On November 20, 2025, the Supreme Court adopted a narrowly drawn, technically framed definition of the Aravalli Hills, restricting their recognition to landforms rising 100 metres or more from the local relief, along with their slopes and associated landforms. According to recent media reports, this elevation-based benchmark effectively excludes more than 90% of the number of hills in Rajasthan that were previously treated as belonging to the Aravallis – India’s oldest mountain range, formed during the Precambrian era (4.6 BYA – 541 MYA). Environmentalists, urban planners and conservationists warn that this definition could expose extensive landscapes to mining and construction, as a large number of hills may no longer fall under environmental safeguards previously associated with the Aravalli designation. Although the ruling also directs the Union government to conduct scientific mapping and prepare a sustainable mining management plan, critics contend that the real implications lie in the new definition. The deeper significance of this judgement becomes clearer when viewed within a longer historical arc – the shift from an organic conception of nature to a mechanistic one that began in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries.When nature was alive, sacred, and self-regulatingFor many centuries, communities viewed the world through an organic lens – one in which the cosmos, the natural world, and human life formed a living interdependent whole. Nature was imagined as a fertile, nurturing mother, and this image placed subtle but powerful ethical constraints on how people could act toward the environment. Such portrayals worked as cultural constraints against forceful intrusions like deep mining, large-scale clearing of forests, or unrestrained extraction of natural resources. As Carolyn Merchant notes in The Death of Nature, miners once approached the earth with ritual reverence: they observed purification rites, practiced abstinence, and performed acts of propitiation, believing that digging into the earth’s body was a violation of her sanctity. These symbolic understandings established a set of moral boundaries – practical “oughts” and “ought-nots” – that regulated commercial and technological activities and helped curb destructive tendencies.Also read: Aravallis on Trial: When Law Protects Profit, Not LifeThe rise of the mechanistic worldview: Nature and humans as resourcesDuring the 16th and 17th centuries, the earlier understanding of the cosmos and society as an interconnected organic whole began to fade under the accelerating pressures of commercial expansion, technological innovation, and the early currents of capitalism in Western Europe. As the scientific revolution took hold, the image of a nurturing, animate earth was displaced by a mechanistic worldview that treated nature as inert, disorderly matter awaiting rational control. Natural processes were no longer understood as the cyclical rhythms of an organism but as the predictable operations of a machine. With this shift, long-standing cultural restraints on mining and extraction weakened: what had once bordered on sacrilege now appeared as a legitimate – and even celebrated – act of technical mastery. The earth ceased to be a mother demanding reverence and became a storehouse of resources to be opened, partitioned, and exploited.This transformation did not stop at the natural world. As nature was reimagined as dead matter, human beings – especially those rendered vulnerable through conquest – were likewise absorbed into an extractive logic. The mechanistic worldview fit seamlessly with the emerging structures of commercial capitalism and European imperial expansion. As Amitav Ghosh argues in The Nutmeg’s Curse, capitalism did not arise internally within Europe; instead, its expansion depended on colonial conquest, the genocidal displacement of indigenous peoples, and the large-scale enslavement of Native Americans and Africans. Through the military and geopolitical dominance of Western empires, small ruling elites acquired unprecedented control over vast populations – their labour, bodies, belief systems, and environments – mirroring the new conception of the earth as raw material to be dominated.In this sense, the collapse of the organic worldview between 1500 and 1700 was far more than an intellectual transition; it marked a profound cultural, political, and ecological rupture. The mechanistic model dissolved earlier ethical limits and made both nature and human beings available as resources – an orientation that continues to shape modern systems of power, economy, and environmental degradation today.The persistence of extractive logicSeen in this longer historical frame, the Supreme Court’s November 2025 judgment reflects a contemporary expression of the mechanistic worldview. By reducing the Aravallis to a numerical height threshold, the ruling converts a richly interconnected ecological landscape into a narrow technical category. Many features vital to groundwater recharge, climate regulation, biodiversity conservation, pollution and heat-wave mitigation, and desertification control across Northwest India – including the NCR – such as low ridges and hillocks are effectively erased from legal recognition. Any hill that fails to meet the 100-metre criterion is reclassified as “non-Aravalli” and therefore becomes potentially available for mining, real-estate development, and construction. The judgement illustrates how mechanistic reasoning increasingly shapes environmental governance: landscapes are parsed into discrete, quantifiable units that can be opened, fragmented, and monetised. As in the seventeenth century, elements of nature that once benefited from protection – whether grounded in law, cultural ethics, or ecological understanding – is now vulnerable to extraction under the banner of technical rationality. Colonisation reimaginedLocal communities living in and around the Aravallis as in other parts of the country and world are increasingly cast as impediments to development rather than recognised as long-standing custodians of the land. Their ties to land, livelihoods, and cultural spaces are subordinated to industrial and commercial priorities, echoing older colonial patterns in which local ways of life were dismissed as impediments to ‘progress.’ Mining has already damaged their access to farming and drinking water and has undermined their health. Dust and fine particulates from mining and stone-crushing operations trigger or worsen respiratory illnesses. Agriculture declines as vegetation loss and groundwater depletion make the region more arid, while contaminated runoff from mining sites degrades soils. Mining also disrupts aquifers, causing wells to run dry and leaving available water heavily silted.Much like colonial empires that legitimised extraction through categories imposed by maps, measurements, and legal constructs, the definition of the Aravallis in the recent judgement manufactures extractable space by reshaping the very terms through which natural features are understood, all under the guise of technical logic. What was once protected as an ecologically interdependent system is recast as a divisible and negotiable commodity, its worth measured not by ecological function or human relationships but by its potential for exploitation.Also read: The Aravalli Hills Have A New Definition. Here’s Why This Is A Problem.Challenging the mechanistic legacy The Supreme Court’s judgment is not an isolated legal event; it stands within a long intellectual and political trajectory stretching back five centuries. The dismantling of the organic worldview and the rise of mechanistic rationality enabled the capitalist systems of extraction, colonisation, and ecological devastation that shaped the modern world. By removing protection from more than 90 percent of the number of hills in the Aravallis in Rajasthan, the Court’s decision repeats this logic: nature becomes inert matter waiting to be converted into economic value, and communities become collateral to that conversion.Yet this worldview is increasingly out of step with contemporary global ethics. Across the world, an alternative vision is gaining ground. From the Whanganui River in New Zealand to the Ganga and Yamuna in India, from Ecuador’s constitution to citizens in Germany seeking rights for the River Spree, the Rights of Nature movement reflects a profound moral shift: nature is not property—it is a living system with its own rights. Recognizing ecosystems as legal persons is not radical; it merely enables their well-being to be defended in court through guardians acting on their behalf.This global turn toward a vitalist ethic underscores what the Aravalli judgment overlooks: that human well-being depends on treating nature as kin, rather than a quarry. At a moment when an alternative worldview grounded in ecological reciprocity is on the rise, the Supreme Court’s ruling moves in the opposite direction. It is a reminder that the struggle to move beyond the mechanistic worldview remains urgent – and that the fate of our natural heritage, like the Aravallis, will determine whether we choose extraction or stewardship, domination or care, destruction or life.Ritu Rao works with the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) on various natural heritage projects.