Tag: Ganges

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Hindu Right-Wingers Feasting in Gandhi’s Domain

I wrote in the New York Times a few months ago about the takeover of the Gandhian Institute of Studies in Varanasi, India, by a clique of so-called “academics” tied to the right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The RSS, a paramilitary organization with an estimated 5 million members, “actually was the inspiration and source of the Kill Gandhi and Hate Gandhi movement” that led to Gandhi’s assassination, according to Tushar Gandhi, a great-grandson of the Mahatma.

It’s ironic, Tushar told me, that the RSS “is attempting to grab an institution founded by Ram Manohar Lohia, a eminent follower of Gandhi and one of India’s leading socialist leaders.”

Now comes news that the grounds of the Gandhian Institute have recently been used to host a meeting of RSS leaders. Clips (in Hindi) after the jump.

It’s a world of fakes and charlatans — they’re in every city in every country. But still: The Gall.

Continue reading “Hindu Right-Wingers Feasting in Gandhi’s Domain”

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Swami Shivanand Breaks 36-day Fast for the Ganges

Swami Shivanand of the Matri Sadan ashram in Haridwar, India, breaks a 36-day fast to protect the Ganges River.

Details to come. I first wrote about Shivanand and his band of dedicated and embattled saints last December for National Geographic ( http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2011/12/09/a-swamis-hunger-strike-ends-mining-on-a-stretch-of-the-ganges-river/ ) and the New York Times ( http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/a-sacred-river-under-assault/ — http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/21/indias-anticorruption-guru-anna-hazare-is-a-hunger-strike-opportunist/ ).

Shivanand is fearless, and says he’s not afraid of death. Just the same, I am very glad he’s alive.

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India’s Massive Blackout, and the Environmental Danger to Come

This post first appeared at National Geographic.
An estimated 600 million Indians * – more people than live in western Europe — were without electricity earlier this week, victims of a massive blackout that darkened most of the northern and eastern portions of the country.

The Great Indian Outage, stretching from New Delhi to Kolkata, comes just a day after 300 million people in northern India lost power for much of Monday.

It is a disaster that’s caused untold damage to India’s economy, its prestige, and its well-being – think of the millions of patients in hospitals, the commuters stuck on trains, and farmers in need of irrigation. Hundreds of miners in the states of West Bengal and Jharkand were trapped underground by the blackout. Some 300 trains were reportedly stalled across the country.

There’s more damage to come, I fear: Forces that have been bridling against environmental regulations and science-based activism will use the Great Outage as a cudgel to demolish future restraints on dam construction, coal mining, and other projects.

India’s humiliating power failure is sure to birth a slogan as reductive and wrong as America’s own “Drill Baby Drill.” Continue reading “India’s Massive Blackout, and the Environmental Danger to Come”

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Dying for the Ganges: A Scientist Turned Swami Risks All

This piece first appeared at National Geographic, and was updated Saturday night.

G.D. Agrawal is determined to die.

“At the moment I am quite resigned to my fate,” Agrawal, the 80-year-old dean of India’s environmental engineers, tells me by phone from his hospital bed in the holy city of Varanasi.

Agrawal hasn’t eaten since February 8. He hasn’t taken a drink of water since March 8; an intravenous drip of dextrose and vitamins keeps him lucid.

GD Agrawal, the environmental engineer also known as Swami Gyan Swaroop Sanand, at the Varanasi hospital where he is on a hunger strike. Agrawal says he will remove his IV tube on Saturday. "At the moment I am quite resigned to my fate," he told Nat Geo News Watch.

Continue reading “Dying for the Ganges: A Scientist Turned Swami Risks All”

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India’s Gangster Politicians

When Franklin Roosevelt appointed the business titan and former bootlegger Joseph Kennedy to head his new Securities and Exchange Commission in 1934, the U.S. president famously bragged that he had “set a thief to catch a thief.” If India’s politicians follow this strategy, its most populous state will be crime-free in no time.

At least ten state assembly candidates in Uttar Pradesh are presently in jail awaiting trial on charges that include murder and racketeering. In the current assembly, 139 out of 404 legislators are free while facing criminal charges.

My latest, “In Indian Politics, Crime Pays,” is up at the New York Times/International Herald Tribune.

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When You Have to Drink the Water

A version of this post first appeared at National Geographic, and references my piece, Grunge on the Ganges, at The New York Times’ Latitude blog.

Varanasi, India — A couple years ago, one of India’s leading industrial houses announced a revolutionary new household filter that would for the first time bring affordable, safe drinking water to millions of homes. The Tata Swach combines the inexpensive carbon of burnt rice husks with silver nano-particles to kill and remove deadly microbes including cholera, E coli, and the rotavirus.

The Swach doesn’t need electricity or running water. Unlike some filters sold in the United States, the Swatch’s filter bulb cuts off the flow of water when it’s exhausted, meaning it’s impossible to drink unclean water that’s passed through a spent filter. (There’s no risk in drinking unfiltered water in New York or Denver, but it’s a different story in India, where waterborne diseases kill as many as half a million children each year.)

And it’s hugely affordable: The unit costs less than $20 and monthly filter replacements are just $7.

More than a million of these filters have been sold since 2009, and it’s not hard to imagine the public health benefits that will follow. More Indian companies are jumping into the low-cost filter business, which could push prices even lower.

This Indian success story, however, can also be seen as a thin bit of cover for the country’s scandalously poor public services. Continue reading “When You Have to Drink the Water”

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Saving the Ganges: A tale of religion, money, and (maybe) murder.

Satellite images of the effects of quarrying on the Ganges near Haridwar between 2003 and 2010. Image courtesy Matri Sadan ashram.

This post first appeared at National Geographic News Watch, and references “A Sacred River Under Assault,” which ran on the New York Times/International Herald Tribune’s Latitude blog on December 8. My first contribution to the NYT/IHT Opinion section, “A Dam’s Unexpected Winners,” appeared November 25.

An 11-day hunger strike by the swami of a small ashram ended on Monday night when the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand banned stone and sand mining from the Ganges riverbed near the city of Haridwar pending an environmental impact statement.

Officials slid the written order under the bolted door of a room of the Matri Sadan ashram, where 65-year-old Swami Shivanand had barricaded himself to prevent his arrest on charges of attempted suicide.

Shivanand read the order, unlocked the door, and broke his fast with glasses of lemon water and apple juice. This fast was Shivanand’s sixth. The longest, in 2000, was 21 days. Continue reading “Saving the Ganges: A tale of religion, money, and (maybe) murder.”

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Where Three Rivers Meet

Three sacred rivers meet at Allahabad: The Ganges, born of clear Himalayan tributaries that first trickle and then rage down from India’s border with Tibet; its sister, the Yamuna, which shadows the Ganges to the west before curving past Delhi and the Taj Mahal to join her; and the mythical Saraswati, ancient and invisible, which is said to run beneath the earth.

Only the Saraswati reaches Allahabad in a pristine state.

My latest, at National Geographic.