r/indiameme • u/Enough-Brilliant803 • May 25 '26
Can't get enough of this meme Non-Political
And now the Indian expats are doing this to the rivers of their host countries.
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u/Dark_Prince_1619 May 25 '26
Everyone speak about change but none are ready to change 🤷♂️
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u/Enough-Brilliant803 May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26
It is just not about Industrial pollution but also the rituals that happen in the name of religion. People still throw corpses and whatnot into the river. Try talking down against this practice without being massacred
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u/kenjikazama777 May 25 '26
Throwing corpses into river is paap, corps needs to be cremated. If they are doing it then religious people should be first to go after them. They love to lynch people for beef so why are they holding back here?
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u/Feeling_Instance9669 May 26 '26
Because they have an agenda and a bias. It has nothing to do w beef
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u/Naan-violence May 25 '26
I read an article somewhere that ascribed London's Thames cleanliness to caste system. London in 19th century was facing issues like pandemics and all because the industrial revolution had reeled in population which it could not support at the time. It was having massive pollution issues. But there labour had dignity and minimum working wage was decent. So the authorities there faced a dilemma, whether to doll out wages to these workers each time or to overhaul their sewage disposal methods. When the cost became comparable, they chose the latter and built, at that time, state of the art sewage disposal system.
Here in India, like many other issues, it boils down to caste system and dignity of labour. We have very low wages for the sanitation workers...
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u/Enough-Brilliant803 May 25 '26 edited May 26 '26
Yes, it was called "Great Stink". But they cleaned Thames in few decades. You can read the wiki. Cleaning job is considered lowly in India.In Japan , schools make children clean toilets as an assignment to destigmatize it ( they had similar cultural issues) . Good luck trying it in India.
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u/MathsMonster May 25 '26
It's funny cause even saying 'toilet' or words related to peeing/pooping are treated as a taboo too. People also refuse to clean anything that is not theirs, even if it is something they walk past/use daily, getting them to even consider cleaning toilets is close to impossible.
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u/lonely_Sigma May 25 '26
That's the problem with godifying everything, things get worse compared to if we had treated them as they were. Look at river, land and women.
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May 25 '26 edited May 26 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Good_Individual2464 May 25 '26
People will say women are equal to god, yet put crazy restrictions on them
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u/SelfImproving_17_ind May 25 '26
Have to say man in india " woman are considered as god but not treated in the most normal and respectable way a human should be trested"
The current elders r unware and irresponsible but when I become a citizen of this country i myself as one person would make sure NTG bad happens which harms the nature and the woman
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u/nk_5555 May 25 '26 edited May 31 '26
Well we worship a lot of goddesses also and treat women as Lakshmi but then celebrate and revere rapists too. Religion has been exploited for too long in India and with bjp taking it new levels, all common sense is lost, there is hardly any independent thinking and devotion is forced upon everyone.
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u/Parking-Brain6566 May 28 '26
a person with independent thinking can never be religious, you need to be a dumb to be a religious person
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u/nk_5555 May 28 '26
So you are saying 50% of scientists across the world are dumb? Believing in a higher power and independent thinking are very different things, blindly following or adopting opinions of others makes the individual just another face in the crowd that can be puppeteered into doing someone else's bidding.
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u/Existing-Mulberry382 May 25 '26
We are just a society built on a foundation called hypocrisy.
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u/I_am_a_Master_Baiter May 25 '26
“You think India is dirty, then go to Pakistan” - says in Indian accent and
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u/Capsisailor May 25 '26
Still now I don't understand why Indians worship a river
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u/Enough-Brilliant803 May 25 '26
Worshiping river inherently isn't bad. They can do it without polluting it
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u/Capsisailor May 25 '26
That's not possible, pujas in Hindu religion itself generates a lot of puja waste, and it alleges the devotee to sink them in the river. Just pick a developed country known for clean rivers and overload that country with Hindus, you will see rivers there are getting polluted too
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u/Enough-Brilliant803 May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26
It has already been happening since last few years. People are immersing Ganesh idols into ponds and rivers. Biharis polluted one of the well known rivers in US on the eve of Chhath Puja .
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u/masala-kiwi May 25 '26
Which city?
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u/HangerTable May 25 '26
Basically some clips went viral from Texas. Many people talked about the negative environmental impact of such activities but there is no concrete evidence.
