“Delhi’s Dark Waters: A HOLY RIVER DESTROYED”

“Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu visited the different forests, including Madhuvana, Talavana, Kumudavana and Bahulavana. Wherever He went, He took His bath with great ecstatic love.”  Madhya17.193

Suffocated by Sacredness
India’s Holy Yamuna River Stifled by Pollution

By Katie Walter,  September 8, 2010

VRINDAVAN, India — In the Indian public imagination, Vrindavan is an idyllic forest town that sits alongside the pristine Yamuna River, surrounded by green pastures filled with grazing cattle.

This scene serves as the backdrop for a popular Indian children’s cartoon that recounts traditional Hindu stories about the god Krishna, who accomplished numerous heroic feats on the banks of the Yamuna as a young boy.

But the picture that greets the millions of pilgrims flocking to the town each year is altogether different. The path created for pilgrims is now crowded with cars, buses, camels, cows, and motorcycles.

The forest has been cleared for development and the ground is largely barren of grass; in its stead are dust, construction rubble and trash heaps fed upon by dogs and wild pigs.

The river, whose blue waters once shone for Krishna, is now dark, still and foul-smelling, with embankments that are encroached upon by homes, ashrams, shops and waste.

“Twenty or thirty years ago, Vrindavan used to be a beautiful place,” says Delhi resident Diya Kochhar. “Now my family visits the town far less frequently because it is so dirty.

A lot of my friends say they also avoid the place on account of filth.”
The irony of Delhi-ites turning up their noses at a degraded Vrindavan is that upstream waste from their city is partly responsible for the Yamuna River’s pollution here.

The other major source of pollution is the Kosi Nala, a huge drain that empties several local towns’ worth of waste into the river.

The drain enters the Yamuna just before it reaches Vrindavan’s famed Keshi ghat, built in the 17th century by Rajasthani royalty to commemorate one of Krishna’s many heroic deeds.

It is here that people engage in ritual activities like bathing, drinking river water and offering milk and flowers to the river goddess Yamuna. During certain festivals, they dip idols decorated with toxic paints into the river.

“The belief is that anything sacred should be submerged into the river” says Vimlendu Jha of the Delhi-based NGO Swechha. “It is a convenient thing to still imagine Yamuna to be sacred so that people can make their offerings.

But there is no dissolved oxygen in the river and therefore even flower petals are bad for the river as it takes away the oxygen from the river in its decomposition process.”

Dissolved oxygen (DO) is necessary to sustain aquatic life and is measured regularly when assessing the health of rivers.

Recent tests conducted by Indian conservation organization PEACE Institute Charitable Trust show that after Kosi Nala drain meets it, the Yamuna contains no dissolved oxygen whatsoever.

For years, test results like these have been ignored by locals in favor of religious dogma that the river is eternally pure no matter what is placed in it and that issues of the material world such as water pollution are merely the work of maya, or illusion, which blinds us to transcendent spirituality.

Sarandha, author of the forthcoming book “In Search of Yamuna,” points out the paradoxical nature of these views: “The physical purity of the river gave rise to the myth of a goddess of purity. This myth in turn is now used to deny destruction of physical purity.”

The constant influx of pilgrims and tourists that flood Vrindavan also plays a role in the Yamuna’s destruction. The town receives an average of 10,000 visitors daily, a number which rises to one million during important festivals.

These visitors strain an already weak local infrastructure, adding massive amounts garbage to Yamuna’s banks and sewage to it’s waters.

Meanwhile, luxury high-rise apartments with vast, sprawling gardens and enormous price tags have sprung up on the outskirts of town, soaking up Vrindavan’s already inadequate supplies of electricity and water.

The majority of these are owned by Delhi-based weekend vacationers and retirees who want to spend more time in the immediate vicinity of Vrindavan’s famous temples.

Pollution of the river and groundwater make consumption of local water a health hazard: the ritual sips worshippers take from the river, known as achman, are teeming with disease-causing organisms.

Local healthcare provider CDH International reports that thousands are infected each year with diarrhea and digestive problems, as well as more severe diseases including cholera, typhoid, hepatitis and dysentery.

“The plight of Yamuna needs international attention,” says Dr. Shoor Vir Singh, a local scientist who recently conducted tests on Yamuna water and found E. coli and other bacteria that were fully resistant to antibiotics. “This way, perhaps help will come to ignorant people who, in the name of religion, are drinking poison.”

Religious leaders, realizing that years of abuse have finally culminated in the imminent death of their perpetually pure goddess, have recently begun to take action to save the river. Sadhus, or holy men, who previously bathed in the river, are now taking sand baths in protest against the Yamuna’s deplorable condition.

A number of local temples that have centuries’ long traditions of using Yamuna water to bathe their Krishna deities have stopped doing so.

People are realizing that despite the sacredness of the goddess, the river is a health hazard.

Plans to build a flyover across the Yamuna near Keshi ghat fueled a new round of public protest early this year. The result was the formation of the Braj Vrindavan Heritage Alliance, a union of religious leaders and concerned citizens that is now supporting public interest litigation suits fighting what they call reckless development.

Initiatives taken by religious leaders are starting to gain publicity and generate greater national and international awareness of the plight of the Yamuna. The sense of sacredness that has been the root cause of so much environmental devastation on the Yamuna may now be key to its rehabilitation.

But locals like, Satish, the 36 year-old boatman who has lived in a village on the Yamuna opposite Vrindavan his entire life, are still skeptical.

“When I was young, the river was good for swimming and I could drink the water. Now I don’t allow my children to swim. The river is a goddess, but these days, it is also a danger.”