Replication of Environmental Ethics, Religious Values, and Family Bonding in Dilip Chitre’s The Felling of the Banyan Tree

Abstract

The replication of environmental ethics, religious values, and family bonding represents a practical approach to sustainability. It suggests that pro-environmental behaviour is not just a result of policy or science, but is deeply rooted in the ‘soft’ infrastructure of human society: what we believe, how we pray, and how we raised. Modern industrialization and urban expansion have severely disrupted the world's ecological equilibrium, fostering seemingly irreconcilable conflicts between human ambition and environmental integrity. While these advancements have secured unprecedented material comfort, they have simultaneously catalysed deforestation, systemic pollution, and the erosion of cultural landscapes. Literaturespecifically poetryserves as a poignant mirror to this crisis, effectively translating abstract ecological degradation into the visceral language of human emotion. The poem narrates the destruction of a centuries-old banyan tree which stands not merely as an ecological tragedy but also as a profound symbol for uprooted identity, cultural forgetfulness and experientialmovement. This paper examines the poem through the joint lenses of replication environmental ethics, Religious Values and family bonding by exploring how Dilip Chitre links ecological demolition to spiritualbreakdown and cultural separation.