Thaindian News

New York, Apr. 22 (ANI): As the Hindu population has grown in Queens, New York, over the last decade, so too has the amount of ritual debris - clothing, statues, even cremation ashes - lining the banks of Jamaica Bay near Cross Bay Boulevard.

“We call it the Ganges. She takes away your sickness, your pain, your suffering,” the New York Times quoted one pilgrim, Madan Padarat, as saying as he finished his prayers.

However, park rangers who patrol the beach, see the offerings on the banks of Jamaica Bay as trash. They say that the federal preserve must be kept clean for picnickers, fishermen and kayakers.

Unlike the Ganges, they say, the enclosed bay does not sweep the refuse away.

The result is a standoff between two camps that regard the site as sacrosanct for very different reasons, and have spent years in a quiet tug of war between ancient traditions and modern regulations. Strenuous diplomacy on both sides has helped, but only to a point.

“I can’t stop the people and say, ‘You can’t come to the water and make offerings,’ ” said Pandit Chunelall Narine, the priest at a thriving Ozone Park temple, Shri Trimurti Bhavan, who sometimes performs services by the bay.

He adds: “We are at a dead end right now.”On Friday, Earth Day, prominent Hindu leaders plan to join park rangers in a cleanup of the beach, close to Kennedy International Airport, as part of a longstanding “leave no trace” campaign.

Park officials, wary of dictating matters of faith, have reached out to Hindu temples, gently encouraging members to pray at the waters but to leave nothing there for the gods.

And many Hindus have obliged.

But as new immigrants arrive, unaware of the rules, and others refuse to change their ways, park rangers have intermittently forsaken good-cop sensitivity for bad-cop force: installing signs, closing the parking lot at night and threatening to hand out 75 dollar fines, but to little avail.

Most Hindus who visit the beach are immigrants from the Caribbean islands and Guyana who have settled in the Richmond Hill area of Queens. They are largely descendants of Indian workers sent to the Caribbean in the 19th century.(ANI)