Endangered Ganga

[Guest guest]

Pranam. I read this article on another group and wished to share it with you

all. I was there just recently.This sounds bad...

 

With Love

 

Shankaree

 

 

A Sacred River Endangered by Global Warming

Glacial Source of Ganges Is Receding

 

By Emily Wax

Washington Post Foreign Service

Sunday, June 17, 2007; A14

 

VARANASI, India -- With her eyes sealed, Ramedi cupped the murky water of

the Ganges River in her hands, lifted them toward the sun, and prayed for

her husband, her 15 grandchildren and her bad hip. She, like the rest of

India's 800 million Hindus, has absolute faith that the river she calls

Ganga Ma can heal.

 

Around Ramedi, who like some Indians has only one name, people converged on

the riverbank in the early morning, before the day's heat set in. Women

floated necklaces of marigolds on a boat of leaves, a dozen skinny boys

soaped their hair as they bathed in their underwear, and a somber group of

men carried a body to the banks of the river, a common ritual before the

dead are cremated on wooden funeral pyres. To be cremated beside the Ganges,

most here believe, brings salvation from the cycle of rebirth.

 

" Ganga Ma is everything to Hindus. It's our chance to attain nirvana, "

Ramedi said, emerging from the river, her peach-colored sari dripping along

the shoreline.

 

But the prayer rituals carried out at the water's edge may not last

forever -- or even another generation, according to scientists and

meteorologists. The Himalayan source of Hinduism's holiest river, they say,

is drying up.

 

In this 3,000-year-old city known as the Jerusalem of India for its intense

religious devotion, climate change could throw into turmoil something many

devout Hindus thought was immutable: their most intimate religious

traditions. The Gangotri glacier, which provides up to 70 percent of the

water of the Ganges during the dry summer months, is shrinking at a rate of

40 yards a year, nearly twice as fast as two decades ago, scientists say.

 

" This may be the first place on Earth where global warming could hurt our

very religion. We are becoming an endangered species of Hindus, " said Veer

Bhadra Mishra, an engineer and director of the Varanasi-based Sankat Mochan

Foundation, an organization that advocates for the preservation of the

Ganges. " The melting glaciers are a terrible thing. We have to ask

ourselves, who are the custodians of our culture if we can't even help our

beloved Ganga? "

 

Environmental groups such as Mishra's have long focused on pollution of the

Ganges. More than 100 cities and countless villages are situated along the

1,568-mile river, which stretches from the foothills of the Himalayas to the

Bay of Bengal, and few of them have sewage treatment plants.

 

But recent reports by scientists say the Ganges is under even greater threat

from global warming. According to a U.N. climate report, the Himalayan

glaciers that are the sources of the Ganges could disappear by 2030 as

temperatures rise.

 

The shrinking glaciers also threaten Asia's supply of fresh water. The World

Wildlife Fund in March listed the Ganges among the world's 10 most

endangered rivers. In India, the river provides more than 500 million people

with water for drinking and farming.

 

The immediate effect of glacier recession is a short-lived surplus of water.

But eventually the supply runs out, and experts predict that the Ganges

eventually will become a seasonal river, largely dependent on monsoon rains.

 

" There has never been a greater threat for the Ganges, " said Mahesh Mehta,

an environmental lawyer who has been filing lawsuits against corporations

dumping toxins in the Ganges. He is now redirecting his energies toward the

melting glaciers. " If humans don't change their interference, our very

religion, our livelihoods are under threat. "

 

Mehta and other environmentalists want to see the Indian government here

enforce strict reductions of greenhouse gas emissions, the primary cause of

climate change.

 

But during this month's Group of Eight conference of the major

industrialized nations, both India and China, eager to protect their market

growth, joined the United States in refusing to support mandatory limits on

greenhouse gas emissions. President Bush has instead pushed a plan for

nonbinding goals to reduce emissions.

 

" It is a fact that more and not less development is the best way for

developing countries to address themselves to the issues of preserving the

environment, " Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in a public

statement before leaving for the G-8 summit in Germany.

 

While India is one of the world's top producers of greenhouse gas

emissions -- along with the United States, China, Russia and Japan -- it

argues that the United States and other developed countries should reduce

their own emissions before expecting developing nations to follow suit.

 

Environmentalists call that kind of thinking shortsighted and say India

desperately needs strong laws in place at a time when the country is growing

so quickly.

 

" Economic growth is important, but can you imagine a billion cars in India? "

Mehta asked. " As people become affluent, they want cars and air conditioners

and refrigerators. What effect is that going to have on the environment? "

 

About 1 million pilgrims a year visit this ancient, hardscrabble city, many

traveling hundreds of miles on foot. Many of them leave with vials of Ganges

water to wear around their necks or display in their homes, sometimes

sprinkling droplets of water into their town's wells, spiritually purifying

their drinking water.

 

On the stone steps leading up to the Ganges' famous temple ghats, graffiti

reads: " Happy is the person who lives by Ganga, Ma " and " I love my India. "

 

" The government should realize that climate change will hurt not just

communities, but also businesses and even the Ganga itself, our most sacred

river, " said Srinivas Krishnaswamy, a climate and energy expert for

Greenpeace in India.

 

" When the Ganga River is threatened, Indians will have to wake up the

government to this crisis. "

 

 

 

Let my every word be a prayer to Thee,

Every movement of my hands a ritual gesture to Thee,

Every step I take a circumambulation of Thy image,

Every morsel I eat a rite of sacrifice to Thee,

Every time I lay down a prostration at Thy feet;

Every act of personal pleasure and all else that I do,

Let it all be a form of worshiping Thee. "

 

From Verse 27 of Shri Aadi Shankara's Saundaryalahari

 

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

, Shankaree Ramatas

<shankaree wrote:

>

> Pranam. I read this article on another group and wished to share it

with you all. I was there just recently.This sounds bad...

 

This is terrible. I think we should be more active in the environmental

movement, which can be seen as a form of worship of Ganga Ma, as well

as, Bhudevi. I remember reading of a story when there was so much

warfare that Bhudevi complained to Lord Vishnu. The Lord did something

about it, too. I think polluters are making war in a different sense.

Perhaps, we should complain to Lord Vishnu, too. Neopagans often do

rituals to help heal the Earth. Perhaps, the Sanatana Dharma has

similar rituals.

 

 

Blessings,

Stephen