By JP Singh
Temples can be destroyed, repaired, and rebuilt. Mountains, however—like the Aravallis, now at the centre of a grave controversy—once destroyed, can never be rebuilt. Temples may rise again through human devotion and wealth; mountains cannot—for they are not human artefacts, but the very architecture of life.
Mountain ranges protect forests, flora, and fauna. They generate rivers, enrich soil, regulate climate, and sustain rainfall. They form the unseen backbone of food security, ecology, and human survival. Once a mountain crumbles, everything connected to it collapses.
It is no coincidence that India’s civilisational identity flows from the Hindukush, the Himalayas, and the Indus river system. History bears grim testimony: civilizations that ignored the ecological forces shaping climate and terrain did not merely decline—they vanished.
That the Vedic civilization alone has endured for over five thousand years is not accidental. Its sages placed mountains, rivers, and soil at the heart of cultural, spiritual, and ethical life. Mountains were understood as the pegs of the divine tent, holding the sky in place. Any civilization that seeks longevity must keep its mountain systems and riverine ecology at its centre.
This is why India’s sages regarded mountains as even more sacrosanct than temples. Temples were conceived not as replacements for nature, but as guardians of it.
The highest expression of this wisdom is Kailash Parvat, where no temple was ever built—for the mountain itself was revered as Shiva, the living symbol of the Creator, beyond all human imitation. In the same spirit, sacred shrines were deliberately placed upon mountain tops and hills: Vaishno Devi on the Trikuta Hills, Kamakhya Devi on the Nilachal Hills, Hinglaj Devi on Chandra Roop Parvat in Baluchistan, Tirupati on the Tirumala Hills, and the Dattatreya shrines on Brahmagiri, the Sahyadris, and the Satmala ranges. These were not acts of domination over nature, but acts of reverence—a way to elevate human consciousness towards protection, restraint, and humility.
The mountains themselves are ancient beyond comprehension. They emerged over two to three hundred crore years from molten lava. Once destroyed, they are gone forever. They were born of a primordial, consecrated yajña, where unimaginable heat shaped the Earth’s body—its mountains, oceans, forests, biodiversity, and the delicate balance that allows human life to exist.
The sages intuitively understood what modern science now confirms: that imbalance—whether in nature or in human desire—leads inevitably to collapse.
Even during early urbanisation, when kings quarried stone for palaces and monuments, sages warned that life is transient and power fleeting. Without discernment between what is enduring and what is expendable, wisdom cannot guide action. To safeguard forests and watersheds, shrines of Shiva and Durga, the divine feminine, were established. Mountain forests were preserved as life-support systems—providing water, fertile soil, flood control, and climatic stability—like a blanket protecting a vulnerable body exposed to the elements.
Even when rock was cut under royal patronage—by the Cholas at Thanjavur or in the Kailasa Temple at Ellora—the underlying message remained intact: unless human creation is sanctified by restraint and reverence, it will devour its own future.
Across spiritual traditions, humanity is described as a vicegerent—a trustee, not an owner, of Earth. Consumption divorced from responsibility turns the consumer into the consumed. Ego, desire, and unchecked appetite ultimately destroy the very ground they stand upon.
The wisdom of the ages converges on a single injunction: know thyself—before seeking to conquer what you falsely believe is separate from you.
The cry of the Aravallis is not merely ecological. It is civilisational. It is spiritual. It is a call to remember who we are—and what we are about to lose. A civilization that wounds its mountains wounds its own spine—and once the spine breaks, no power can make it stand again.
—The writer is a retired Associate Professor of History, Delhi University
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