India's plastic problem: No easy fix for trash mountains that provide profit and pain

Story by Salimah Shivji • Today

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As he wound his way through the alleys that curve around the massive garbage dump, Rajesh Prajapati pointed out the ways in which countless waste pickers get through to the sprawling, imposing mountain on the edge of the slum that colours their entire way of life.

"It looks like a mountain," the local doctor said. "But it's not a proper mountain, it's a waste mountain, which is made up of plastic bags and papers and lots of waste from all of Mumbai."

The mountain is a source of misery for residents of the area because of the numerous health hazards associated with breathing in fumes wafting from decomposing waste, but it's also a major source of income.

Jahana Shaikh, 45, and two of her teenaged children, Reshma, 13, and Sohail, 12, are part of a group of waste pickers sorting through the mounds of plastics and other scraps of wire and metal rummaged from the mountain, which they will later try to sell.


Jahana Shaikh, middle, pictured with two of her children, 13-year-old Reshma, left, and Sohail, 12, live steps from the Deonar waste mountain and spend their days going back and forth. If they skip one day of picking for plastics, they starve that day.© Salimah Shivji/CBC

"How much we make depends on what we have gathered. But it's just barely enough to get by," she told CBC News in Hindi. "If we don't go to the landfill for one day, there will definitely be no food at home that day."

Deonar, located in east Mumbai, is one of the largest and oldest landfills in India — entrenched for nearly a century. It's not just one single mountain but eight different massive mounds, amalgamated.

The landfill's dimensions are unfathomable for those unfamiliar with it: some 18 storeys high, with more than 16 million tonnes of garbage, spreading over 121 hectares — roughly the size of 227 football fields.

The colossal dump is walled off, with barbed wire topping the perimeter, since public access is prohibited, but people get in anyway, darting through countless tunnels and holes in the concrete wall.



The Deonar landfill, and its 16 million tonnes of waste, is walled off to restrict access, but those living in homes nearby duck in through holes in the wall or tunnels, to pick through the garbage looking for plastics and other materials to sell.© Salimah Shivji/CBC

Dr. Prajapati, a medical doctor who works near Deonar, stood watching three men whip through a co-ordinated sorting process of recyclable materials just outside one of the tunnels, as he spoke to CBC.

The pickers will sell them later to small businesses that compile the waste, the doctor explained, after which what's salvaged is transferred to local scrapyards and other outlets. It's a whole ecosystem that supports the livelihoods of some 100,000 people at the Deonar waste mountain alone. But it comes at a cost.

"All the plastic waste, without any gloves, without any masks," Prajapati, 35, pointed out, dejectedly. "Of course it's going to affect your lungs. But to earn their bread and butter, they're doing it."



Rizwan, 11, has never attended school. He has only ever scrounged for plastics and scrap metal at Mumbai's Deonar garbage mountain, to sell to help his single mother support the family.© Salimah Shivji/CBC

Festering waste releases toxic fumes

In his five years assigned to the neighbourhood near the Deonar dump, Prajapati has seen an alarming number of cases of tuberculosis and other respiratory ailments, often in the late stages because residents assume their chronic cough or wheezing is nothing to worry about.

"We can smell the fumes, always, we also can't breathe properly because of [it]," he said, when asked to describe life in Deonar, with plastic everywhere.

The decomposing waste releases noxious gases such as methane, hydrogen sulphide and carbon monoxide.

Jahana Shaikh and her family know the hazards first-hand, working on the front lines of the informal garbage economy. Three of her six children died suddenly, she said, including her eldest daughter of tuberculosis four years ago, at 16. Shaikh's five-month-old boy died of pneumonia, while another baby girl died of unknown causes.

Jahana blames their deaths on the filth they live beside and breathe in.

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She tries to avoid sending her remaining children onto the actual waste mountain to scrounge for treasures, preferring that they sort and sell the plastics instead, but still, there's not much choice when they live steps from a giant landfill.

"What other work can we do?" Shaikh said quietly, with a sigh.


Jahana Shaikh lost three of her six children to sudden illnesses, one of them to tuberculosis-related complications. 'I miss them a lot,' she told CBC News, blaming the filth that they sort through to find plastics to sell, with no other options to eke out a living.© Salimah Shivji/CBC
'An everyday danger'

Rates of tuberculosis and other diseases are far higher in the area, made worse by cramped housing, according to experts in waste management and planning.