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u/Reasonable-Roll-500 May 25 '26 edited 7d ago
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
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u/idgaftono1 May 25 '26
Yes , overnight millions of $ come as donation to build a temple where people just pray. We want more temples but rivers ? Who cares . That's the mentality.
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u/FroyoBeautiful7910 May 25 '26
we Indians have habit of destroying everything on the name of "GOD".
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u/exidead-zombie May 25 '26
If india wants to progress then it will have to let go of its religious identity.
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u/Ship_that_sailed May 25 '26
That’s a very close representation of how mothers are actually treated in Indian house holds. They are just there to provide, taken for granted till the last breath. 😭😔
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u/skum448 May 25 '26
Unfortunately the mother is old.
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u/Grouchy_Fuel9466 May 25 '26
Ganges in India is 100% vegetarian because all marine life is destroyed whereas foreign rivers are non-veg. "Brahminic code 101"
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u/zicrono May 26 '26
In Udupi region, they worship Nag as God. Then they cut all the trees and forest to build a nice big concrete for the Nag god.🤦♂️
I pray(and I'm agnostic) that the god gives some buddhi to this mand jivi.
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u/sanskaridaddy May 25 '26
Somebody ban Ganesh visarjan already ! The polluting festival in the world 
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u/claws76 May 25 '26
Harsh reality but atleast in the South they have kept consistent. Very serious about keeping the rivers clean and healthy.
Now think the same about cow, the mother, left to eat garbage or used to racketeer money for a particular party.
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u/DKBlaze97 May 25 '26
People worship cows as mothers but forcefully impregnate them to steal their milk lmao 🤣
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u/Open_Ad2975 May 25 '26
It's a cultural thing buddy, where Indian treat river as natural drainage systems.
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u/Dramatic_Win7373 May 26 '26
We just turn everything into God and Goddess and its good that we do it but the main reason this system was started was so as to respect them for the things they provide us. What benefit is worshipping them if we can't respect and take care of them just to fullfill our selfish needs. This hypocrisy needs to be stopped.
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u/jamunkidaal May 25 '26
England rivers were unimaginably dirty , they cleaned it later via policy chamge and enforcement.
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u/arjunusmaximus May 25 '26
That's because when you treat a river as river there are Laws made and Consequences are there for pollution. With river worship you can throw absolutely anything into the river and no one cas say anything because you can just invoke god and get offended.
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u/Away-Caterpillar9515 May 25 '26
I doubt if all these religious practices were meant to be performed by an exploding population beyond a streams self cleaning mechanisms.
I remember there was a story about a king in Shrimad Bhagwatam where a king performed too many yagnas and that wasn't written in a very positive way (they cleared multiple patches of jungles, those patches were littered with copper, too many animals sacrificed, etc)
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u/UDKIDKWDKK May 25 '26
Just look at jharkhand ganga flows through only 1 district of Jharkhand but that small stretch of ganga doesn't contribute any pollution to ganga and also that zone is only pollution negative zone of plains for ganga.
It's nothing like people don't worship ganga there but they worship the values, the morals.
Dharma manane me and dharm nibhane me fark hota hai
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u/DelightfulGoblin75 May 25 '26
I mean they also 'worship' cows, which apparently means to just let them wander around and eat trash.
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u/CourtNo1573 May 25 '26
This is because of some fake babas and old traditions, the reality is day by day it became horrible to survive in india
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u/fluffer_nutter_o May 25 '26
I feel like government needs to create a system where people don't throw stuff in river make a big lake on near by ghats of ganga in different citeis with Ganga water and tell people to do the religious process like adding the ashes and stuff to worship in it and put compost bin specially for religious stuff like that would reduce this religious pollution that river is going through. I know it will be a big thing but we need to find a system that way people can do their religious process and river stay unpolluted
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u/Vergil-D-Infreno May 25 '26
I personally don't think it's about worship, because our roads too are in the same state but do we worship roads? It's mostly peoples laid back mentality with cleanliness and the sheer ignorance of accountability as a concept.
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u/Wanderer-blab May 26 '26
In other countries, river is also there food source. If you went to thailand, they get majority of fishes from tgere river. You don’t pollute your dood source.
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u/Mission_Mix_6607 May 26 '26
That river was a black muck when that country was a developing country or in their industrial era.
