India, April 27 -- The passing of Muni Narayana Prasad on Saturday, April 25, at the age of 87, marks the loss of one of India's most original philosophical voices on sustainability. He did not speak the language of climate targets or carbon markets. He did not frame his arguments in the vocabulary of policy or activism. Yet, few thinkers in recent decades have engaged as deeply with the crisis that now defines our time.

For him, the ecological question was not technical. It was civilisational.

At a time when sustainability is widely discussed in fragmented terms, energy, water, biodiversity, climate, he insisted on seeing the whole. The crisis, he argued, lies not only in how we manage resources but in how we understand existence itsel...