"You are living with waste as an everyday thing, it's an everyday danger," Amita Bhide, professor with the Centre for Urban Policy and Governance, at the Mumbai-based Tata Institute of Social Sciences.

"This is the ward [which has] the highest proportion of tuberculosis and multidrug-resistant tuberculosis at that. The proportion of urinary tract infections is very high amongst women. There are several skin diseases that you can see," Bhide added.



Rates of tuberculosis are higher in the Deonar area, attributed to the toxic fumes that emanate from the decomposing waste mountain that's been expanding for nearly a century.© Salimah Shivji/CBC

The professor noted that there is also recent evidence of an increase in respiratory disorders near Deonar, after a bio-medical waste incinerator was installed in the area.

While the scale of Mumbai's infamous dump site sets it slightly apart, similar health problems plague the neighbourhoods surrounding all of the country's trash mountains.

According to a 2020 report compiled by the Delhi-based think tank Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), India had 3,159 waste mountains which stored about 800 million tonnes of trash.

A newly-released update this year concluded that of the country's 3,184 garbage mountains, 234 have been reclaimed and cleared. Another eight are classified as scientific landfills, meaning no further waste is dumped and leakage or emissions are checked by accredited labs to make sure the space doesn't become toxic.



Dr. Rajesh Prajapati is diagnosing more and more cases of tuberculosis and other respiratory diseases in the Deonar area, often, he said, with patients not realizing that the fumes they inhale from living so close to a massive garbage mountain are making them deathly ill.© Salimah Shivji/CBC News

The hundreds of remaining landfills continue to fester, periodically catching fire and burning for days. The fires are often caused by the combustible gases emanating from the decomposing garbage, which, once ignited, releases even more fumes into the air.

The most recent example was in the southern Indian city of Kochi, in Kerala in early March. Toxic fumes spewed into the air for around two weeks as the fire smoldered, blanketing the city in a thick haze and forcing school closures and N95 mask-wearing advisories.

Successive governments have tried to tackle the problem of waste management, including India's current prime minister. Narendra Modi, who released a sweeping cleanliness plan in Oct 2021 that included a promise that "the garbage mountains in cities will be processed and eliminated completely". The idea is to turn them into waste treatment plants.

A goal that is beyond complex for many experts, who are skeptical.



Smoke billows during an ongoing fire at the Bhalswa landfill in New Delhi in June 2022. Fires commonly break out at some of India's more than 3,000 waste mountains, and they can be triggered by combustible gases from the decomposing waste.© Prakash Singh/AFP via Getty Images

Bhide called it a "very important statement" that demonstrated "a political will to create some change" while also softly scoffing at the thought that decades of legacy waste could be wiped out so easily.

"We move slowly," the professor said, comparing change in a country like India to "moving a mammoth elephant [with] multiple parts which are not necessarily moving in harmony with each other".

Not a single Indian city has been successful in implementing all of the requirements laid out in a set of solid waste management rules implemented more than 20 years ago in 2002, she said.

Deonar is also the focus of a court case that has dragged on for 27 years, aiming to shut down the landfill.



A waste picker sorts through the mounds of plastics and other scraps of wire and metal rummaged from Mumbai's Deonar waste mountain, one of the largest in India, which he will later try to sell. Rates of respiratory illnesses are higher in the area because of the toxic fumes from decomposing waste.© Salimah Shivji/CBC

"The orders for closure of the Deonar dumping ground have been given more than 10 years ago and there is still no success," said Bhide.

And so, more waste keeps getting dropped off at the Mumbai landfill, and people like Shaikh and her family members climb through gaps in the wall every day to get to the garbage on the mountain.

It's the only option, Shaikh said.

"Otherwise we go hungry."



Piles of plastic are seen everywhere in the cramped neighbourhoods hugging Mumbai's sprawling Deonar landfill, considered to be one of the largest and oldest in India.© Salimah Shivji/CBC

Israel’s Reform rabbi and legislator on judicial overhaul: ‘It doesn’t look good.’

Gilad Kariv, who serves on the Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, said he wants American Jews to help protect Israel’s democracy.

Israelis protest against plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government to overhaul the Israeli judicial system, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Saturday, March 18, 2023. (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)

March 20, 2023

By 

Yonat Shimron

(RNS) — Gilad Kariv serves in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, as a member of the opposition Labor Party.

He is also Israel’s first and only Reform rabbi serving as a legislator.

