Will popular beliefs also melt away?

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Will popular beliefs also melt away?

The Business Standard

 

Julian Crandall Hollick

New Delhi

July 15, 2007

 

With the Gangotri glacier receding every year, and the Amarnath

Shiva linga dwindling, the author of Ganga wonders what will

happen to Hinduism's central rituals

 

I was saddened but not surprised to hear that the Shiva stalagmite

at Amarnath had melted away a few days ago. I remembered the

stalagmite as being bigger than the mere 12 inches reported last

month, but the official explanation that the stalagmite melted from

the heat of the sheer press of human bodies and light bulbs is

plausible.

 

Blaming it all on global warming is too facile and convenient.

Human actions probably haven't helped, but they're also unlikely

to be the sole cause. Yes, winters in the Himalayas are warmer

and less predictable, glaciers are retreating. But all this has

happened before. Shiva's anyway having a hard time of it. The

Ganga - the river he brought down to earth in a lock of his hair

in the Himalaya - is also under great strain. India's insatiable

appetite for water for agriculture and modernisation is far

outstripping the river's capacity to provide.

 

All up and down the northwest, the Ganga periodically runs dry as

she is dammed and diverted to generate electricity for thirsty

towns and cities. East of Allahabad the problem ceases to exist:

there are fewer big cities and many more huge rivers from Nepal

to replenish the Ganga. But lack of adequate flow also

exacerbates pollution - the Ganga at Kanpur and Yamuna at

Delhi are stinking examples - and that, in turn, affects rituals.

 

Both Ganga and Amarnath, therefore, offer many of the same

consequences for popular rituals and beliefs. Some of my friends

in Varanasi no longer take a morning dip in the Ganga because it's

too dirty. Instead, they keep bottles of Ganga jal at home and

pour a few drops into their buckets before topping up with tap

water. I assumed it wouldn't matter if they filled their buckets

first

and then poured a few drops of Ganga jal in. Wrong! The order is

important.

 

A similar adaptation is made for cremation. Traditionally, the

shrouded body is immersed on its stretcher in the Ganga before

being placed on the funeral pyre. In most instances this still

happens because the water is relatively clean. But in Kanpur it's

anything but, so once again water is brought from home or the

nearest hand-pump. And nobody I talked to seems to think that

somehow devalues the ritual.

 

Hinduism, therefore, seems flexible in adapting to changing

circumstances. I once talked with a priest at Bhairon Ghat in

Kanpur who has performed the cremation prayers with full

shlokas via cell phone with families in the United States. He also

saw nothing odd in that. Of course, in small villages rituals are

performed unchanged. But my point is there's nothing that says

they can't adapt. And people do. So pilgrims will still go up to the

cave at Amarnath however tiny or non-existent the Shiva

stalagmite has become.

 

But there are also certain rituals that are much less susceptible to

such change. For instance, drinking Ganga jal. Many people drink

it every day and are perfectly fit, when by rights they should be

seriously sick. Faith and centuries of immunity are probably the

reasons.

 

But I've met priests in Bihar who now only drink bottled water

because their stomachs can no longer handle Ganga jal. What

happens to belief in the goddess when priests choose to no longer

observe one of the most basic cultural customs? No one as yet

knows. Chandra Bhal Misra, a very old and wise man in an

ashram in Allahabad, put it succinctly: " Ganga the river, of course,

can die. But if you believe she is a goddess, then Ganga can never

die. "

 

It sounds wonderfully plausible. And I'm sure many Hindus do

scoff inwardly at those who say the Ganga is dying when they see

stretches of the river, anywhere from the Himalayas to Allahabad,

that are just a necklace of sandy pools.

 

The long-term impact on belief may be a different story. I suspect

popular belief is shaken by tangible events, such as the

disappearance of the susu - the Gangetic dolphin, the mount of

the goddess - or the drying up of the Ganga in certain reaches;

just as it must be by the melting of the Amarnath stalagmite.

 

Somewhere in the popular imagination of the India that lives

outside the Big Five cities, these events register. They are signs of

human degeneracy - confirmation of the kalyug. I remember

eavesdropping on some women of Varanasi having a good moan

about everything that was going wrong in their own lives and in

Varanasi. It all came back to the stars and the relationship of

Shani to the kalyug.

 

Veer Bhadra Mishra, the mahant of the Sankat Mochan temple in

Varanasi, says that in the end, whether or not one believes Ganga

is a goddess who can never be hurt by pollution or sucked dry by

greed matters less than the cultural impoverishment caused by the

disappearance of a particular ritual.

 

" What hurts me is it's a part of our heritage that's disappearing

when Hindus stop drinking Ganga jal or taking their holy dip every

day. Part of what makes us Indians. That's what's so sad and

dangerous! It's our culture that dies. " Ganga and the Amarnath

cave are just the tip of the iceberg. As India rushes to modernise,

to become like the West, how much of what makes India Indian

will also be carelessly and irreparably thrown away? That may be

the real message of the melting of the stalagmite.

 

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