There is a dust storm in blistering heat, vehicles jam the road while a queue of rafts jam the Ganga. Her crowded banks are a cheap version of Mumbai’s Chowpatty. Plastic litter is everywhere, as are malodorous garbage dumps. Then there is prostitution and Ankita Bhandari rape horrors, boards boasting of the highest bungee jump, and hordes of raucous tourists with beer cans and selfies. There are parking lots cum alcohol centres blaring DJ music in the revered ‘Muni ki reti’; and not far are deluxe spas, luxury hotels, and international ashrams with asana practitioners. This sweltering dust-bowl is none other than yoga city Rishikesh, and this is what ‘spiritual’ tourism looks like.
The chardhaam yatra was once a pilgrimage; then it was ‘spiritual’ tourism; now it is simply a stampede. This May a staggering 1.4 million tourists visited in the first 20 days. The Uttarakhand government has capped the tourists per day at 18,000 in Kedarnath, Gangotri at 11,000, Badrinath at 20,000 and Yamunotri at 9000, increased by approximately 50% compared to 2022. This means that the actual darshan for every individual is no more than five seconds before being shoved off by a policeman.
And to facilitate the frenzy, the deities will now work overtime. Their afternoon eating and resting periods have been slashed; online pujas continue through the night, and at the crack of dawn begins a new day of relentless darshan. This irreverence is a mirror reflecting the depths to which our spirituality has plummeted.
Are our deities living images or stone? Do the praan pratishtha mantras invoke the divine presence into them or not? Are laser shows on Kedarnath temple wall devotion?
Also read: Uttarkashi Tunnel Collapse Calls for an Immediate Scientific Review of the Char Dham Project
We were certainly lectured to that effect during the elaborate installation of Ram Lalla in Ayodhya. And the chardhaam deities are ancient. While this frenzy of tourism goes on there is an entire section of the lower class, the villager, the authentic devotee, barricaded in an open field, begging to be let through, and denied because he does not live in a world of computer access and is ignorant of online registration. Nor is there a walking path for those who yet believe that a pilgrimage is to be made on foot, because the Chardhaam Pariyojana (CDP) sacrificed it for a wider road to facilitate speeding vehicles.
Amidst the unprecedented heat, the landslides, the forest fires, the water crisis, and the onslaught of tourist related construction in the Himalaya, especially in the prohibited floodplain zone, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways is still pushing for a wider 12m width road. What makes it entirely incomprehensible is that this width is specifically required for 10,000 passenger car units (PCUs) per day, whereas the government has been compelled to cap tourist inflow to well below this due to the choking of these narrow valleys. Even if one takes the conservative average of five people in one vehicle, and ignores buses, the vehicles are well below 5000 PCUs per day. Even with these limits once again there are long traffic jams 30 kms below Kedarnath, starting from Gaurikund and extending up to 10 kms, in the same stretch where lives were lost in the 2013 floods.
This is because the terrain and limited carrying capacity that these close-ended valleys impose are being outrageously flouted. Extensive slope failures and landslides were triggered in building this unnecessarily wide road. Recently, an additional Rs 1400 crore of taxpayer’s money has been sanctioned to the CDP for management of destabilised slopes. Experts monitoring the Silkyara tunnel that trapped 40 labourers alive admit that the 12m width of the tunnel was a major factor. We are funding our own destruction. And it is a vicious cycle.
‘Spiritual’ tourism is a dangerous oxymoron. ‘Spiritual’ tourists dump an estimated 10,000 kilograms of garbage every day in each of the dhaams; ‘spiritual’ tourists defecate along the road and the Ganga banks; ‘spiritual’ tourists throw whisky bottles and styrofoam plates out of moving cars; and they also deem it their right to blare loud music and undress for selfies with the mountains and shrines as backdrop. And it is ‘spiritual’ tourists who blare pressure horns and race, raising a whirlwind of dust, amidst the pine, the silver oak and the stunned animals of the mountains. What is spiritual in this desecration and selling out of the Himalaya?
The approach was different before five trillion dollars blinded the eye. Mountain villagers never walked with shoes on the bugyals, or raised their voice while in those abodes of the gods. People were hesitant to stop overnight in the dhaams as one would defecate and pollute those sacred spots. Even bright apparel was considered disrespectful. And Rishikesh itself was once a haven of peace for wandering monks like Swami Vivekananda who delighted in the transparent waters of the Ganga where fish ate from one’s hands, and elephants came to drink.
And since this fiasco is being perpetrated as sanatan dharma, let us clarify. Sanatan dharma looks at a thing and thinks “How can I raise this?” Modern man in ‘New India’ looks at something and thinks, “How can I consume this?” Modern India is willing to tunnel the immortal Ganga, turn a chardhaam into a chaar daam, and make the Himalayas bite the dust. We are trading an eternal wisdom until all we know is the price of a thing, and nothing of its value.
Priyadarshini Patel is head member of Ganga Ahvaan, a citizen forum working towards the conservation of the Ganga and the Himalayas.
This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.