CELEBRATING SUSTAINABLE PROSPERITY
Onam as Earth Festival
Keywords:
agri-culture, diversity, education for sustainability, responsible consumption-production, stewardshipAbstract
Search for the enough that ensures peace is also the path to abundance and prosperity – often with accumulation with a few and deprivation of the many – however, deep down, human desire is for a society where all are treated equally and all have enough. This dream is partly realised in times of harvests, which are experiences of prosperity. The regional harvest festival of Onam of Keralam, in the South of India is a religious celebration of harvest-linked prosperity, into which are dreams of egalitarianism, abundance, and generosity infused through the myth of Mahabali, the benign benevolent ruler of the land. The effort is to examine Onam festival against the background of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), the elements of sustainability in the celebration and in the increasingly consumerist culture of the region, and what possibly religious and educational institutions could do to reinvent the overarching virtue of sustainability through the celebration and through the platforms available to them.
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