‘A TIME BOMB’
Climate change and development threaten this holy town in the Himalayas
Inside a shrine overlooking snow-capped mountains, Hindu priests heaped spoonfuls of puffed rice and ghee into a crackling fire. They closed their eyes and chanted, hoping their prayers would somehow turn back time and save their holy — and sinking — town.
For months, the roughly 20,000 residents in Joshimath, burrowed in the Himalayas and revered by Hindu and Sikh pilgrims, have watched the earth slowly swallow their community. They pleaded for help that never arrived, and in January their desperate plight made it into the international spotlight.
But by then, Joshimath was already a disaster zone. Multi-storey hotels slumped to one side; cracked roads gaped open. More than 860 homes were uninhabitable, splayed by deep fissures. And instead of saviours they got bulldozers that razed swaths of the town.
The holy town was built on piles of debris left behind by landslides and earthquakes. Scientists have warned for decades that Joshimath could not withstand the level of heavy construction that has recently been taking place.
“Cracks are widening every day and people are in fear. … It’s a time bomb,” said Atul Sati, of the Save Joshimath Committee.
Joshimath’s future is at risk, experts and activists say, due in part to a push backed by the prime minister’s political party to grow religious tourism in Uttarakhand, the holy town’s home state. On top of climate change, extensive construction to accommodate tourists and accelerate hydropower projects in the region is exacerbating subsidence — the sinking of land.
Joshimath is said to have special spiritual powers and believed to be where Hindu guru Adi Shankaracharya found enlightenment in the eighth century before going on to establish four monasteries across India, including one in Joshimath.
Visitors pass through the town on their way to the famous Sikh shrine, Hemkund Sahib, and the Hindu temple, Badrinath.
“It must be protected,” said Brahmachari Mukundanand, a local priest who called Joshimath the “brain of North India” and explained that “our body can still function if some limbs are cut off.
But if anything happens to our brain, we can’t function. … Its survival is extremely important.”
The town’s loose topsoil and soft rocks can only support so much, according to environmentalist Vimlendu Jha. “In the short term, you might think it’s development. But in the long term, it is actually devastation,” he said.
Authorities, ignoring expert warnings, have continued to develop costly projects in the region, including a slew of hydropower stations and a lengthy highway. The latter is aimed at further boosting religious tourism, a key plank of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.
While construction for the project near Joshimath was paused last month, locals feared it was too late. A long crack running across one of the front walls in the famed Adi Shankaracharya monastery had deepened worryingly in recent weeks, said Vishnu Priyanand, one of the priests.
“Let places of worship remain as places of worship. Don’t make them tourist spots,” he pleaded.