India's sullied river 'goddess'

An old man in a loincloth squats on the banks of the sacred Ganges River scrubbing his clothes. Nearby, sewage gushes from a pipe as water buffaloes contentedly wallow in the river's murky waters.

Upstream, a bright-eyed woman clad in a fuchsia sari stands waist-deep, pouring a stream of the river's holy water from a brass pot and reciting prayers while a plastic bag of garbage washes up on the shore.

This river is known to Hindus as goddess Ganga, one of the main arteries at the heart of India's spiritual and physical life, who provides a lifeline of fresh water to the 400 million people who live on her banks.

Starting Wednesday and for the next six weeks, legions of devout Hindus will celebrate the "Ardh Kumbh Mela" or Half Grand Pitcher festival in the city of Allahabad, at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers. Allahabad is one of four spots where Garuda, the winged steed of the Hindu god Vishnu, is said to have rested during her battle with demons over a pitcher of divine nectar.

But chronically high levels of pollution have turned this river goddess into a potential killer. For the nearly 75 million pilgrims – setting the record for the world's largest gathering of people – who will travel here to bathe their sins away, sip the river water, or cremate their dead, the "holy dip" is believed to usher them more quickly into a state of nirvana.

Leading Indian environmentalists claim the $100 million Ganga Action Plan (GAP), launched 20 years ago to treat sewage dumped in the river, has failed. They blame poor planning, corruption, lack of technical knowledge, and a gross miscalculation of the volume of waste from Varanasi, a teeming city of around 1.2 million people, which they say has left pollution levels worse than ever.

Kicked off in 1986 by former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, the GAP aimed to divert and treat the waste and bring the quality of water up to bathing standards. However, in Varanasi, where raw sewage spews into the river from 30 sources, levels of fecal coliform bacteria are up to 3,000 times the accepted Indian standard and 1.5 million times the safe level for drinking.

The river's destitute state is no mystery to the hordes of fervent devotees. This year, hundreds of Hindu holy men have threatened to commit mass suicide during the festival to protest what they say is a lack of government action, the Daily Telegraph reported last week.

Among the devotees completing the daily dawn ablutions before the festival was Veer Bhadra Mishra. Clad in a white cotton dhoti, the tall, silver-haired priest cups his hands and lifts the water to his mouth. But he leaves out one part of the ritual – he does not drink it. As the mahant, or spiritual and administrative head of Varanasi's second largest temple, he believes the water is holy. But as a professor of hydraulics and a leading campaigner to clean up the Ganges, he knows it is not pure.

The 66-year-old has been campaigning to clean the river since 1982, when he founded the Swatcha Ganges Abhiyaan (Campaign for a Clean Ganges) organization, an effort that combines his knowledge of the spiritual with the scientific.

Page: 1 | 2