Maota Lake is a small water body in front of Amber Fort, Jaipur, India. Once upon a time it was in very bad condition but eventually with the hard work of government and Amber fort authorities it has been cleaned and brought back to life.
But what I had seen yesterday was enough to break my heart. Hundreds of people at a time were coming to the lake and the process of Idol immersion (Visarjan) was going on full day, the idol immersion ritual will go on same way for next 7 days. There were hundreds of Idols which were immersed in that lake. Which were made and decorated with toxic colours, synthetic clothes, plastic artefacts, plaster of paris, iron rods, varnish, cement and so on . . . all these things are non-biodegradable and when they come in contact with water, water becomes poison. The reason behind this is those materials that do not dissolve easily in water, thereby reducing the oxygen level and increasing the level of acidity in water. This results in contamination and death of fishes and other animals in lake and destroying the complete ecosystem of lake.
I took this photo in the evening. This guy in picture is one of the cleaning staff of the lake who is assigned on the special duty to clean the lake. They continuously try to clean the lake by removing the floating waste. When I talked to him he said what they are doing is just not enough, they are not even able to remove the 10% of what have been immersed. He said further that the ill effects of all this has already started to show and they had found few dead fishes floating on water while cleaning the lake.
Immersion of idols in water bodies is indeed an extremely harmful practice and people have to find a way out to solve this problem. The spiritual leaders of our society have to come forward and take initiative by including this topic during their discourses.
ReplyDeleteThe easiest way that would be acceptable to all may be using non-toxic, biodegradable material for making idols which would, instead of polluting water, would somehow help to improve the quality of water! One thing is sure, though! No government agency in our democratic country would dare stop this age-old ritual fearing a backlash from the people. This tricky subject is to be handled by the religious gurus only. The government should call a meeting of the saints and ascetics and should make them see the reason and then expect follow up action by them.