Shaadu Maati or Natural clay is a non renewable resource that is mined from Gujarat and West Bengal. Now that Plaster of Paris idols have been banned, natural clay is the material that will be most used to replace PoP. To ensure that we do not create an other ecological disaster, we need to create a supply chain that is a closed cycle by recycling the clay sludge after the visarjan of the idols . This can be done by collecting the sludge after our home visarjan and drying it.
For 2021 eCoexist is collecting the clay sludge from all those devotees who would like to reduce the carbon footprint of their worship practices.
Contact us at 9049146644 to find out more.
While the diety Ganesha appeared early in the evolution of the Hindu brief system, the festival of Ganesh Chaturthi became a major social and public event because of Indian freedom fighter Lokmanya Tilak, who championed it as a means to circumvent the colonial British government ban on Hindu gatherings through its anti-public assembly legislation in 1892. The district of Pune which is the home of the eight special forms of Ganesha ( Ashta Vinayak) was also the city where Lokmanya Tilak lived and led the freedom movement. The celebration is most grand in the city of Pune which continues the tradition of using it to raise social and environmental awareness in society.
Ganesh Chaturthi (IAST: Gaṇēśa Chaturthī), is the Hindu festival that reveres god Ganesha.
A ten-day festival, it starts on the fourth day of Hindu luni-solar calendar month Bhadrapada, which typically falls in the Gregorian months of August or September. The festival is marked with the installation of Ganesha clay idols privately in homes, or publicly on elaborate pandals (temporary stages). The festival ends on the tenth day after start, wherein the idol is carried in a public procession with music and group chanting, then immersed in nearby water body such as a river or ocean, thereafter the clay idol dissolves. ( Source: Wikipedia)
The Sculpting Tradition
The tradition of making a Ganesh idol has evolved differently in different parts of the country. A festival that originally began as a way of offerring gratitude to the earth involved bringing a handful of earth home and moulding it oneself into an idol. After worshipping it for a few days it was brought back to the river banks and submerged to carry the prayers and blessings back to the Earth.
In South India, people still follow this tradition of making ones own idol at home and children have grown up watching the ritual being followed annually.
The art of sculpting Ganeshas however provides livelihood and income to a large population of people whose entire income comes from the sale of idols they have made all year around, during month before the festival begins.
Few of these people are master sculptors, artists who retain the skill and art of moulding an idol from clay. Based on the prototypes these few masters create, moulds are pressed and then large scale production begins, done mostly by ‘printers’, people who know how to handle the material, but are not artists themselves.
As the demand of hand sculpted Ganeshas reduced in the market, fewer and fewer masters remain and the industry is now run mostly by labour.
While the diety Ganesha appeared early in the evolution of the Hindu brief system, the festival of Ganesh Chaturthi became a major social and public event because of Indian freedom fighter Lokmanya Tilak, who championed it as a means to circumvent the colonial British government ban on Hindu gatherings through its anti-public assembly legislation in 1892. The district of Pune which is the home of the eight special forms of Ganesha ( Ashta Vinayak) was also the city where Lokmanya Tilak lived and led the freedom movement. The celebration is most grand in the city of Pune which continues the tradition of using it to raise social and environmental awareness in society.
When we began to look at the environmental issues surrounding the Ganesh festival in 2007, in the city of Pune, the birthplace of this massive social event, a few things were immediately evident.
eCoexist began by addressing the most obvious aspect – the material out of which the Ganesh idols were made. Whereas traditionally, the idols were sculpted out of local clay by devotees themselves, in the industrial age, this had been replaced by Plaster of Paris, a man-made material that does not dissolve in water. Additionally, the paints used to colour these idols were chemical oil or watercolours that contained lead and mercury.
The issues around toxicity in the festival of Ganesh Chaturthi can be broadly put under three categories
It should be clearly stated that it is not the materials themselves that are an issue but the fact that they are ‘immersed’ in natural water bodies that creates an environmental problem.
Study by Toxics Link on impact of immersion
Research paper by Prof Asolekar IIT Mumbai on impacts of immersion
Guidelines for immersion by Maharashtra Pollution Control Board
Guidelines for immersion by Central Pollution Control Board
Legal histories around the Ganesh immersion
A discussion among five NGOs based in Pune about the Ganesh festival and how the CPCB guidelines will help us minimise the impact of this festival on the river.
