Summary Of A Prayer For The Ganges

As expressed in the article “A Prayer for the Ganges” by Joshua Hammer, the Ganges River is horribly polluted. Many tanneries alongside the Ganges drain toxic chemicals into the river that cause various severe health issues. This source of pollution combined with sewage runoff, littering, and the placing of dead bodies into the river has become such a problem that in the city of Varanasi “the coliform bacterial count is at least 3,000 times higher than the standard established as safe”. While Hinduism is not the direct cause of this pollution, its beliefs can certainly be used to eliminate the public apathy that limits any efforts to alter the state of the river. A way to eliminate this apathy is to show Hindus that cleaning the river is a path to moksha through karma yoga: cleaning the river is a selfless act and therefore a form of karma yoga. Connecting the values of selfless action found within karma yoga to cleaning the Ganges River could
As apathy is the largest problem facing minimizing pollution in the river, eliminating it is the best way to promote the cleaning of the river. Once indifference is largely eliminated among the Hindu population, the government will soon follow and act in order to honor the wishes of its people. There is already a “water-treatment scheme” that “ hydraulic engineers and scientists at the University of California at Berkeley” specially designed to purify the water in sections of the Ganges. The main problem facing the implementation of this system is funding; this will not be an issue when the people and consequently the government are no longer indifferent to pollution in the river. Connecting karma yoga to pollution in the Ganges River will curtail the severity of pollution in the river by minimizing the government’s apathetic agenda toward the