Hindus place faith in India Post Ganges water scheme
HIGH in the Himalayas, where the mighty Ganges is still a frigid glacial stream, labourers fill jerry cans with the river’s holy waters to be distributed to Hindus all over India.
Buyers sparingly use the precious liquid to bless important occasions, from births, weddings, and funerals to festivals such as Diwali or the purchase of a new car.
“This is for every faithful Hindu who can’t get here personally,” said one of the workers in the pilgrimage town of Gangotri, giving his name as Ramesh.
“It feels blessed to be part of a project that reaffirms our Hindu faith and delivers this divine water to all corners of the country,” he said.
The scheme is run by the Indian postal service and is one example of a raft of initiatives, from the symbolic to the gargantuan, launched by prime minister Narendra Modi
The water is considered purest closest to its source so is collected in the Gangotri, where the Ganges starts its roughly 2,500-km journey across India, and trucked to a bottling plant 100km downstream.
After being left to settle for three or four days, it is filtered in tanks before workers decant it by hand into 250-millilitre plastic bottles. Bought over the counter at post offices around India, they cost just `30 (£0.3) each – customers can also order them online for home delivery at `321 (£3.3) for a pack of four.
Millions of the little containers have been sold since the scheme launched six years ago.
New Delhi postman Rupesh Kumar, 23, has made several deliveries of the holy water, including during the current auspicious festive period.
He feels “additional responsibility” whenever he is carrying it to a customer for their ritual needs, he said.
“We also used Ganges water in the family for all special and religious occasions,” he said.
“People are often very thankful and polite after I deliver these bottles to their homes.”
Modi’s biggest religious construction project is a grand temple being built in the ancient city of Ayodhya. The government has also pushed a $1.5-billion (£1.27bn) highway project in the Uttarakhand state, which will make it easier for Hindu pilgrims to reach Gangotri and three other Himalayan temples.
The sites already receive hundreds of thousands of devotees each year.