Rahul SomvanshiOne morning on the ghats of the Yamuna in Vrindavan, Radhadulari Dasi walked to the water’s edge carrying a garland. It was made of plastic wrappers, empty bottles, and discarded packaging — collected from the riverbank and threaded together. She held it up the way a devotee holds a flower offering before a puja, and she asked: “This looks ridiculous, doesn’t it?”
Then she said: “It also looks ridiculous when people worship Yamuna Maharani, but then pollute her very same waters with trash. It’s more than ridiculous. It’s heartbreaking.”
Radhadulari Dasi is a Brahmacharini and Atma Kriya Yoga teacher who lives and works in Vrindavan. She is affiliated with Bhakti Marga India, where her association as a teacher is independently listed. She has been speaking about the condition of India’s sacred rivers for years, and the contradiction she keeps returning to is a direct one: the same people who consider the river a goddess are often leaving their garbage in it.
The facts behind that observation are documented. In October–November 2024, the Yamuna River in Delhi was covered in thick white foam during the Chhath Puja festival. A 2024 parliamentary committee described the river as “more of a toxic waterway than a river.” The foam forms from a chemical mixture of untreated sewage, laundry detergent residue, phosphate-rich agricultural runoff, and industrial discharge. In 2021, fecal bacteria levels at one measuring point in south Delhi exceeded the maximum permissible health limit by 8,800 times.
Thousands of Hindu devotees stood in the foam during the 2024 Chhath Puja to offer prayers to the sun god Surya, despite court-issued warnings against entering the water. Authorities deployed motorboats with defoaming chemicals and erected bamboo barriers at some ghats.
The Yamuna supplies over half of New Delhi’s drinking water to more than 20 million people.
Radhadulari Dasi frames her concern through the theology she practises, drawing a line between the stated devotion and the actual treatment of the river. “From the Yamuna to the Chandrabhaga, all rivers are holy,” she said in one of her videos documenting this issue. “But what they have in common is not just their holiness. It’s the fact that they are sadly so, so polluted.”
The Chandrabhaga, the river flowing through Pandharpur in Maharashtra and sacred to the Varkari pilgrimage tradition, faces the same problem. Millions of Wari pilgrims travel to Pandharpur twice a year to take a ritual dip in the river and receive darshan of Lord Vitthal at the Pandharpur temple.
She invokes the medieval Varkari saint Savata Mali, who is remembered in Pandharpur tradition for teaching that Lord Vitthal — the deity — was present in every vegetable, every tree, every living thing. His famous abhangi carries the line: “Kanda mula bhaji, avghi Vithabai maji” — onions, roots, vegetables, all are my Vitthal.
“People stand in line for hours to get darshan of Vithala,” she said. “But what they don’t really recognise is that Vithala is here — in the nature around us. The same way we should be treating the nature around us.”
In Vrindavan, her work with the Clean Vrindavan Project has taken her to the 64 Mahant Samadhi, a complex of memorials to saints and spiritual leaders of the Vaishnava tradition. What volunteers have found there has been documented: plastic bottles placed directly next to the memorials, footwear placed on top of them, piles of garbage accumulating at the same sites people visit for prayer.
“Just because you see a pile of trash doesn’t mean it’s a garbage can,” she said while cleaning the site. “Bring your trash home. Don’t dump it in the holy spots of Vrindavan.”
The Clean Vrindavan Project runs cleaning sessions twice a week, on Thursdays and Sundays. It is a volunteer-led effort.
On the institutional side, the Delhi government allocated ₹1,000 crore for Yamuna cleanup in its 2025–26 budget and announced a 30-point action plan. Over ₹6,856 crore had been spent on Yamuna cleanup in the decade leading up to 2025. In March 2026, a Yamuna revitalization pilot project was reported for the stretch in Vrindavan between Keshi Ghat and Devaraha Baba Ghat, involving geological mapping of both riverbanks and pollution-source identification.
The white foam that covered the Yamuna during Chhath 2024 was absent during the 2025 Chhath festival — an improvement noted by residents and devotees who had gathered at the ghats.
“Real spirituality is not only in temples and rituals,” Radhadulari Dasi said. “It’s how we treat the world around us, because God is everywhere. Put it where it belongs.”
The Yamuna River carried toxic foam during Chhath Puja in November 2024, when thousands of devotees entered the water despite court warnings. A 2024 parliamentary committee described the river as more of a toxic waterway than a river. Radhadulari Dasi and the Clean Vrindavan Project have been documenting waste at sacred sites in Vrindavan, including the 64 Mahant Samadhi. The Chandrabhaga at Pandharpur faces parallel conditions. The Delhi government allocated ₹1,000 crore for Yamuna cleanup in 2025–26. A Yamuna revitalization pilot in Vrindavan was reported in March 2026.
