Gandhi’s life and writings show that he was attempting to bring about a planetary paradigm shift by providing holistic and ecologically sound alternatives to the unsustainable life model established by modern industrial civilisation. He tried to replace consumerism with conservation, mass production with production by the masses, private ownership with community ownership, quantity obsession with quality concern, dominating power with enabling power, centralisation with decentralisation, reductionism with holism, and crass materialism with authentic spirituality.

These traits of deep ecology are constitutive elements of his philosophy and way of life, and that is why many hail him as the father of modern environmentalism. And the relentless effort he made to attain the triple harmony- of body, mind and spirit, and of thought, word and deed – earned for him the title of Mahatma which means a person in whom thought, words and action are amalgamated into a whole.

Gandhi considered modern civilisation which has set the satisfaction of material wants and attainments of physical comfort as the central purpose of life, as the root cause of all social maladies including environmental degradation we witness today. To discard this, and to adopt a sustainable alternative in its place, is therefore indispensable for maintaining eco-balance