Under the leadership of Father Anand and Father Dilraj of the Indian Missionary Society, the volunteers got into filthy water with their spades, brooms and baskets for a massive cleanliness drive. The campaign began at Kedar Ghat where hundreds of Hindu sadhus, priests and civilians were sitting on satyagraha.
After a common prayer along with people of other religious faiths, the Christian volunteers picked up garbage consisting of polythene bags, left over ritual materials, old dirty clothes, glass pieces etc. Catholic priests, Protestant pastors, religious sisters, students of theology and philosophy, Christian laity from various churches and cultural and social activists belonging to Hindu and Muslim faiths cleansed 700 meters long stretch covering five ghats. (River Ganga flows through 84 ghats in Kashi, the most ancient living city of the world.) They transported the garbage by a boat to the other side of the river and dumped them far away from human habitation.
Shri Pramod Manjhi, president of the boatmen’s association was standing with folded hands inside the river from dawn to dusk as a tapasya (austere practice). Similarly some others were performing buddhi-shuddhi yagna (ritual sacrifice for a sound mind) for the national leaders. Everyone of them wanted the government to act.
Fr. Anand told this reporter that he is convinced that Ganga can be cleaned only with the cooperation of the local people. For this, there is a need of mass awareness among the local people, the pilgrims and the priests.
Much of the filth is caused due to the materials used for rituals. The pujaris (priests) and others involved in arati and other ritualistic acts have to change their mentality, said Fr. Anand.
The volunteers distributed copies of a leaflet containing 10 appeals to the administration and the civilians appealing for a new mindset. The appeal challenged the traditional practice of pushing five types of dead bodies to float in the river. They are the bodies of children below five years, pregnant women, people who die of snake bite, chicken pox and white-leprosy (with the hope of their coming to life by the grace of Mother Ganga).
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