Sadhana: Hindu Progressives in Action organize for environmental justice
October 5, 2017 0
Sunita Viswanath, the most recent Jamaica Bay cleanup, is a driving force behind Sadhana’s creation as a progressive Hindu movement in America. • Photo by Robert Hirschfield
NEW YORK—On the first Saturday of almost every month Hindus from New York’s temples, organized by Sadhana, scour the waters and beaches of Jamaica Bay, by JFK Airport, with garbage bags and metal pickers, picking up cigarette butts, saris, bottles, bamboo staves and murtis (statues) of Shiva, Ganesh, and Hanuman offered unwittingly as polluting gifts to the bay, where worshippers, far from India, do their puja.
Aminta Kilawan, Sadhana’s point person for the monthly cleanups called Project Prithvi (mother earth in Sanskrit), believes that the spiritual makeup of the Hindu community makes organizing for environmental justice less arduous than one might expect.
“The Hindu faith is very much rooted in the elements. There is reverence towards earth and water that motivates people’s desire to get involved in environmental justice activism. Particularly young people. You see a lot of young people at the cleanups.”
Savitri, from the Shanti Bhavan temple in Jamaica, brought her two young children to a recent cleanup. A Hindu from Guyana, she recalls that her fellow Hindus voted Marxist Cheddi Jagan into power in the early 60s when such a thing was unheard of. But she was more concerned that day with keeping her older son from strong-arming a murti of Ganesh from his little sister who fished it out of the water.
“It’s good to get the kids involved, so they have an [understanding] of problems like pollution at an early age,” Savitri said. “For us, coming here is motivated by seva, community service, which is why our temple is also part of the Sanctuary Movement.”