The whole world is but one family - Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan Australia

Mother Ganga
& Sanskrit
(Extempore speech delivered by His Excellency,
Sri. S.S. Mukherjee, Former High Commissioner for
India)
Source: Sivananda Ganga Cultural Center
Swami Sahajanandaji, fellow Satsangees, our friends
from India, Sri Rakesh Jaiswal, Dr Biplove, the
rishikumars from Rishikesh and Consul-General
Sri Ajit Kumar, let me join Ajit Kumar, the Consul
General, in expressing my profound sense of
privilege and sheer pleasure in being here today on
the auspicious occasion of Ganga Dussehra.
This is my fourth assignment in Africa, in a career
spanning eight missions, but very few of these
assignments have given me the sheer feeling of joy
that I feel when I visit Durban and came to places
like Sivanandashram here. Swamiji, my Pranams for
giving me this opportunity of being here.
Today we offer our obeisance to Ganga Mata. She
is the very Being of our civilization. She is part of
our consciousness. She is the glue that holds our
culture, religion and heritage together. Mother
Ganga is a life-giver. Her waters have nourished
and sustained that very civilization that we are all
proud of—a civilization that spans a period of over
6,000 unbroken years, a civilization that is alive and
well today creating the same kind of awareness of
our heritage. This is symbolized and epitomized in
our chants to Mother Ganga.
We even go beyond our present lives in our
genuflections to Gaga Mata, even our life after
44 | Bhavan Australia | February 2012
death with Ganga Mata. It is for this reason that
we seek salvation by dipping in Her waters and
cremating our dead on Her shores. In a spiritual
sense, Ganga Mata dominates our minds and our
Spirit.
This project of Ganga clean up undertaken by
Divine Life Society of S.A. and Eco-Friends, is of
central importance because it is the benchmark
of our devotion to Ganga Mata. Are we really
devoted to Ganga Mata? On the one hand we pay
obeisance and make our offerings we seek from Her
the salvation of our souls. On the other hand we
pollute Her. We allow thousands of tons of the most
toxic waste to flow into Her. Through our quest
for prosperity, we allow through inertia, through
neglect, thousand for tons of the most foul sewage
to flow into Her. We find loopholes in the laws and
deliberately fail to implement them. We have failed
tragically to preserve the cleanliness and pristine
purity of Ganga.
One of our greatest’ projects, although it
was Governmental in the main, supported by
international efforts to clean up Ganga Mata, has
only begun to take effect. It is a mammoth project.
It cannot be done by bureaucrats and engineers
of the Government alone. It cannot be done by the
wonderful NGOs who are giving their all to such
projects, those whom the Eco-Friends of India
exemplify. It cannot be done by them alone. It has
to be done by all of them together. But, most of
all, what it will need beyond these resources and
technological knowledge, is faith. You look around
and can see that, given faith, nothing is impossible.
I think that without faith. It cannot be done—that
undefinable something that is provided by people
like Swami Sahajananda and the people whom he
inspires. Without that, I doubt that we can get there
or even get close to it. I am sure all of you get the
same feeling. With faith we will get there.
I know that I speak for all of you when I invoke the
blessings of God on this project. When our children
and their children look at Ganga Mata, they will be
able to say that the benchmark that their parents
and grandparents achieved was something at least
adequate.