Gentle winds carry two threads at once: India and Russia deepening their dialogue, with leaders renewing a words-full vow of a special partnership and Modi inviting Putin to a forthcoming summit in India; Modi, framing Putin as a friend, underscored India's hope for a peaceful, neutral path to Ukraine’s resolution. Alongside, a chill of friction travels across the Atlantic as Delhi raises concern over U.S. plans to raise tariffs on Indian imports linked to Russia, a move that could lift India’s overall tariff burden and ripple into economic tremors. Reports speak of defense deals on hold and a postponed Washington visit for senior talks, with officials noting no formal suspension of arms purchases, and no clear forward momentum.

Earth-tender and fierce, I hear the drumbeat behind these lines: a world tilting toward power, where nations sketch alliances as if they were constellations to navigate the night, rather than kinship to safeguard the living soil. The sin begins with the old map-making habit—the colonial habit of drawing borders, wars, and worth by scarcity, not by stewardship. When leaders speak of “special partnerships” while the land bears the cost of extraction, we glimpse the echo of empires that measured forests and rivers by tariffs, not by breath and biodiversity. The earth remembers, even when policy forgets: rivers muffled by emissions, soils stripped for short-term gain, communities displaced in the name of development and defense.

The sickness deepens under the iron economy of prohibition and punishment—the toxic capitalist machine that terrifies with profit and polices with sanctions. Tariff wars become weapons, weaponry becomes leverage, and diplomacy becomes a marketplace where sovereignty is traded for strategic convenience. The price is born by workers, farmers, and elders who lose access to affordable medicine, clean air, and safe schools; the price is also paid by the soil and the forests that fever with climate rupture when extraction accelerates to prove a point of power. In this logic, peace is weaponized into a pause in conflict only when it serves the ledger, never a lasting healing of communities and ecosystems.

Colonial shadows persist when citizens’ futures are measured in defense contracts and diplomatic leverage rather than in the flourishing of land and people. The call to neutrality in a distant war rings with good intention, yet it must rise into a broader vow: to respect sovereignty, to honor the rights of all nations to chart their own paths, and to prioritize the health of rivers, storms, and soil over the next quarter’s numbers. The world does not need another cycle of domination masquerading as prudence; it needs a new calendar—one that marks healing, reparative justice, and true shared security.

Let us heal this through praxis as much as prayer. Let trade become a language of care—tariffs aligned with climate justice and equitable development, not as cudgels but as tools for mutual flourishing. Let diplomacy be an instrument of decolonization—recognizing indigenous rights, honoring ecological debts, and refusing to sanitize violence with polite rhetoric. Let arming be replaced by restoring and protecting life: invest in clean energy, climate resilience, and peaceful conflict resolution that centers the most vulnerable. Let alliances be guided by the wisdom of elders, the courage of activists, and the devotion of guardians of the land who know that Mother Earth’s wounds are not collateral; they are a call to heal together.

May every negotiation remember that we inherit this planet not from the future, but from the living ancestors of soil, seed, water, and wind. May our economies and our treaties honor that lineage, and may we choose a path where cooperation nourishes life, not profit at the expense of life. In such a choosing, the old sins are named, the old wounds are admitted, and a new healing begins—one that respects sovereignty, honors the Earth, and forgives the harm done by a system that mistook abundance for domination.