ABSTRACT
Having heard about the tree-temples of Swadhyaya, I called their office in Mumbai to visit one such site in summer of 2006 during my trip to India. Soon, I found myself on my way to Valsad in Gujarat. I arrived at the home of a local Swadhyaya volunteer, Maheshbhai, who was supposed to take me to the site. Several other people had also come to accompany me to the site. All of them showed warmth and enthusiasm to welcome me and explain to me about tree-temples and several other works and ideologies of the Swadhyaya movement. The tree-temple, established on June 22, 1987, appeared as if an oasis has suddenly sprung up out of nowhere. It was a dense garden of trees of mangoes and chikoo (sapodilla). I appreciated the view of lush green trees and was particularly impressed that it was built on a land where people had just lost all hopes of cultivation. Even the government had declared it as a barren land. As the caretakers of this garden began explaining about the way they perceive the trees and the vision of their guru Athavale with the words mentioned in the quotation above, I began asking questions related to environmentalism. What I present below is based on several such interviews with Swadhyaya followers who have participated in such work. I have also extracted relevant information from the vernacular literature of Swadhyaya that is based on the video-recorded discourses of Athavale.
