The Aravalli range is India’s only transverse mountain system. Most of India’s mountain chains run in a north-east direction, aligned with the monsoon. The Aravallis, by contrast, stand chest out from south-west to north-east. That very stance allows them to absorb the sand-laden storms blowing in from the west into their dense forests.

This is why the Aravallis are called India’s backbone. They are also the world’s only ancient mountain range where, even today, fresh sand dunes can be seen wedged between primordial rock formations.

After conducting a remote-sensing study, Prof. S.S. Dawariya — then director of the Birla Institute of Scientific Research, Jaipur — submitted his report to the Supreme Court as part of a petition I had filed. By then, mining had already ripped open 22 massive gaps in the Aravallis.

After hearing me and examining the report, then Chief Justice of India M.N. Venkatachaliah had directed the Government of India to protect the Aravallis to shield Delhi from sandstorms. That directive led to the ministry of environment and forests issuing the Aravalli protection notification of 7 May 1992.

Even before that, the Supreme Court had delivered a historic judgment, recognising the Aravallis as a single, integrated mountain system and ordering that it be saved.

At the time, it felt like the Aravallis’ tears had been wiped away, that the judiciary understood the pain. But after reading the Supreme Court’s judgment of 20 November, along with the reports and affidavits, I must say, with profound grief, that no one seems to understand the pain of the Aravallis.

The mountain itself has now been divided into ‘high’ and ‘low’. Only peaks higher than 100 metres will count as Aravallis; anything lower will simply cease to exist as Aravalli. Go ahead, then — erase those small hills we have been fighting to save since the 1980s!

In 1986, to regenerate the Aravallis, we built a large dam in Gopalpur........

© National Herald