Each year at the end of the monsoon, Bihar’s iconic Chhath Puja unleashes an “ancient, decentralised force” of volunteers on the state’s riverbanks. In a new London School of Economics case study, Siddhant Sarang, a Delhi University alumnus and Diana Award-winning climate practitioner, documents how millions of villagers mobilise to clean neglected ponds and ghats during the four-day sun-worship festival. Instead of waiting for delayed government contracts or municipal tenders, communities simply roll up their sleeves: Sarang notes that people treat river restoration as a “collective, sacred obligation." Chhath grassroots movements achieve their goals through public support, which most expensive government initiatives fail to accomplish because Chhath supporters directly enter the water to perform cleaning work while Namami Gange, a multibillion-rupee mission, faces difficulties because of its complex bureaucratic processes.
Ritual Ethos and Community Ownership
The study emphasises that Chhath Puja’s religious ethos deeply reinforces environmental care. The festival’s Vedic roots hold the Sun as the “Soul of the Universe,” making sunlight and water sacred. Because Chhath has no priestly hierarchy, devotees forge a direct bond with nature, the river itself is treated as an “Open Temple”. Cleaning riverbanks is framed as a form of worship, the study explains that Chhath subverts the usual free‑rider logic through Shramdaan (voluntary labour). Men, women, and youth see clearing silt and garbage as a religious merit, not a chore. By owning the ritual personally, villagers gain a profound “radical ownership” over the ghats, social pressure to keep the site pure becomes far stronger than any official fine. According to the study, because the puja “belongs to the people rather than a formal institution,” communities enforce cleanliness norms themselves.
A defining feature of Chhath is its matriarchal core. Households are led by Vratins- mostly women devotees during the four-day fast, embodying ecofeminist values of nurturing nature. The study says that these women insist on biodegradable, locally-sourced offerings like bamboo baskets (supa) and seasonal fruits to replace plastics or ornamentation. This enforces a built‑in “circular economy” where nothing is discarded after worship but returned harmlessly to the earth. By centering ritual practice on community and reciprocity, Chhath turns the river into a domestic sacred space, a worship-and-preserve cycle that helps keep the waters clean in the first place.
The “Toxic Paradox”: Devotion Meets Pollution
The study also highlights a stark toxic paradox at Chhath, devotees bow to the Sun while standing in polluted water. In urban centers like Delhi, participants often offer prayers amid thick white foam and chemical sludge. Recent images of worshippers knee-deep in Yamuna River foam went viral, questioning the government and the citizens of the country. The study warns that ritual cleaning can only remove physical trash that “cannot filter out the heavy metals and untreated sewage” flowing year-round into the river. The case study cites data from Patna: despite nearly ₹3,900 crore invested in the Namami Gange mission, city sewage treatment remains underpowered. A PRS Legislative report found only about 52% of planned treatment capacity built by 2025, and many Bihar plants are still non-functional, letting raw waste pour into sacred waters. Sarang argues Chhath offers only a seasonal respite; it clears silt and waste during Puja but cannot fix the structural pollution from year-round industrial and sewage runoff.
The LSE analysis stresses that Chhath’s power has limits. During the festival, local volunteers manage crowds and divert garbage with an efficiency that official agencies struggle to match. But the study points out this is a high-intensity, low-frequency effort. Once the final offerings conclude, the “sacred urgency” fades and rivers revert to being dumping grounds. The study notes that Chhath’s egalitarian celebration is indeed the “environmentalism of the poor,” but it is confined to the Puja period. Even billions spent on infrastructure often lack the grassroots buy-in that Chhath generates effortlessly. Sarang demonstrates through his research that religion has the ability to organize large workforces, but it needs an active administrative system to function. The bridge between communal energy and long-term governance needs to be established for lasting change to occur.
Although rooted in Bihar, Chhath Puja’s lessons have global resonance. Sarang observes that the festival’s waters dissolve caste and class; even the Bihari diaspora maintains this portable ecology of gratitude in London, New Jersey, and beyond. Chhath, he argues, models what a “Green Faith” movement looks like, religion can coexist with environmentalism and indeed drive collective action. The key, Sarang suggests, is to transform seasonal ritual fervor into sustained policy. Global climate strategy, he writes, must treat communities “not as targets, but as partners in conservation." In his view, governments should partner with faith networks, which can mobilise large-scale participation and build the institutional reforms needed to turn sacred urgency into year-round ecological accountability.
This new case study by Siddhant Sarang, a Delhi University alumnus and Diana Award-winning climate practitioner, was published on LSE’s Religion and Global Society blog. It brings Bihar’s Chhath Puja into academic and policy discourse, illustrating how a local tradition can inform global conversations about society, faith, and sustainable development.