In this, he charts a pioneering path. A native of Israel who grew up in a secular Jewish home in Tel Aviv, Kariv embraced the Reform Jewish movement, which, when he was growing up — he is 49 — accounted for a sliver of Israeli Jews. (Israel’s polarized religious landscape is broadly made up of secular and Orthodox Jews.)

Kariv has advocated for greater religious pluralism in Israel and has worked to expand the Reform movement’s presence. It now has 54 congregations. (There are about 850 congregations in North America.)

He is also a lawyer and serves on the Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee. That makes him privy to the negotiations over the right-wing coalition’s efforts to enact legislation that would sharply curtail the Supreme Court’s powers.

The proposed judicial overhaul has drawn massive opposition protests by Israelis who say it will destroy the country’s democratic foundations. The judicial overhaul has also tested relations with American Jews who, with some exceptions, have embraced Israel uncritically.

RNS spoke with Kariv, who returned to Israel on Sunday (March 19), about the portentous changes ahead in Israel and how he thinks American Jews ought to respond.

Knesset member Rabbi Gilad Kariv meets with the Finance Committee on May 3, 2021. Photo by Dani Shem-Tov, Knesset Spokesperson’s Office

The interview was edited for length and clarity.

You’re negotiating a compromise to the judicial overhaul bill. How’s that going?

I’m a member of the committee that deals with most of the legislation on the table. We are deeply frustrated with the way the government is pushing this legislation forward. We don’t identify a real desire to reach a compromise. The government and coalition are not responding positively — even to the suggestions of the president, Isaac Herzog. As long as the government insists on (passing) this legislation in a few weeks, we are mainly committed to battling this bad legislation.

How soon do you expect the Knesset will pass the legislation?

The government’s plan is quite clear. They want to complete the legislation around the nomination process of judges and around the constitutional authorities of the Supreme Court by the end of the winter session, which ends before Passover (April 5). We are deeply worried about future (legislation), too. We are placing a lot of pressure on the coalition and the government to at least wait until the next session that starts in May. The fact that they’re not willing to do this — to enable the Israeli society and political system to see if we can build a wider consensus — this, for us, is the main signal that they’re not serious when they talk about reaching a compromise. You can’t reach a compromise around such fundamental constitutional issues in two and a half weeks.

What do Knesset members think of the protests?

Israel has experienced significant waves of civil protests before. It’s a sign of democratic health. But the current protests are the largest we’ve ever experienced, and they’re totally decentralized. They are not led by the opposition parties. Politicians are not speaking from the main stage. The unions aren’t leading the demonstrations. There’s no specific group of NGOs. It’s a massive grassroots movement that brings Israelis to the streets.

We see young people, veterans, the former leaders and commanders of Israel’s security agencies: the Israel Defense Forces, the Mossad. They’re all there, saying this judiciary reform will harm Israel. You have leaders of the high tech industry talking about Israel’s economy. The CEOs of all the Israeli banks, the universities. You see a very deep understanding that this is a dramatic moment. Some of the more moderate right-wing politicians; some of the local mayors that come from the Likkud, they get it. They understand it’s not an ordinary civil protest.

Protesters carry a large copy of the Israeli Declaration of Independence during a protest Feb. 20, 2023, near the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Demonstrators oppose plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government to overhaul the judicial system. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Unfortunately, most of them are not brave enough to say, ‘We need to slow down this process.’ The majority of the right-wing politicians are doing whatever they can to delegitimize the protests and to present those hundreds and thousands of citizens as people who don’t respect the outcome of the last elections, as people trying to undermine Israel’s national security, or as anarchists.

Is there any chance this government could fall?

I tend to believe it is very difficult for an Israeli government to face such a massive civil protest. It doesn’t mean this government will fall in a few weeks or months. They have the necessary political energy to keep going. But it is becoming clear the government will not be able to push all its policies forward because internal pressures are growing dramatically. Israel also has real risks to its national security. To face those security challenges, you can’t allow yourself such social and political frustrations.

If they continue with their extreme policies, it will be extremely difficult to overcome the protests. Foreign governments, including the American administration, are also disturbed. They understand there is a link between judicial reform and the desire among some elements in the coalition to create de-facto annexation in the West Bank or change the policies of the government toward the Palestinian Authority.

You’re the first and only Reform rabbi in the Knesset. What do people think of you?

There is a huge political debate in Israel between the non-Orthodox denominations and the Orthodox establishment that enjoys public funding and governmental authority in marriage and divorce. They identify me as someone who is trying to change the nature of synagogue and state relations in Israel. They see me, correctly, as someone who is struggling with deep, real, profound change in Israel’s attitudes toward non-Orthodox denominations.

