Hundreds of India's most revered Hindu holy men are threatening a mass suicide at one of the world's largest religious festivals next month in protest at the pollution of the Ganges, India's most sacred water course.
The threat comes as about six million pilgrims prepare to attend the three-month Ardh Kumb festival where devotees queue to take a "holy dip" in the confluence of the rivers Ganges and Yamuna, the site where the mythical Sarasvati river was said to have flowed, outside Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh, north India. Pressure on the government to clean up the river, which devout Hindus revere as a goddess with healing powers, has been mounting ahead of the festival which begins on Wednesday.
The threatened protests, which were announced at a joint meeting of holy men and religious teachers in Allahabad last month, echo the mass hunger-strike of 2001 which was only called off after local authorities issued promises — never to be fulfilled — to clean up the river.
Attempts to clean up the Ganges have been on-going since 1985 when the then prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, made it a personal mission to rid the river of sewage and industrial effluents.
However, despite spending more than £150 million on several action plans over the past 20 years, the levels of untreated sewage in the river continue to rise, posing a serious risk to pilgrims from fecal coliform bacteria.
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