Events & Issues
New
Delhi, 5 August 2015
Environmental
Damage
TIME TO
RESTRICT PILGRIMS?
By Proloy
Bagchi
This year quite a few Hindu
pilgrimages are scheduled. In fact, some have been gone through, some others
are continuing and still others are yet to commence. An ancient religion as it is, it has a number
of auspicious days as prescribed by the scriptures and the same have designated
a number of holy places. Actually, the entire country is dotted with places
that have some religious significance or the other.
In some estimation there are over 300
such sacred sites that span the country. Some are very important, so much so
that a visit to these for the faithful is considered de rigueur to earn
salvation. Others, however, may lack that compelling importance, considered
holy only in the areas around. A pilgrim centre could be any holy place like
the Himalayas, the temples located there or
elsewhere, a holy congregation as prescribed by the mythology or a powerful
deity or a tomb or a Samadhi of a holy or Godlike man.
Hindu pilgrimages have come down to
us from the Vedic times and even in the 21st Century the tradition seems to be
nowhere near tapering off. If anything, it has acquired a greater hold on the common
man than ever before. Hundreds of thousands of people travel through the
country from east to west and north to south or vice versa on pilgrimages using
the modern means of travel like roads, railways airlines and even helicopters.
Gone are the days when the pious and the staunch believers would trudge through
the country that was largely untamed and wild, without fears of natural
calamities or of predators lurking behind every bush.
Motivated by sheer piety, unshakable
faith and a strong desire to obtain release from the cycle of birth and death
they would go over the difficult mountainous terrains and through verdant
valleys or across broad rivers or hilly streams. The fear of losing life in the
process was singularly absent though the near and dear ones would more often
believe in the unlikelihood of their return.
Today, however, it is far more safe,
convenient and trouble-free. One doesn’t have to undergo the privations of yore
that the pilgrims had to suffer on the long journeys generally undertaken on
foot to the temples or abode of a deity. Now it is well packaged and most of
the needs, comforts and conveniences of the pilgrims are outsourced to private
or public enterprises.
Such is the surge in numbers of the
devotees that their travels, halts, lodgings and boarding are booked in advance
so much so that one does not have to do anything other than embarking on the
pilgrimage. Highly commercialized, such facilitations have only increased the
numbers of pilgrims exponentially over the last few decades.
Numerous States that are lucky to
have an important pilgrim centre in them also join in making arrangements by
building up infrastructure like roads, hotels, lodges, camping sites, etc. for
smooth and painless passage of pilgrims. Those dependent on the revenues earned
through the large influx of pilgrims invite more and more of them to bolster
their coffers.
“Religious Tourism”, as it has come to be
known, is precisely from where the problem of degradation of environment of
such places consequent on massive visitations has cropped up – despite the
strong empathy of Hinduism with Nature and all its elements.
A classic example is that of
Uttarakhand which suffered untold devastations in 2013 due to environmental
degradation only to accommodate more and more pilgrims. Blessed as the State is
with the four holy Hindu shrines, it could never have escaped pilgrims from all
over the country. Earlier Uttarakhand was part of Uttar Pradesh and pilgrims’
traffic was on a low key.
The newly-created State, however,
gave the subdued religious tourism a mighty heave. It became a big collective
enterprise and virtually every section of the population got into the act.
Roads were re-laid or newly-built on which would run hundreds of buses, SUVs
and MUVs. Rest houses and hotels came
up, shopping and eating joints were opened up all along the routes precariously
perched on mountain slopes and dangerously close to the fast-running rivers,
throwing to the winds all environmental norms.
The country’s rising middle classes
sent the tourist traffic soaring by the year so much so that on 16th June 2013,
thousands were milling around at the State’s four shrines located at elevations
of 10000 to 12000 ft in ecologically fragile narrow valleys. While the entire
population of the State was 1 crore, 2.5 crore tourists had travelled to it –
much more than what was its carrying capacity.
Kedarnath with a population of fewer
than 500 was hosting 17000 pilgrims. A disaster was in the making and, lo and
behold, suddenly Nature struck a violent blow – a massive cloudburst that sent
millions of cusecs of water gushing through the narrow valleys carrying along
massive boulders down the steep mountain-slopes destroying or sweeping away
everything that came in their way, from houses to cars to men, women, animals,
roads, and slices of the weakened mountain sides.
Thousands perished and many are still
untraced and yet the ‘never-say-die’ politicians opened the State to pilgrim
traffic in a year’s time despite the routes to the shrines remaining vulnerable
to flash-floods, landslides and other natural calamities. Such is the lure of
the lucre for politicians – and, of course, votes – and piety of the faithful.
Deaths in pilgrim centres have
become common. Only recently lakhs had collected on the banks of Godavari at Pushkarulu for bathing during an auspicious
period that comes only once in 12 years and several died in a stampede that
occurred as the restraints were dropped with the VIPs leaving the venue.
Again, a few died in a landslide
caused by heavy rains at Baltal in Kashmir – once a beautiful, quiet meadow
below Zoji-la pass surrounded by green pine-clad mountains. The meadow was
commandeered for providing another route for the inflated traffic of lakhs of
pilgrims to Amarnath cave where a trickle of frozen water miraculously assumes
annually the shape of phallus – the symbol of Mahadev. The township that is
erected every year has played around with the surrounding hills making them
weak and prone to slips.
Likewise, unrestrained influx of
people in hundreds of thousands wreaks havoc on the ecology of several pilgrim
centres most prominent of which are Allahabad
and Sabarimala. At Allahabad
during Kumbh hundreds of thousands camp on the banks of the Holy Ganges and
take ritualised baths in it polluting its surroundings and waters. The annual
trek through the forests of Ecologically Sensitive Area of Wayanad in Kerala to
the Sabarimala hill shrine is devastating the famed forests. Besides, the River
Pampa flowing by has become a sewer and people residing on its banks have to
suffer its smelly and filthy waters.
As the pilgrim centres are generally
located on ecologically sensitive mountain tops or in forests or on banks of
the holy rivers a time seems to have come to restrict the number of pilgrims
travelling to them for the sake of saving them for posterity. Every site should
have its scientifically determined “carrying capacity” permitting access to
them above that limit should be prohibited by law reckoning it as harmful for
all, the holy site, man and nature.---INFA
(Copyright,
India News and Feature Alliance)
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