Shortage of wood for funerals in DEBABHUMI

Hindus from all over the country rush to different places of Uttarakhand like Haridwar and Rishikesh considered holy for putting a final touch to the last rites of their deceased. They believe that a puja which also immerses a burned body part, at the banks of Ganga will emancipate their beloved souls.

But the state which is also known as Debabhumi (land of Gods) is itself facing a crisis for the funeral pyre of its own residents. And this is environmental one- there is a serious shortage of wood for the funeral pyres in the hill state.

There are approximately more than 10,000 crematoriums across Uttarakhand, mainly along the banks of over two dozen rivers mainly Ganga, crisscrossing the mountainous state. However, only a hundred-odd crematoriums have a tal (depo).

Villagers have been forced to chop down trees due to the absence of adequate wood storage facilities in many of the Himalayan state’s crematoriums. Given the cost of wood and the absence of wood storage facilities most of the state’s crematoriums face the same dilemma. While poor villagers prefer to chop trees for wood rather than buying them to save money, a lot of people would start buying wood if it was available at village crematoriums. People also sometimes opt to bring their own wood for cremation, because what is available in crematoriums is often ‘inferior’, containing tree roots, branches, etc which don’t burn properly.

Officially, wood for crematoriums is supplied through designated government forest depots. It is sourced from only dead trees or those uprooted due to storms or other natural causes.

After measuring and collecting the wood, Uttarakhand Forest Development Corporation (UAFDC) transports it to the depots that are called tals — from where relatives of the deceased can buy wood for cremation. However, there are reports that claim that crematoriums also source the wood from vendors who might be deriving the wood through ‘illegal’ means.

Villagers usually cut down trees while on their way to the funeral, preferably at a place near the crematoriums to save transportation costs. The forest guards and police give it a miss due to the ’emotions’ involved in the process.

In crematoriums that have the facility of wood storage, an assortment of wood is provided that includes roots of trees that don’t burn easily. Thus, a large quantity of wood needs to be purchased to facilitate the burning. A quintal of wood at a ghat costs around Rs 400. Almost seven to eight quintals of wood are consumed in a pyre. Apart from that, there are overhead charges such as those of transportation, shroud, services of priests, etc., which makes the whole process expensive for poorer people.

Usually, pine is the preferred tree for cremation as its wood burns quickly. It takes around two hours to fell a medium-sized pine tree. Sometimes tyres are also utilised to cremate a body, particularly during the rainy season — notwithstanding the amount of air pollution its combustion generates.

Be it tyres or trees, cremations can be highly degrading to the environment. Anshul Garg, co-founder and president of Mokshda, a Delhi-based NGO working to reduce the environmental impact of funeral pyres, said that the felling of trees for cremation is not limited to Uttarakhand. Around sixty million trees are burned every year in funeral pyres across India. A tree takes 15-20 years to grow, and we take a few minutes to fell it and burn it in funeral pyres and replanting can’t compensate for trees felled for this purpose.

Garg’s organisation has been propagating ‘green cremation’ for the last three decades and has developed a cremation system that uses one-third of the wood that a typical cremation requires. In this system, the body is placed on a metal grate rather than directly on wood, as is the case with traditional cremation. This ensures that the circulation of oxygen is not blocked, and the combustion is efficient. The metal grate gets heated by the wood underneath it, which enables better air circulation around the flames. A chimney also traps much of the particle matter produced and releases clean emissions.

Not only does the system reduce tree felling but also decreases the number of pollutants that go into the air and water due to cremation, Garg said. Moreover, the system allows people to perform all the traditional rituals involved in a Hindu cremation, some of which might not be possible at electric or CNG- run crematoriums. Similarly, some students and alumni of the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi have been promoting a system that creates logs out of cow dung to replace wood in funeral pyres. These ‘green cremation systems’, got a fillip during the pandemic as relatives of the deceased seemed less resistant towards cremating bodies in alternative ways. However, the environmentalists feel that a long-term strategy needs to be chalked out to promote them better, starting with designating a group of people at the crematoriums to educate the people about the benefits of the green cremations.

Early this year, 50-year- old Govind Gopal, an environmental activist of the state went on a hunger strike to raise concerns about and demand accountability for the rampant felling of trees for cremations. He called for a green cremation facility at the local crematorium and the establishment of wood depos in crematoriums where it’s not available.

Source: Himalayan News Chronicle