Uprooting Geographic Thoughts in India: Toward Ecology and Culture in 21st Century

Under the cultural turn and transformation the new intellectual discourses started in the 21st century to search the roots, have cross-cultural comparison and to see how the old traditions be used in the contemporary worldviews. This book is the first attempt dealing with roots of Indian geographical thoughts since its beginning in 1920. It emphasises identity of India and Indianness and consciousness among dweller geographers in India, development and status of geography and its recent trends, Gaia theory and Indian context in search of cosmic integrity, ecospirituality and global message towards interrelatedness, Hindu pilgrimages and its contemporary importance, Mahatma Gandhi and his contribution to sustainable environmental development for global peace and humanism, and new vision to see meeting grounds of the East and the West on the line of reconstruction and reconciliation in the globalising world. These essays are selective and thematic, therefore overall view of comprehensiveness is lacking. But this book is not the end; obviously it is a beginning as already other volumes in sequence and continuity are in progress. At the end, the lead essays, representative of the three eras, by Spate (1956), Sopher (1973), and Mukerji (1992) are reprinted with a view to assessing the relevance of their challenging message even today.