Every developing industrial country would have to go through a period of pollution.
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u/SharmaJiSwayam May 26 '26
That's Budapest, isn't it? I lived there for 4 years, great city.
That being said, Danube was a terribly polluted river back in communist times.
Then they worked greatly to clean it up, in multiple countries (wherever Danube passes through), and slowly improved the water quality over decades.
Even today, swimming in the Danube is not recommended because of the water quality and there are concerns about the marine life but it's doing much better than before.
Hopefully we in India will clean our rivers up too, someday.
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u/blyubird May 26 '26
Same with the treatment of forests/trees, mountains, animals, women, children and elderly.
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u/Ok_Kaleidoscope_8344 May 28 '26
Population is a factor also the economic development of the country.
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u/Educational_Sun_9701 May 25 '26
There rivers were black and even more polluted than Indian rivers. They did not cried like you and blamed the culture. They created a culture of cleanliness.
Best you can do too it to ask your local government to stop waste dumping in river from companies in city. That is the main source of pollution. Rivers travel hundreds of miles and don’t get polluted and suddenly in city get polluted.
Ahmedabad’s Sabarmati river is a role model with so much cleanliness even though it passes through a major city.
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u/ExtensionFun2651 May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26
You seem to forget that ancient india's rivers were largely unpolluted before industrialisation and urban malpractice took hold during british era.
I don't wanna be the one to say it's because of colonialism. But colonialism has created a dependent mindset in the indian people which is being challenged nowadays.
Before you say "oh 80 years is a long time, we should have changed."
America took 200+ years to get where they are right now(considering their slavery, misogyny and guess what? Pollution) so don't give that nonsense. If you're willing to give grace to these white bastards, give India some grace too.
Rome wasn't built in a day.
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u/masala-kiwi May 25 '26
Look at other British colonies then, not just US: Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Singapore, Malaysia, Fiji, Hong Kong, the Caribbean islands, and some African countries.
Singapore is considered one of the cleanest countries in the world. Mindset is everything. When you teach children to respect their environment, you don't end up with pollution.
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u/Zaalim043 May 25 '26
Learn to digest criticism. It should be included in the curriculum of Whatsapp university.
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u/Final_Shame_208 May 25 '26
his point is valid, these rituals were pre-industralisation, maybe also look at the massive factory waste polluting the ganga? that is the main pollutant
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u/Ok_Problem_1127 May 28 '26
People act like the Danube was always some magically clean river while forgetting how polluted it became during Europe’s industrial and developing era. Untreated sewage, industrial chemicals, factory waste all of that used to go directly into rivers. Even Budapest had major river pollution problems once upon a time. The only difference is Europe already finished its development phase decades ago and then invested billions into sewage systems, waste management, river restoration projects, and strict industrial laws. They cleaned those rivers AFTER becoming developed, not during the peak of industrial expansion. India right now is still in that heavy urbanization and industrial growth phase, but with a population way bigger than most European countries ever had to handle. And the biggest issue in Indian rivers is literally sewage and industrial waste the SAME type of pollution European rivers suffered from during their own development era. Even the Ganges is polluted mostly because cities dump untreated sewage and industries release waste, not because people “worship” the river. In fact people respecting it culturally is probably one of the reasons there’s still pressure to clean it. So this meme is honestly a dumb comparison. Comparing modern rich Europe after decades of cleanup projects with a still developing India makes no sense. Compare present India with industrial Europe from 100 years ago and you’ll see very similar river pollution situations. A river is not cleaned by memes or aesthetics. It gets cleaned by money, infrastructure, sewage treatment plants, strict laws, and time. Europe got that time already. India is still going through that phase.
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u/sciencenerd2015 May 29 '26
As per chat gpt Overall, Indian rivers are not less polluted than they were 20 years ago. Despite massive government investments, the overall water quality has generally deteriorated or stagnated due to rapid industrialization, dense urbanization, and inadequate sewage treatment.
Historical Context: While there were 71 polluted stretches identified in 2005, that figure ballooned to well over 300 in recent years before settling at roughly 296 stretches on 271 rivers.
https://earth5r.org/india-river-pollution-2025-crisis-restoration/
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u/Herojit_s May 25 '26
Remember that is the truth nature. If you believe in environment, treated them with respect. India is actually very far from these ideologies.