I was born in the beautiful Himalaya, inspired by the mountains and forests and rivers. When in the 1970s I saw the forests and streams start to disappear, I felt that part of me was dying. That is why, when peasant women of my region started the Chipko movement to stop deforestation, I joined as a volunteer. Chipko means to embrace. Women occupied the forests, saying they would embrace the trees, and they would have to be killed before the trees were killed. For them trees were not square feet of dead timber, they were living mothers who provided them with water, fuel, fodder, food. Four decades  before  scientists started to talk about the ecological functions of nature, from the women of Chipko I learnt the highest lessons of ecology and interconnectedness. From them I learnt that economic systems which destroy nature also create poverty. As a child I was inspired by Einstein, and chose to study Physics. My scientific enquiry took me to the foundations of Quantum Theory – to shape a world view beyond Cartesian, Newtonian, Baconian science which sees nature as dead matter. I did a PhD on Hidden Variables and non Locality in Quantum Theory from Western University in Canada. The fragmented, mechanistic, reductionist world is violent in its origins, and violent in its impact on earth and human life. I was much more at home in a quantum world of non-separability, potential and uncertainty, a world in dynamic flux, shaped by interactions.

The Quantum paradigm and ecological paradigm of Chipko converged in my mind and my life. I realized I could either live my life solving puzzles of Quantum Theory or serving Earth and society. I chose the latter, and established the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology.

In 1984, the violence in Punjab was at its peak . More than 30000 people had been killed. Punjab is the land where the Green Revolution was started in the 60s. Green Revolution is the name given to industrial agriculture in the Third World.  The Green Revolution was given a Nobel Peace Prize. But there was no peace in Punjab. In the same year, a pesticide plant owned by Union Carbide in the city of Bhopal leaked and killed 3000 immediately , and 30000 since then. The question that kept coming to my mind was “Why is so much violence linked to agriculture”. So I studied the Green revolution, and wrote a book titled the Violence of the Green Revolution. I also made a commitment to promote non-violent ecological/organic farming.

In 1987, at a meeting on Biotechnology I heard the corporations that had brought us chemicals for war, which became agrochemicals after the war, talk about owning the seed through patents on GMOs.

That day I decided to dedicate my life to saving seeds, and started Navdanya, which means nine seeds. We have created 120 community seed banks, trained 650000 farmers in Organic. We produce more nutrition per acre, farmers get higher incomes, consumers get more health, nutrition and taste. This then, is an agriculture that works with nature’s ecological processes, and also gives us more food.

Apart from this, here are some responses to specific points in The Third Eye Of Shiva.

The Alternate Science Movement.

In the 1980s we talked of alternatives to reductionist, mechanistic science, which was dominant. Today, the cutting edge sciences of epigenetics and agro ecology have made the ecological paradigm the real scientific paradigm. There is nothing absurd in seeing inadequacies in the obsolete Cartesian paradigm. In fact it is absurd to be scientific blind and stick to outmoded beliefs inspite of new research and evidence.

My PhD

My Ph D is the Foundations of Quantum Physics. The specific topic was “Hidden Variables and non-Locality in Quantum theory. I went to Canada to follow this topic after one year to doing a PhD with India’s leading particle physicist, Dr Samar Biswas, because my mind was attracted to the foundational issues of how a Quantum World View differed from a Classical Mechanical world view. It differs in being indeterministic, and in non separability/nonlocality.

The Gaia foundation.

I do not know what Dr. Ranganathan is talking about. The Gaia Theory was the contribution of  NASA scientist, Dr James Lovelock who found that the Earth functions as a self-organising system. Maybe the writer believes in the  assumptions science gave up long ago, that the Earth is dead matter. One more evidence of outmoded thinking.

The Green Revolution and Golden Rice.

Even Dr. Swaminathan recognises the shortcomings of the Green Revolution. The other day I was invited by the UN to address Punjab agriculture scientists on the ecological costs of the Green Revolution. Does the writer not see the cancer train that leaves Punjab, or the depletion of water, or the debt of farmers and the death of Punjab soils? The Golden Rice as a solution to vitamin A deficiency is 300% less deficient than the bathua in the fields of Punjab killed with herbicides, or our curry leaves, or our drumstick , or Amaranth Greens. Because of the blindness to biodiversity and indigenous knowledge, I called Golden Rice “A Blind Approach to Blindness prevention” in 2000 when it was first talked about.

Repeating corporate propaganda is not science, it is propaganda. My critique of the Green Revolution and Golden Rice is a scientific critique from the scientific paradigm of Agro ecology, promoted today by ever UN Agency and recognised as the future by the International Assessment of Agricultural, Knowledge, Science, and Technology for Development which was carried out by 400 scientists over 6 years. They found that neither the Green Revolution or GMOs offered an answer to increasing food production, only ecological agriculture does.