By Mansee Bal Bhargava, Priya Sharma*
The images from Har ki Pauri in Haridwar were damning. To clean the Ganga before Diwali, authorities stopped the river’s flow for 18 days. What surfaced was not a sacred river but a landfill: tons of waste, discarded clothes, puja material, plastic, flowers and debris exposed on the riverbed. Equally ironic, some people still took a holy dip in the remaining trickles—and left behind more clothes and puja material. This should not surprise a civilisation that thrives on cultural practices that instigate pollution. The question, then, is not merely why the Ganga is dying. It is why a morally dying civilisation continues to be fuelled by a culture of polluting.Ganesh Visarjan and Durga Visarjan have just passed; Diwali is here; soon come Sankranti and Holi—and between them, every other week offers something to celebrate. After the festivals, streets and waterbodies choke with filth. The more religiously, culturally and socially inclined we become as a “developed” society, the more unlivable our built environment becomes—with waste in air, land and water.
During Diwali, Delhi remains among the world’s most polluted cities, wrapped in firecracker smoke. This article focuses on water: our worries about water pollution and our wisdom for solutions. India is blessed with a plethora of festivals, ceremonies and events; it is also cursed with polluted waterbodies. The politicisation and commercialisation of religious-cultural-social practices augment pollution and accelerate the deterioration—even death—of waterbodies.
Prayers After Prayers: From Devotion To Denial
In India, devotion converting into dirtiness is continuous and countless. More concerning is the constant denial of the process, which fails waterbodies. On most festivals, ceremonies and events—and even on ordinary days—people gather by water to pray. We fold our hands, close our eyes, offer diyas and puja samagri, toss coins, take holy dips and leave behind clothes and footwashers. A belief to please the gods and honour the waterbody we fondly call “mother” sounds simple, sweet and sacred. By the next day, the waterbody looks like a dumpyard or graveyard: coconut shells and flowers everywhere; puja material clinging to steps and curling onto the water; plastic and paper flying and floating; grease from diyas spreading across the surface. Another belief—that the waterbody, being mother or god, can cleanse itself—plays as an undercurrent as the cycle repeats every day, everywhere.
Waterbodies After Waterbodies: From Mother To Murder
From Calcutta to Bombay, from Dilli to Madras, India hosts some of the most polluted waterbodies. Ancient scriptures mention water pollution and its solutions. A civilisation that worships most waterbodies as mothers or goddesses—“Ma”—has a beautiful culture. No other country has this belief. Most countries qualify and quantify waterbodies in measures of water and ecosystem. Yet the same culture dares to pollute them, which speaks volumes about the respect mothers and goddesses actually draw in society. The Ma Ganga is widely cited as the world’s second most polluted river, after Indonesia’s Citarum. It is better not to call her mother if we treat her as we do. The death of a waterbody is the death of life in it and along its edge. Dead fish floating and stinking in and around waterbodies is common across geographies and seasons—and can often be linked to a religious-cultural-social festival, ceremony or event.
In recent months, thousands of fish died in Mumbai’s Banganga Tank after Pitru Paksha rituals; mass fish deaths were reported near Siddhabet weir and temple ghats of the Indrayani River in Aland; millions of dead fish surfaced along the Yamuna; millions washed ashore near Buaadu village on the Andhra coast. Ironically, fish deaths show up; aquatic plant deaths do not even get recorded. They are simply considered waste and left to stay or rot.
Waterbodies have been killed in various ways: reclaiming them for development, reducing them to cesspools, discharging solid and liquid waste, neglect, filling and construction. This is quantifiable, and much effort is made to defend development at the cost of the waterbody. Reducing waterbodies to cesspools through recurring devotion and denial also goes hand in hand. It is difficult to say which killing is worse, but the paradox of faith and failure is worth wary attention.
Intended actions with unintended consequences remain undiscussed and undermined. This also underscores the moral grounding of the civilisation we pride ourselves on. The culture of religious-cultural-social practices towards pollution remains a silent killer. Politics and policies shy away from taking the issue head-on, citing and covering behind civilisational glory.
Some Of The Faith Leading To Failing Waterbodies
A mind map of Diwali from Rukmini Banerji’s education— “A Masterclass on Diwali”—offers an overview of rules and rituals. This is just one festival. With millions of gods in one faith, Hinduism, the country practises several faiths equally worth examining for the rules and rituals of practices, which also vary in the degree of harm. A humble checklist: milk in waterbodies can increase Biological Oxygen Demand up to 350–400 times higher than raw domestic sewage; physico-chemical properties are altered beyond what fish and birds can survive on. Ministers politicise throwing milk into rivers as a declaration of cleaning them.
Imagine wasting milk on shivlingas and in puja in a country where malnutrition among children and women is among the world’s highest. People also give pasteurised cow milk to cats and dogs in good faith without realising it harms tiny creatures. The oil and ghee of diyas form an ultra-thin layer on the surface, suffocating fish from light and air. Disturbed surface tension affects microorganisms that are fish food. Underwater plants and phytoplankton stop photosynthesis, thus stopping oxygen and food production for fish. A 500 ml of oil or ghee can spoil an acre of water spread. Firecracker black powder is usually a mix of potassium nitrate or perchlorate, charcoal, sulphur and magnesium-aluminium powder. Substantial firecracker remains—paper, plastic and gift wrappers—reach waterbodies. Tiny pieces choke water supply and drainage pipelines.
