NEW YORK -- On an overcast morning this month, a dozen or so Hindus -- children and adults -- gathered in a circle on the shore of Jamaica Bay and bowed their heads in prayer as a priest invoked the deities.
The location they had chosen, next to Cross Bay Boulevard in southern Queens, has for years been a popular site for New York's Hindus to conduct rituals that involve the casting of religious offerings into the water, including food, statuary and fabric. Many of the items later wash ashore as flotsam.
But on this particular morning, the group was seeking divine inspiration for a countervailing reason: to clean up the debris left by their fellow Hindus.
"This beach, this water, is our mother," said the priest, Arjunen Armogan, who leads a temple in Jamaica, Queens. "We're supposed to keep it clean, just as we look after our mother."
The effort was part of a campaign by Sadhana, a 4-year-old Hindu group based in New York, to spread environmental awareness and best practices among fellow believers.
For the past two years, members of the group and other volunteers have gathered once a month at the south end of the Joseph P. Addabbo Memorial Bridge, which links Howard Beach and Broad Channel, to clean the beaches lining Cross Bay Boulevard, popular places for Hindus to perform the rituals. The group's leaders have also visited Hindu temples to speak with priests and their congregations about adapting ancient traditions to modern environmental regulations.
The effort has challenged cultural conventions and caused friction within the Hindu population. But officials with the National Park Service, which manages the bay as part of Gateway National Recreation Area, said the project had contributed to a significant reduction in the amount of debris left by Hindus in the past couple of years.
"In New York, I've seen it go from something that is taboo to something that is acknowledged and talked about," said Sunita Viswanath, a founder of Sadhana, who was recognized by the White House this year as a Champion of Change for her faith-based environmental work. "It gives me so much hope."
Sadhana is seeking to strengthen the liberal voice in the Hindu population and become a flag-bearer for social justice and social action. Its leaders have spoken out in favor of gay marriage and against homophobia and Islamophobia, among other issues. And they have taken a particularly strong stance against the caste system.
"We want to stand for human rights and justice for all," Viswanath said. "If the rights of Hindus have been violated, we will stand in protest of that violation. If Hindus perpetrate an atrocity, we will stand against that."
Their efforts have met some resistance, the group's leaders say -- for example, with the green puja campaign, called Project Prithvi.
"It's hard to tell someone not to do something they've been doing for decades," said Aminta Kilawan, a Sadhana founder who serves as a legislative analyst for the New York City Council.
The group has focused its environmental lobbying on the temples of the Indo-Caribbean population, which has a large presence in Queens, especially Richmond Hill and Ozone Park, just north of Jamaica Bay.
At the heart of the matter is the practice known as puja, in which Hindus make offerings to the gods to commemorate births, deaths, marriages and other key events.
In India, the Ganges River is the most important site for such rituals. But in New York, Hindus have made do with other bodies of water, especially Jamaica Bay.
Parks officials tried for years to make a dent in the litter problem by doing outreach among the Hindu population, visiting temples and speaking at Hindu events.
Their campaign received a significant lift with the cooperation of Sadhana's members, who brought to the effort the advantage of being Hindu themselves.
While the problem is still chronic -- the group's last cleanup of the year, on Nov. 7, netted 40 bags of trash in three hours, with ritual debris still littering the shoreline -- parks officials say they have seen a measurable reduction in the amount of waste left behind by worshipers.
"People are getting the message and I think it's making a big change," said Keith White, Gateway's coordinator of volunteers. "The message comes across a lot better when it comes from within their own community."
Daniel M. Hendrick, who has written a book about Jamaica Bay and is finishing a documentary on the same subject, said Sadhana had "transformed" the relationship between the Parks Service and the Hindu population, making it "less us-versus-them."
"They're changing the minds from inside," Hendrick said.
Sadhana's members have sought to show how religious practice can be compatible with environmental awareness, and have insisted that while the submersion of objects in water is important, worshipers need not leave them there.
The basic message: Leave no trace.
"Use saris and fabrics as needed in your puja, but take them home with you," guidelines distributed by the group say. "Wash and press them, and give them to a needy or elderly person who could use them."
Cindy Ramotar, a Guyanese immigrant, said, "You are trying to do the ritual but you're also trying to keep the earth pollution-free."
She had come to the beach one Saturday morning several months ago with her parents, her son and other family members for an annual puja ceremony.
As Sadhana members and other volunteers combed the beach for trash -- they would soon fill scores of extra-large trash bags -- Ramotar and her relatives prepared their ritual.
On a white sheet, they laid out nine foam plates piled with fruit, flowers and candy. Ramotar and her mother, Seeta Venkatasami, folded the entire load on itself like a burrito and then, hiking up their skirts with a free hand, waded into the water up to their knees.
They dunked the bundle into the water, hauled it back to the beach, dumped it into a garbage bag and took it to their car.
Ramotar said that until about two years ago, the family would have left everything in the water.
Asked whether any one person in the family had pressed for the change, she responded, "As a family, we all thought about it at the same time, that it was a wise thing to do."
But when her father turned away, she lowered her voice and whispered, "It's always the younger generation that makes the change."
"God will protect you no matter what," she continued.
"But if you get a fine from the city," she said, shrugging, "what are you going to do?"
Religion on 11/21/2015