Away With 'Sacred Pollution
By Subhash Gatade
04 September, 2006
Countercurrents.orgIt was the beginning of the month of August when Hyderabad witnessed a heated debate over immersion of Ganesh idols in Hussain Sagar.The city happens to be second only to Mumbai in organising the festival on a massive scale where more than 15,000 huge idols are normally installed at various places. In fact the debate was precipitated by a decision of the highcourts which had asked different departments to make alternate arrangements for idol immersion. The highcourt was responding to a petition before it which had provided details about the pollution caused by this yearly ritual. The advocate general of the state had also made a presentation before the courts which also elaborated upon the way idol immersion adds to the level of water pollution ( Hindi Milap, 5th August 2006, Hyderabad).
Taking umbrage at this order a section of the citizenry, which saw enough participation of Hindutva brigade leaders in it, flatly denied that idols cause any type of pollution and asked the state government to intervene to protect the 'religious rights of Hindus'. As of now immersion in the Hussain Sagar will be taking place under strict monitoring by state authorities as the Andhra Pradesh High Court has issued orders to minimise pollution.
One does not know when state leaders of the Hindutva brigade - namely BJP or VHP - had raised a hue and cry over this issue, they had any knowledge about the way their counterparts in Gujarat were contemplating a plan to control the pollution caused by the same. If the high court in AP had asked to merely to make alternate arrangements for idol immersion, the guidelines issued by the Gujarat state government had asked that idols should be made of clay and no synthetic colours be used to make them. These guidelines were necessiated taking into consideration the way thousands of Ganesha idols are immersed in Kankaria Lake in Ahmedabad, Sursagar Lake in Baroda and the Sabarmati river.In a newsitem 'Gujarat' bid for Clean Ganesh' which appeared on BBC news:
The new guidelines, originally prepared by India’s Central Pollution Control Board and reproduced by its Gujarat state counterpart, have been sent to district officials for implementation. From now on Ganesha idols should be made of clay and not of plaster of Paris - a fine white chemical powder which solidifies when mixed with water. Environmentalists say plaster of Paris takes longer to dissolve; it also reduces the oxygen level in the water resulting in the death of a large number of fish. Clay, on the other hand, dissolves quickly and does not harm aquatic life. The pollution control board has also appealed to the organisers of the festival to commission smaller idols which dissolve more easily in water. (www.bbc.co.uk, : Monday, 21 August 2006, 14:53 GMT 15:53 UK )
The raging debate over idol immersion reminded one about a tragic scence on the Juhu beach,Bombay last year. The sudden appearance of thousands of dead fishes - small as well as big - had made policy makers as well as citizenry sit up and wonder what precipitated this phenomenon. When asked to divulge the possible reasons the officials of the fisheries department had made a few general comments focussing around increased pollution of water leading to such deaths. But nobody was ready to tell that the immediate reason for the increase in level of pollution had something to do with the immersion of idols in their thousands in the month of september followed by October.A electronic channel (NDTV) continued to followup the particular story and investigated into the quality of sea water at various places.It found to its dismay that the sea water has turned poisonous at different places because of dissolved mercury and other heavy metals.
One can understand why two years back the Chennai highcourt had imposed a temporary ban on immersion of idols of Ganesh. The court upheld a petition which said the idols are made of chemicals which pollute the sea and other water sources. (www.bbc.co.uk ,Wednesday, 8 September, 2004, 18:30 GMT 19:30 UK).The court had also issued notices to the state government and the Pollution Control Board to explain their stand on this issue.
A study of the pollution levels of Yamuna river in September done by the ‘Central Pollution Control Board’( Indian Express 13 September 2005) had similarly thrown light on this phenomenon which had clearly underlined how immersion increases quantity of metals and decreases dissolved oxygen in the river and thus leads to choking of the river. It was observed that while mercury concentration in the river is nil in normal period, it goes up in the festive season after the idol immersion. The way people dispose of flowers, plastics, ashes in the river also adds to the pollution levels. The CPCB tells us that the capital witnesses every year around 1700 immersions and looking at the enormous popularity of Ganesh festival in many parts of India one can imagine the enormity of the pollution caused because of this yearly ritual.
Definitely the immersion of idols causing irreparable damage to the environment is not the only example which demonstrate how rituals of a section of people can become nuisance of sorts for the wider populace or for that matter the ecosystem itself. May it be mass deaths of fishes or the incovenience caused to the broader public because of holding of religious processions every other day or for that matter holding of namaaz prayers on the street itself to accomodate a large gathering or the sprouting up of ‘ancient’ temples on busy thoroughfares or colonies one can vouchsafe that faith of a section of the people is not neutral as it is presented to be. While the onset of communal riots on some minor pretext could be said to be the extreme manifestation of this phenomenon the non riot like situation which othewise exists is not a guarantee that everything is normal at the societal level.
It is clear that the makers of constitution who had rightly added freedom of faith including its propagation as one of the cardinal principles of the democratic experiment could not have envisaged this state of affairs. Looking at the state of affairs and the possibility of mischievous elements benefitting from it, is it not high time that saner elements in society come together to envisage plans so that faith practised by a section of the society should not become an alibi for harming the larger lifeworld around us.
