First, what the pictures show. Fig. 8.18 has four photographs: a river covered in thick white chemical foam with factories on the far bank; a hill stream with plastic waste piled along its edge; a heap of plastic rubbish with plastic bottles and bags; and a cow — an animal regarded as sacred — feeding on that rubbish. Every one of them shows something held sacred being treated as a dumping ground.
How did the rivers become so polluted? Not by one cause but by several together:
| Cause | What it does to the river |
|---|---|
| Untreated sewage from fast-growing cities | The single largest source; drains empty straight into the river |
| Industrial effluent — dyes, tanneries, chemicals | Poisons the water and creates the foam seen in the photograph |
| Farm run-off — fertiliser and pesticide | Feeds algae, uses up oxygen, kills fish |
| Plastic and solid waste, including ritual waste | Chokes the banks; animals eat it, as the cow in the picture is doing |
| Over-extraction — dams, canals, borewells | Less water means less power to dilute and carry away waste |
But behind all five lies one deeper reason, and the chapter names it: the old harmonious relationship between people and their sacred geography “is under great strain”. We still call the river Ganga ji and worship it — and then treat it as a drain. Reverence has become ritual without responsibility. A person who genuinely felt the river to be a mother would not empty a factory pipe into her.
Sacred places near you that have been degraded. Look for these and name the real examples in class:
- The village pond or temple tank, now full of silt, plastic and weeds.
- The sacred grove that has shrunk as fields, houses or a quarry crept into it — the chapter says thousands of groves have been lost to such encroachment.
- The stretch of river below your town, where the water changes colour after the drains join it.
- A hill shrine whose slopes are now bare, or littered with wrappers and bottles left by visitors.
- Old trees on the roadside cut for widening, or a spring that has dried up since borewells were dug.
Whose responsibility is it? Everyone's, at four different levels — and the honest answer is that it fails when any one level is missing.
| Who | What they must do |
|---|---|
| Each of us | Not throw waste into water; use cloth bags; offer flowers without plastic; carry litter back from a shrine |
| The community — temple trusts, panchayats, resident groups | Clean and guard the tank, grove or ghat; revive old rules that protected them; run shramdān drives |
| Industry and business | Treat effluent before releasing it; the polluter, not the river, should bear the cost |
| Government | Build and actually run sewage treatment plants, enforce the law, and protect groves and rivers legally — as New Zealand did for the Maoris' Taranaki Maunga |