation, yet they instinctively knew that harming a tree harmed the balance of life. Modern political Hinduism, however, seems to have missed this memo entirely. In the rush to turn every religious occasion into a street-wide spectacle, trees have morphed into disposable inconveniences standing in the way of ambitious “beautification” projects.
And here lies the great absurdity. The Kumbh lasts weeks. A mature tree takes decades to grow. But somehow, the logic presented to the public is that a short-term gathering requires long-term ecological sacrifice. Were Nashik’s previous Kumbh Melas held in the prehistoric era without trees? Did pilgrims back then not walk, pray and bathe without bulldozers clearing a path? The argument is so flimsy that its motive is obvious: this is not about managing crowds. It is about managing optics.
For governments teetering between administrative inadequacy and PR addiction, the Kumbh is not a spiritual event; it is a stage. A chance to display wide roads for cameras, polished ghats for visiting dignitaries, and sterile, treeless vistas that photograph well in brochures. Trees, unfortunately, do not fit this aesthetic. They cast shadows, drop leaves, disrupt the symmetry of riverfront tiles and worst of all, cannot be commissioned, inaugurated or ribbon-cut. So they must go. Not because the Kumbh demands it, but because political showmanship does.
The ecological price Nashik will pay far outlives the pilgrims, contractors and politicians who will benefit in the short term. Trees regulate heat. They slow floods. They anchor soil. They shelter birds, insects and microfauna that make up an entire hidden ecosystem. Once cut, that balanced world collapses. Compensatory plantation does not replace that loss; saplings are not substitutes for mature canopies. Planting a two-foot stick after killing a 50-year-old tree is not “restoration.” It is greenwashing with extra steps.
What makes this saga especially painful is that Hinduism deserves better than the tokenistic environmentalism displayed in political speeches. You cannot invoke the sanctity of rivers and the purity of land in the morning, then approve mass felling by evening. You cannot celebrate Prakriti and Panchabhuta in textbooks while treating Nashik’s green cover as expendable. You cannot preach about Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam — the world as one family — while systematically destroying one of its most fundamental members: the tree.
Let us be clear. Opposing unnecessary tree cutting is not anti-Hindu. It is not anti-Kumbh. It is, in fact, deeply aligned with the values Hinduism teaches. Protecting trees is not activism. It is dharma. What the government is doing in Nashik is not dharma. It is politics — the kind that hides its insecurities behind religious events and hopes no one notices the environmental carnage left behind.
But Nashik has noticed. Citizens have begun raising objections, environmental groups are demanding accountability, and young people are asking why their future must pay for a festival that already ran smoothly without this destruction. They are right to resist. It is not disrespectful to faith to demand responsible governance. It is disrespectful to faith to hide bad governance behind it.
The choice before Nashik is simple but urgent. If the Kumbh is truly a celebration of spirituality, then let us honour the spirit of the land that hosts it. If the festival is meant to cleanse, let us begin by not polluting the ecological balance that protects the city. If Hinduism teaches us to revere nature, then the greatest offering we can make is preservation, not devastation.
Saving trees is Hinduism. Cutting them for the Kumbh is pure politics. And Nashik must decide which one it wants to stand with — its roots or its rulers.
