A Pilgrimage Landscape and the Water That Runs Through It

The shrines of Uttarakhand sit in steep, seismically active, glacier-fed valleys, and the relationship between the pilgrimage and the physical landscape is not decorative.

In June 2013 several days of extreme rainfall and a glacial lake outburst sent water and debris through the Kedarnath valley at the height of the season. Thousands of people died, most of them pilgrims and the workers who serve them, whole settlements along the route were destroyed, and the temple itself survived largely because a large boulder came to rest immediately behind it and split the flow. The disaster prompted an argument about carrying capacity that has not been resolved: pilgrim numbers had grown enormously, the road and hotel building that made that growth possible had cut into unstable slopes, and the state depends economically on the traffic.

The rivers themselves carry religious status that has entered law. In 2017 the High Court of Uttarakhand declared the Ganges and the Yamuna to be legal persons with the rights of a minor, appointing officials as their guardians; the Supreme Court of India stayed the order shortly afterwards on practical grounds. The attempt is part of an international pattern of granting legal standing to rivers and mountains, and in this case the reasoning drew directly on the rivers' status as deities.