Poverty, stigma behind bodies floating
Villagers along the river say cremation expenses rose during the pandemic, forcing many to immerse or bury the bodies in sand. Lucknow, India – Virendra Kumar, a resident of Ajrayal Kheda village in Unnao district, about 520 kilometres (323 miles) from India’s capital New Delhi, says he had to bury the body of his dead son on the banks of the Ganges River instead of cremating him.
“My son Arun Kumar was 18 and was suffering from epilepsy since he was 10. He was sick and denied admission by a private hospital when he suffered a seizure,” the 54-year-old father told Al Jazeera, sitting outside his shanty hut in the village.
“So we were getting him treated with a local doctor and the cost of treatment even locally was about 2,000 Indian rupees ($28) a month. Yet he breathed his last on May 9 at home.” Kumar says with a family income of less than $100 a month, he did not have any money left to meet his son’s cremation expenses. “Our main source of income is agriculture and all the savings were used in the marriage of my daughter. We are in debt as well,” he said. “We are Dalits, so you know how poor we are.” The Dalit community, formerly referred to as the “untouchables”, is at the bottom of
India’s complex caste hierarchy and has faced systemic marginalisation and oppression for centuries.“My religion has the custom of burning the dead body and not burying it but it was my poor economic situation due to which I had to perform the burial. The funeral would have required at least 15,000 rupees ($200) but I did not have that money,” Kumar told Al Jazeera. “I could not even do my son’s “Terahvi” (customary community lunch on 13th day of death) and only invited a couple of people from the neighbourhood. It’s eating me from inside.” Kumar says he could not borrow any money from his friends because “everyone is under some financial stress due to the coronavirus lockdown”. Hundreds of dead bodies were seen floating in the Ganges in the northern Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar after a ferocious second wave of the coronavirus pandemic hit Mass India in burial April. sites were also found along the riverbank in Unnao and Prayagraj districts of Uttar Pradesh, as photos of semi-buried bodies, most of them wrapped in traditional saffron cloth, emerged on social media........