Cleaning of the Ganga River: A question about Civilisation

Cleaning of the Ganga River

                                                                                                                Lalit K Kaul

The question to be asked is not, “Why river Ganga is not being cleaned”, but why did river Ganga become unclean?

Why did river Ganga become unclean is the question if asked raises questions about the civilization itself; whereas what is being asked and protested about accepts the present civilization – its world view and hence its governing institutions and the concomitant ethics and logic, the establishment and concomitant politics governing them all; the accepted dichotomy between the spiritual and the secular world like two banks of the river Ganga; development being synonymous with growth in consumerism and growth rate being synonymous with limitless exploitation of natural and human resources; etcetera ; etcetera- and lays the blame at someone else’s doorstep for non  completion of works .

Mother Ganga! How could mother become unclean! How could children make their mother unclean! Not possible!! If so, then who defaced and disfigured our mother ‘The Ganga Maiyya’ is the question that fundamentally questions the very basis of what has come to be known as ‘modern civilization’.

The project ‘Clean Ganga’ exists not for the purpose of cleaning the Ganga, but for pushing ‘growth rate’; increasing money circulation among few hands; and the fallout of that is some kind of employment, essentially of labour, for the locals - who anyway have been externed from their knowledge base and therefore their skills by the onslaught of the mega project drive called ‘modernization’ unleashed on the natives and is also known as ‘मुख्य धारा में लाने के प्रयास’.

All rivers in the Indian sub continent are polluted and therefore unclean. The rivers are unclean because they have lost their relevance insofar as the Indian society’s day to day affairs are concerned. When drinking water starts getting served in bottles and huge water purification plants come up for supplying potable water to households through taps including the decentralized purification plants known as water filters then obviously unclean river is of no concern to anybody.

From within the society civilization evolves and therefore when a river ceases to be the basis for their existence it gains no cognizance from them. The question therefore is: What kind of a civilization is this where despite innumerous rivers flowing through the length and breadth of this country yet for drinking and other household purposes  the water has to be made potable and therefore unreachable to very large populous of human, animal and plant world! It is a civilization that prohibits uninhibited use of a naturally available resource by the residents of the Indian sub continent and thus even for as basic a necessity as water the people, the animals and the plants are at the mercy of the establishment!

Nothing that exists in Mother Nature – in whatever form it may – is important or unimportant; pious or impious; useful or useless. It is there and whatever is there is not the creation of human societies. Nevertheless every object, material, resource becomes important/unimportant, useful/ not useful, pure/ impure, etcetera only if it gains cognizance in the world of human endeavour; otherwise it does not exist even though it may lay somewhere in the lap of Mother Nature.

The monstrous drive called modernization has externed a very huge part of the Indian population from being cognizable leading to systematic and deliberate disintegration of an unimaginably very large part of the Indian society causing break up of socio-economic , socio-religious and cultural tenets of which rivers were an inseparable part.   

So with disintegrating societies the rivers were bound to become filthy and stinking streams of water.

Hydel Power: The man made engineering marvel! That’s the claim; the bigger the reservoir the more the Hydel Power harnessed; the more advanced the Nation!

Keeping aside the ecological imbalance that it generates & colossal loss of natural resources that it causes; it dries up the downstream river bed. A very thin stream of water shall be allowed to flow for some reasons. With the dried up bed, all the garbage is thrown in the river bed stretching up to sea and the whole riverbed becomes a cascaded garbage dins with infinite capacity. The illegal mining takes place; the soil from the river bed is excavated and only when reservoir overflows the gates are opened to flood the bed and the region. So the water flows over the bed of tonnes and tonnes of garbage thus immensely polluting the river and rendering it unusable.

The Hydel power generated is for industries and most of them release their effluents and toxic byproducts in to the river and thus immensely polluting it and this kind of discharges end up polluting even the ground water reserves. Therefore, the questions that this modern civilization should answer are : who gave this inalienable right to the establishment to arrogate onto itself the sole proprietorship of all the Natural resources that it did not create and then  destroy them to pursue a unilaterally defined and declared path of development ; to devastate Mother Nature by way of inundating millions of hectors of forests, the flora and fauna; to displace lakhs of adivasis from their homes and hearths – in the name of development- and consequently extern them from their activities based on their knowledge base and thus snatch from them their right to live on the basis of their vidhya (gyan) a respectable life; and then declare them backward and poor and engineer politics based on the theory of backwardness and uplifting the masses from the below the poverty line. Having reduced a gyani to a status of ever dependent labourer the establishment has the arrogance of even defining the poverty line! An entrepreneur is reduced to being a labour and then poverty line is defined for him/her!

Spirituality:

What is spirituality and how can it be made an integral part of all the activities in the secular world?

Fundamentally all the human beings - irrespective of their cast, creed, colour, gender and religion- are same when it comes to connect with the Prakruti because Mother Nature does not differentiate one from the other. Therefore,   everyone is free to interact with her based on an understanding that may differ from one to another. Therefore if the members of a society consider themselves as an inseparable part of Prakruti then they will not exploit it, but only use its resources to meet with their requirements as also regulate them; on the other hand, if Prakruti is seen and understood only as an object/ a vast resource for use then the equation between the human endeavour and the Prakruti will be different.

The content of any civilization fundamentally depends upon what kind of relationship this human being wants / desires to establish with the Prakruti.

How to make spiritualism an inseparable part of human endeavours? Some thoughts are in order:

Ø  In any society an individual is known by his/her contributions in resolving problems that may arise from time to time. So, every individual finds cognizance only by the knowledge he/she possesses. Therefore there cannot be any other basis of organizing a society except for categorizing its members in to two types: the knowledgeable and the ignorant. For ignorant to become knowledgeable, avenues are available in a civilized society.

Ø  Every being is born out of Prakruti and ultimately merges in to it and therefore the Mother Nature is the basis for the existence- animate and inanimate- of all species and hence She cannot be destroyed. For, if She is destroyed the life on this planet will cease to exist.

Ø  The above axiom should never be overlooked / ignored no matter what this human being wants to achieve. There is no other restraining force but this axiom & hence this is highest order of spirituality to be ingrained in to every human being and to be translated in to the secular world.

Ø  No natural resource is a personal property of any individual or any establishment and therefore every generation need to hold all the available natural resources in TRUST for the generation next and thereafter to enable every generation to chalk out its own destiny.

Ø  Whatever works may be undertaken, a balance between Prakruti and Samskruti need to be always maintained.  

Ø  Every society in every generation should have this uninhibited access to the natural resources available in their respective regions and they should be free to decide by common consent- without losing sight of the axiom - how to use the available resources for the overall growth of their respective societies and to set the terms of trade with other regions for import / export of such resources as may be required to import or export.

Ø  There can be no imposition of any region’s definition of knowledge and   methodologies used by them for resolution of their problems on any other region, while there may be a mutual exchange of thoughts for enrichment of minds; every society should be allowed to evolve in its own way and define knowledge and evolve methodologies in a way that is relevant to resolution of their problems; based on their understanding of the Nature around them.

Ø  There cannot be  a  universally approved socio-political, socio-economical and socio-religious dogmas/philosophies to be adopted by all the  societies; every society should be free to evolve its own systems of governance and human to human relationships necessary for mental, physical and economical growth of its people,

So long as economic growth remains synonymous with increase in consumption of bricks, cement, concrete and steel etcetera, and development remains synonymous with increase in consumerism as long Prakruti shall remain at the mercy of devouring giants.

If Prakruti is to be saved from its total annihilation for the very survival of this globe then the politics has to change and its world view has to be different from the present one which has been posited on every society across the globe.