Mumbai, India - Hindu worshippers are increasingly returning to the humble clay and paper idols of earlier generations in a bid to save the environment from the harmful effects of immersing hundreds of thousands of toxic statues in waters during a major Hindu festival, activists said Tuesday.
Every year millions of devout Hindus immerse idols of the elephant-headed god Ganesh into oceans and rivers in the ten-day long Ganesh Chaturti festival that celebrates the birth of the Hindu god. More than 70,000 idols are immersed in India's financial capital, Mumbai alone.
Singing hymns and beating drums, long processions wade into the water to submerge the idol to mark the natural cycle of creation and dissolution.
The effects are typically felt in the environment for weeks after as idol fragments, made mostly of plastic and plaster of Paris, wash up on shores and toxic chemicals from the paints pollute waters and poison fish.
Traditionally Ganesh idols were small, made of clay and painted with vegetable dyes. But over the last three decades the emphasis shifted to towering idols more than four metres high decorated with semiprecious stones.
"Bigger and brighter became better during the festival. The statues don't dissolve, but lie on the shore for weeks," said Debi Goenka, executive trustee of Conservation Action Trust.
"People have realized this and looked for alternatives," she said.
An increasing number of Indians now buy clay and papier-mache idols that will dissolve in water. They immerse these in the sea or in tubs and buckets at home. Others symbolically dip brass idols in the ocean and take them back home.
Mumbai resident Sunil Joshi chanted Hindu prayers along with relatives and friends last week before immersing a small clay idol in a bucket.
"By the next morning it had dissolved and we used the water for our plants," Joshi said on Tuesday. "One has to do something for the environment instead of polluting water and people are getting more conscious about this."
While the numbers of eco-friendly worshippers are tiny, they are growing steadily.
A nongovernment organization, the Aniruddha Upasana Trust, said it sold more than 2,000 papier-mache idols this year, up from just 300 three years ago.
One company, ECoexist, located in Pune, 160 kilometres southeast of Mumbai, sold out 175 clay idols this year up from 30 last year. Founder, Manisha Gutman, says they educate sculptors to use natural colours like turmeric instead of paints containing lead and mercury.
"We are trying to create a market of educated people who will make this choice," she said. "People want to shift to eco-sensitive products, but don't know where it's available. We must bridge this gap between demand and supply."