Paints spread toxic chemicals, heavy metals and plastic particles, preventing mould or marine growth, poisoning aquatic plants, insects, fish and ultimately birds and animals. Plaster of Paris, heavily used for statues, does not dissolve easily, increasing total dissolved solids, water hardness, turbidity and electrical conductivity while altering alkalinity, chemical oxygen demand and dissolved oxygen. Modern coins are made of heavy metals and chemical leaching; they corrode in waterbodies and release harmful elements such as chromium or nickel, contaminating pH and algae/plankton production and affecting the food chain. Thermocol, or expanded polystyrene, causes long-lasting damage because it is non-biodegradable and is consumed by fish and birds mistaking it for food.
Industrially processed and cooked wheat/rice balls, rotis and breads given to feed fish get diluted and affect oxygen levels, leaving fish suffocated; those eaten are difficult to digest. We are not even talking about poor, vulnerable humans pushed to consume polluted water for survival.
The Facts And The Faith, The Devotion And The Denial
Continuing with Diwali: facts do not direct culture to the rules and rituals of practices. Ask Gen A, B, C to Z—not many know why we celebrate Diwali and what all we need to do. Things get trickier with urbanisation and culture. The faith of the faith has deviated into following other followers, with barely any logic of reasoning and questioning. Take Rama’s return to Ayodhya: Ayodhya celebrating it is understandable, but why is India—feel free to call it Bharat—celebrating? Ayodhya is not India and vice versa. At least pollution could reduce manifold if only Ayodhya celebrated, and those interested went there. Similarly, Krishna’s defeating of the demon Narkasura at Pragjyotishapura, now Guwahati, should be celebrated where that belief exists. Take Kali, a tradition as a force that destroys evil and protects devotees. So who is destroyed and who is protected in pollution?
If Diwali is the festival of light, good over evil, there is an urgent need to rethink the very meanings of destroy, evil, protect, devotees and light. Importantly, mythological beliefs refute the glorification of traditions and the gutterisation of waterbodies. Nowhere is it written what all we must do or not do during religious-cultural-social festivals, ceremonies and events. No religion mandates polluting—which helps differentiate culture from religion.
Discussion
The lack of a proper waste-management plan and of motivation to keep places clean means local people and local governments in most cities, towns and villages conveniently continue dumping into nalas, lakes, ponds, rivers and seas. The paradox is that on one hand we consider a waterbody a living being; on the other, we perceive it as just “water” without other living beings. The duality that we can continue polluting as a myth and the waterbody can continue purifying as a mystery is hard to expose in the scheme of devotion and faith.
News of pollution gets buried in small corner columns and further suppressed with the excuse of culture. Water pollution in India, especially instigated by religious-cultural practices, suffers from the Cobra Effect socially and ecologically. Devotion makes people conveniently practise dumping everything and anything as offering—flour/rice balls, milk, fruits, sweets, oil, ghee, flowers, hay, lime, wood, leather, plastics, clothes, thermocol, metals, plaster of Paris. What people cherish as wealth to offer is actually waste for the waterbody. Absolute denial of polluting through dumping comes from the belief that the offering is part of purification.
The culture of polluting is everywhere, every time in India; it only gets aggravated during festivals, ceremonies and events. With politics and commerce fuelling these as “must-do” things, they get bigger and bigger. The Cobra Effect becomes clearer as politicisation and commercialisation augment practices and glorify belief, resulting in aggravated pollution and deterioration.
The question should not be limited to the dying of Banganga or Ganga—or all rivers, lakes, ponds, tanks and wetlands—but must extend to the morally dying civilisation fuelled by a culture of polluting. Where do we stop investing in these rules and rituals of polluting practices? Not until we start investigating them critically and instilling true devotion and faith of socialisation. More than the planetary crisis of pollution and biodiversity loss, we have a civilisational crisis of polluting. We seem more interested in the rules and rituals of the faith than the faith of the faith. We are devoted and at the same time in denial of that devotion. This is not devotion, this is denial. This is not faith, this is failure.
Everyone’s relation with god and religion is a matter of personal disciplining. The moral relation with nature is the actual relation with god and religion. When we have developed a culture of dumping unhygienic food within ourselves and draping ourselves in uncomfortable outfits, the culture of dumping, deteriorating and destroying waterbodies becomes better understandable. After all, we are also a bag of water—a waterbody with a different shape than nalas, lakes, ponds, rivers and seas. The belief that waterbodies have inherent properties to purify should not become a pretence to pollute. The question we must all ask is: who is purified? The purification is neither materialistic nor spiritual. The culture to pollute is definitely not purifying the soul of the people or the ecosystem of the waterbodies.
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Dr. Mansee Bal Bhargava is an entrepreneur, researcher, educator, speaker, and mentor. More about her is available at mansee.in, edc.org.in, and wforw.org. Priya Sharma is a postgraduate student from the Indian Institute of Forest Management, Bhopal
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