A second sadhu fasting for the Ganga’s protection was on Friday night taken forcibly to AIIMS Rishikesh in a virtual rerun of the way Swami Gyan Swaroop Sanand was whisked away to the same hospital from the same Haridwar ashram on Wednesday.
Both Sanand and Sant Gopal Das had fasted for the same number of days: 111. Sanand, 86, died at the hospital on Thursday, prompting calls by fellow monks for a CBI probe to establish whether he had been deliberately left to die.
Das, 50, is being fed a liquid diet through the nose and is doing well, hospital sources said.
Sources at Haridwar’s Matri Sadan ashram, where Sanand had begun his fast on June 22, said Das lived at the same ashram and started his hunger strike on June 24. He, however, decided to roam across Uttarakhand to spread awareness about the environmental dangers faced by the Ganga and its basin.
The sources said that both Das and Sanand had the same demands: the stoppage of sand mining from the Ganga riverbed and banks and the cancellation of all hydel and dam projects on the river.
The state administration, under tremendous pressure following the death of Sanand, a former IIT Kanpur professor of environmental engineering and a well-known Ganga campaigner, picked up Das hours after he returned to Matri Sadan from his state-wide tour on Friday night. Ashram sources said he didn’t want to be taken to hospital but didn’t resist.
Sanand’s fellow monks --- including his spiritual guru, Swami Avimukteshwaranand of Varanasi, and the Matri Sadan head, Swami Shivanand --- have sought a probe into his death, which they have blamed on the BJP governments in the state and at the Centre.
Avimukteshwaranand has accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of ignoring six letters from Sanand and alleged that Ganga rejuvenation minister Nitin Gadkari had said the monk’s demands wouldn’t be met even if he died fasting.
Das had arrived at Matri Sadan accompanied by Rajendra Singh, a water conservationist, a day after Sanand’s death and sat down at the same spot where the former IIT professor had conducted his fast.
“I’m on a Ganga Sadbhavana Yatra --- a journey for a cleaner Ganga,” Das, a native of Gohana in Haryana’s Sonipat district who renounced the worldly life three decades ago, told reporters. “The government is planning to confine me in a hospital and pressuring me to break my fast.”
“Gopal Das was suffering from dysentery and needed immediate medical attention,” a police source said. “There were two AIIMS doctors with us when we met him at Matri Sadan and suggested hospital admission.”
Swami Shivanand said: “Let’s see whether the state and central governments dump him or take a lesson from Sanand’s death.”
Many social organisations in Uttarakhand held protests in Dehradun, Srinagar, Haridwar, Tehri and Rishikesh against Sanand’s death, chanting slogans against the central and state governments and burning effigies of chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat.
Rawat issued a public appeal, saying: “We all want a clean Ganga and are working towards this. We want people to have patience.”
Bhopal Singh Chaudhary of the Uttarakhand Kisan Manch, a farmers’ body, said: “Sanand was fine at Matri Sadan but died at the AIIMS. We want to know what happened to him in the hospital.”
Geeta Devi of the Uttarakhand Samvaidhanik Sanrakshan Manch, a human rights organisation, said: “The Centre is spending crores on the preservation of the Ganga but the river is turning from bad to worse. The government is treating the Ganga activists as enemies of the state.”
Swami Nigamanand, another sadhu from Matri Sadan, was the first monk to fast to death demanding a cleaner Ganga. He died on June 13, 2011, on the 114th day of his fast. Sanand, born G.D. Agrawal, had turned a monk only 10 days earlier.
