There’s more to Yamuna than a floating mass of filth…
Struck in a never ending traffic jam on Delhi’s famous ITO
Bridge built over the sacred river Yamuna, something that caught my eye was a man on the bank of the river performing some religious rituals and then disposing off the dead body of a baby into the river. Till that time all I knew about the river was that it was used as a dumping area by the so called religious souls.
Since many a years Yamuna was being used as the channel to make the offerings reach directly to God, there by piling up the muck in it, making it a floating mass of dirty, stinky and useless things. But that it was also an active crematory for little corpses came as a sheer filthy surprise to me. And the act was not new, but had strengthened its roots deep down the age-old religious Hindu traditions, which do not allow the cremation of corpses of babies and children under 3, like their grown-up counterparts and registered for them a watery grave.
“I don’t know how many babies I have put there, maybe thousands,” says 40-year-old naval Kishore, who has been performing this gruesome task for more than 10 years now, and before him it were his fore fathers indulging in this so called ‘religious service.’ If the religious sects are to be believed, there is no such mention of denial of cremation to babies, but still people blinded by their mad faith in their ancestors are continuing the tradition without paying any heed to what they are doing to the environment.
For a meager sum of Rs.100 or even Rs 50 a man takes the baby in the center of the river, ties a brick to it and set it go in the water. Everybody knows what happens to the corpses, but none is daring enough to realize that they either become food for the organisms breeding deep down the filthy river or dissolve in the water. I don’t think the parents have ever wished for a doom like this for their little ones…what do you say? They definitely deserve something better…at least a decent journey towards the ultimate end…a decent BURIAL GROUND is what they deserve.
Though a court order was passed against the crematoriums to allow the babies to be buried there, but of no use. The capital city Delhi, which is gearing up in full spirits to welcome the commonwealth games has no time to sit back and think for a proper cremation ground for the tiniest members of the society. The adult crematoriums turn away these babies’ corpses leaving them to go no where but to end up making Yamuna a little more murky and enthralling the age old religious sentiments.
Via: CNN
Tags: Children, Indian society, Religion