When you are walking around the city of Varanasi you can literally stumble on history. The rubble of heritage found on our walks is a mishmash of balcony ledges, carved stones and seemingly discarded images. Exploreres on our walks are often taken aback by the apparent disregard of a 200 year old carved stone lintel being used for a seat for the chaishop or a jumble of sacred images placed crookedly for local worship. Many ask while on a walk, ‘Why not reuse the old architectual pieces instead of making new concrete ones and clean this place up to make the shrine more beautiful?’
old architectural pieces around a sacred tree and a concrete shrine behind it.
The answer lies in the completely different perceptions that our Hindu friends have for sacred space, history and objects of devotion. The fact that something is 200 years old or 2 days old is not relevant to a Hindu who is looking to see if that image or structure is filled with supernatural power. This is the reason that many so-called ‘unlovely’ smaller images or hideous concrete shines recently erected are utilised in worship with much more intensity than others.
This extends to the perception of pilgrims to the Ganga who view the river as holy and a source of relief from adharma, translated as ‘iniquity’ meaning a failure to preform duties, rather than physically dirty and polluted. The following information from the Sankat Mochan Foundation’s Swatchna Ganga (Clean Ganga) program explains for statistics in May 2009.
| Sampling Locations | No. of Samples | Avg. DO(mg/l) | Average BOD Value (mg/l) | Average FCC Value (cfu/100ml) |
| Panch Ganga |
5 |
7.3 |
3.3 |
24000 |
| TulsiGhat |
5 |
7.0 |
5.3 |
49000 |
| Nagwa |
3 |
3.9 |
28.9 |
4200000 |
DO is Dissolved Oxygen, BOD is Biochemical Oxygen Demand and FCC is Fecal Coliform Count.
The Permissible limits of River Water for Direct Human Touch (DHT) in respect of BOD is less than 3.0 mg/l and FCC is less than 500/100 ml.
Let’s begin to realise that the local perception, indeed the perceptions of Hindus in general, is that the Ganga can never be dirty. We need to recognise that we are talking about two different concepts, supernatural purity and physical purity. While the issuesof purity should be holistically linked traditonally, somehow a dichotomised mentality has crept into the holy city due to individual disregard, environmentally unfriendly actions, poor disposal of plastic products and lack of implementation or enforcement of legislation by the local government.
We need to think about the metaphor of the river as a life giving source both supernaturally and physically, so we also need to do our part to keep the city clean and green! You can create awareness about sewage issues, clean the place you are visiting, avoid plastic, use cloth bags, don’t deface the riverside or patronise restaurants and hotels who paint their ads on the stone. In that way Something old and something new will come together for the benefit of us all.
Jai
