NEW YORK, N.Y: Water from the river Ganges is to be packed in plastic containers and sold to the Hindu devotees who believe the liquid to be purifying and use it for various rituals involving their religion.
The gullible devotees will be sold the water by a company set up by an entrepreneur who graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. The factory will be at Rishikesh in Uttar Pradesh.
The water in the river is polluted. One of the first acts of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi after getting in power was to order an ambitious project to clean the river. Pollution in the river Ganges is largely due to dumping of various kinds of city and industrial waste in it and the Hindu practice of consigning the ashes of their dead in the river also contributes to the pollution.
The devotees often bring their dead to be cremated at the banks of the river especially in the holy city of Hardwar and unscrupulous crematorium owners often dump half cremated bodies in the river further polluting it.
Ganges water is necessary for all important rituals of the Hindu. It is used to bless the newborn, to heal the sick, to purify the Hindu of mortal sins, and to keep away evil spirits etc.
The sale of such water is criticised by the orthodox as ‘selling religion.’ But it illustrates how people reduce religion to rituals and exploit it.
The very idea of selling water from the holy river is not new, the technique is. Marketing and high tech packing of the product is just an illustration of the way Rajiy Gandhi’s India operates.
Article extracted from this publication >> August 12, 1988
