LLM Group 6 Environment and Legal Order Environment and Development Law and Policy 2022 Question Paper with Solutions

Significance one: an ethic of restraint towards a living world

The earliest writings treat nature as kin and use as something that must be justified. The hymn to the earth in the Atharva Veda (Book XII, Hymn 1) calls the earth mother and prays in verse 11 that her "hills [and] snowy mountains" and "forest-land" be pleasant. In verse 45 it describes the earth as bearing "people of different speech, of diverse customs", a single ground sustaining many ways of life. The philosophical texts turn this kinship into a rule of conduct: the first verse of the Isha Upanishad closes with the command "Do not covet the wealth of any man!", an ethic of limited wants.

The law books extended moral concern to plants and imposed penance for harming them without need. The Manusmriti (Buhler's translation) prescribes that "For cutting fruit-trees, shrubs, creepers, lianas, or flowering plants, one hundred Rikas must be muttered" (XI.143), and that one who destroys "for no good purpose plants produced by cultivation, or such as spontaneously spring up in the forest" must attend a cow for a day, living on milk alone (XI.145). The phrase "for no good purpose" is significant: the text accepts use but condemns waste.

Ashoka's edicts show the State acting positively as well as prohibiting. Rock Edict II (Dhammika's translation) records "medical treatment for humans and medical treatment for animals", medicinal herbs "imported and grown", and that "Along roads I have had wells dug and trees planted for the benefit of humans and animals". The significance is that care of animals, trees and water was treated as a public function, the ancestor of the welfare duties now found in Article 48A.

The medieval period produced written community codes. The Bishnoi community, founded by Guru Jambheshwar at Samrathal Dhora in 1485, lives by twenty-nine principles that include the prohibition of killing animals and felling green trees. The significance of that code was proved in 1730 at Khejarli, where 363 Bishnois led by Amrita Devi died resisting the felling of khejri trees for the Maharaja of Jodhpur. The same tradition of bodily resistance returned at Reni in the Garhwal Himalaya on 26 March 1974, when women led by Gaura Devi turned back contractors' men in the Chipko movement, which led in 1980 to a fifteen-year ban on green felling in the Uttar Pradesh Himalaya.

Sacred groves, the devrai of Maharashtra, the kavu of Kerala and the orans of Rajasthan among them, remain the most tangible legacy. Their significance is now recognised in environmental assessment. In Hanuman Laxman Aroskar v. Union of India, AIRONLINE 2019 SC 318, the environmental clearance for the Mopa airport in Goa was challenged because the impact assessment had not disclosed the plateau's ecological features. Among the objections the Court set out was that "The sacred groves of the area have not been described, including the Barazan which will be lost". The Court suspended the clearance and directed a fresh appraisal. A grove protected by tradition became a fact that a statutory assessment must record.

Beaches and the public trust. In Fomento Resorts and Hotels Ltd v. Minguel Martins, (2009) 3 SCC 571, where a hotel on a Goa beach had blocked the public's traditional access, the Court observed that protection of plants, trees, earth, water and every form of life "was regarded as a sacred duty of every one", before applying the public trust doctrine and ordering the access kept open.

The courts also mark the limit. In Animal Welfare Board of India v. A. Nagaraja, (2014) 7 SCC 547, the Court quoted its own paraphrase of Upanishadic teaching and treated compassion for animals as "the culture and tradition of the country", holding jallikattu unlawful. A Constitution Bench on 18 May 2023, in Animal Welfare Board of India v. Union of India, upheld the State amendments that later permitted the sport, and expressly did "not accept the view reflected in the case of A. Nagaraja that performance of Jallikattu is not a part of the cultural heritage of the people of the State of Tamil Nadu". Tradition can be cited on both sides of an environmental dispute; its significance for the courts is as a source of values, not as a rule of decision.

Their enforcement is unknown. We have rules and inscriptions but almost no record of prosecutions, so the texts tell us what rulers declared, not what they achieved.

They contradict one another. Vedic ritual included animal sacrifice, which Ashoka's first Rock Edict forbade.

Reverence has not prevented degradation. Rivers regarded as sacred are among the most polluted in India, which shows that an ethic without institutions does not protect.

Conclusion. The significance of environment protection in India's ancient and medieval writings is real but specific. They established restraint as the moral norm towards nature, showed a State administering forests, species and urban sanitation with fines and compensation, and sustained practices, from tanks and sacred groves to the Bishnoi code, that conserved real places and inspired Chipko. Modern courts use them as a source of values, from the Doon valley and Tehri to the beaches of Goa, and the Constitution's Fundamental Duty speaks their language of compassion. Their limit is that they gave no rights and applied unequally, so their lasting significance is as the moral foundation beneath modern environmental law, not as a substitute for it; the jallikattu litigation shows that tradition informs the law but does not decide it.