. For instance, in the monsoon season, primarily on the west coast of India, there is a festival known as Ganesh Chaturti. Lord Ganesh is a mythological figure who is the son of Shiva and Parvati, most commonly recognized as the god with an elephants head. The festival is a celebration for ten to twenty days and during this time huge idols of Ganesh are put up in communities and ‘aartis” or prayers and offerings are made to the god as thanksgiving for the bountiful rain, the interesting part is that once the ten days are done, the idols are taken in huge processions to the beaches surrounding the area or any large body of water and immersed in it. The idea being that the next year Ganesh will rise up from the ocean (water) once again and bring the monsoon rain to the people (huge processions travel through the streets, chanting “Ganapati bapa moriya; agla varshi laukar ya.” Which translates in to “ Hail father Ganesh, come back earlier next year.”) . Yet, it would seem disrespectful to immerse a god in an ocean that is polluted by the waste of the people and expect him to return, even so, the people believe that by immersing the idols they somehow purify the water, whence actually they are only adding to the pollution of the sea. The breathing in of a sacredness into objects that are not regarded as sacred, at certain times of the year is problematic and a hindrance to environmental preservation from the religious angle. These problems are only a few of the encumbrances that an environmental ethic stemming from Hinduism would face. The scope of Hinduism’s view of the worlds connectedness and continuity with the fate of its human inhabitants is one that would cover most all the ground that a western environmentalist could dream of covering with a religious backing. The ideas ranging from preserving Krishna’s Vrindavan to keeping the Ganges clean from improperly cremated bodies, all have a ...
