Over decades, India’s holy rivers have been massively polluted with sewage, industrial chemicals, and pilgrims’ ritual bathing. But they may now get a new lease on life: In a landmark ruling on Monday (March 20), the high court of the northern state of Uttarakhand established two of India’s sacred rivers, the Ganga and Yamuna, as “living entities,” the Hindustan Times reports. The new order makes polluting or damaging the rivers legally comparable to hurting a person.
Since the rivers are not sentient beings that can fight for their new-found fundamental rights, they have been assigned three officers as legal guardians to ensure their conservation and protection, according to India Today. The three legal custodians are the director of the Namami Gange program, the Uttarakhand chief secretary, and the advocate-general of Uttarakhand. The court has also ordered that a “Ganga management board” be set up within the next eight weeks.
Some stretches of the 2,500-km-long Ganga, which originates in the Hindu pilgrimage town of Gangotri in Uttarakhand, have stagnated to the point where they are now unable to support aquatic life. A third of the drinking-water supply in India’s capital, Delhi, comes from a reservoir in the northernmost corner of the city that breaks away from the Yamuna right before it becomes toxic. Yamuna, a tributary of the Ganga, originates at Yamunotri in the Garwhal Himalayas.
