Revitalization of Rivers in India Draft Policy - Isha Guru Jaggi Vasudev

Revitalization of Rivers In India
Draft Policy Recommendation
THE KNOTTED-UP RIVER
MANAGEMENT PARADIGM IN INDIA
If one were to work on improving the plight of our rivers, it will be
useful to know when and how we charted the path to their deterioration.
This reminds one of the story of a knotted up handkerchief that Lord
Buddha brought into one of his satsangs. The story goes like this – in one
of the monk assemblies Buddha brought along a handkerchief, knotted
it, and asked if the knotted handkerchief is the same as the old one? The
monks responded that in a way it is the same, but it has many knots in it.
That is, in a way it is the same cloth, but the form has changed.
And then Buddha asked what he should do to bring the handkerchief
back to its original state. Should he stretch the ends? The monks
responded that to get the handkerchief back to its original form, the knots
need to be removed. And the monks added, to remove them we need to
closely examine how the knots were formed.
This story summarizes what has happened with most of the natural
resources that we humans have been bestowed with on this planet.
They are all knotted up. All this has happened in less than five or six
decades. The case of our freshwater resources is similar to the knotted up
handkerchief. And right now, we as a nation, instead of unknotting them,
have only been pulling the knots further apart through our interventions
of building more dams and diverting more water to cities from the rivers.
In this section we look at how the knots were formed and what are
the knots that we have to untie to revitalize our rivers.
FIRST KNOT - BRITISH LEGACY OF INDIA’S RIVER MANAGEMENT
The worship of the rivers in India has been reduced to a ritualistic
process that people follow only because they are told that it will benefit
them. The ethos and the fundamental consciousness that gave rise to this
reverential worship of rivers has been corroded. A man who conducts a
ritual or a ceremony on the ghats of Ganga in Varanasi will not fret to spit
on the same ghat after finishing the ritual.
If we understand how this knot of a complicated “worship and
disrespect” behavior is practiced towards an entity at the same time, we
may be able to get a better perspective of what needs to be done.
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