The reason millions of Israeli Jews want nothing to do with Judaism is because they identify Judaism with the corrupt and aggressive Orthodox monopoly. At the same time, growing circles of Israelis understand the deep connection between Israeli Judaism and Israeli democracy. People understand there is a reason why the Orthodox parties in Israel fully back this judicial reform and why they’re deeply interested in weakening the constitutional authority of the Supreme Court. They want to make sure Israeli democracy is limited when it comes to freedom of religion. They don’t want Israeli Judaism to be diverse and pluralistic.

Knesset member Rabbi Gilad Kariv on July 1, 2021. Photo by Noam Moshkowitz, Knesset Spokesperson’s Office

Reform Judaism, which is dominant in the U.S., is still very small in Israel. How did you become a Reform Jew?

Reform and Conservative Judaism didn’t play major roles in building the state of Israel or of maintaining and cultivating it. Yet there are important exceptions. The Hebrew University was established by a Reform Rabbi (Judah Leon Magnes). The women of Hadassah, who established the foundations of Israel’s welfare system, were Conservative Jews. Yet, I agree: Reform Judaism was a marginal player in the religious landscape in Israel.

Zionism is not a religious movement. But it is a cultural movement in addition to being a national and political movement. It revived the Hebrew language and the Jewish calendar and restored the Jewish holidays’ agricultural and land-based character.

My grandparents grew up in Orthodox families. They all left the Orthodox lifestyle and adopted a secular lifestyle. But they were deeply involved in the national enterprise of building a nation. They didn’t need a synagogue experience. They had a very rich Jewish life without worship, without spiritual Jewish experiences. For my generation, it’s becoming clear that unless we invest in our Jewish identity — unless we revive different elements of Judaism that were less relevant to the founding generations — it will be very difficult to maintain a rich and fulfilling Jewish identity.

As a teenager I wanted something more. My Judaism was deep, but with no spiritual expression. This is a development of the last two or three decades. There is a growing native Israeli audience that is interested in an egalitarian, inclusive, open-minded, pluralistic, spiritual and communal Jewish experience. They’re not willing to give up their liberal values when they celebrate their Judaism.

A new Gallup poll shows that U.S. Democrats sympathize more with Palestinians than with Israel. How do you respond to that?

I strongly believe the future of the state of Israel as Jewish and democratic depends on our ability to find a solution to this terrible national and religious conflict.

I want American Jews to help us reach a political solution to this conflict. Having said that, we have a big challenge. The most important insurance policy we have to cultivate the sympathy of Americans toward Israel is the concept of shared values. Israel must insist on keeping itself as part of the democratic liberal world.

There aren’t any easy calls in regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We need to cultivate our commitment to promote a political solution. The future of Israel relies not only on its ability to guard itself from its enemies but on the democratic wellbeing of our state. If you love Israel you must help us guard its democratic nature.

I’m calling on American rabbis to use the pulpit. American legislators, too, can tell their friends, ‘It doesn’t look good.’ That’s what you do when you love someone and you feel they’re taking the wrong direction. It’s an expression of love, not detachment. It’s a critical moment. We expect our brothers and sisters in North America to help protect Israel’s democracy.

CHRISTIAN CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Princeton Theological Seminary students, alumni seek ouster of trustee chair

‘The seminary needs a deeper reckoning,’ they wrote, ‘with its current relationship to and investment in modern systems of enslavement.’

Princeton Theological Seminary logo, left, and board of trustees member Michael Fisch. Courtesy images

March 21, 2023

By 

Adelle M. Banks

(RNS) — Princeton Theological Seminary students and alumni have called on the educational institution’s leaders to oust the chair of its trustee board because of his ties to a company that charges high fees for inmates to communicate with people outside prison walls.

“We, the undersigned students and alumni of Princeton Theological Seminary, demand the immediate removal of Michael Fisch from the Board of Trustees, as well as the adoption of deliberate and transparent policies on appointing and maintaining board members who reflect the anti-slavery theological commitments of the seminary,” reads their letter to President Jonathan Lee Walton and the board of trustees.

The March 14 letter was released by Worth Rises, an organization focused on “dismantling the prison industry,” and included more than 300 signatures.

Fisch is a founder of American Securities, a private equity company that owns ViaPath, a large prison telecommunications company. Such companies, the letter writers say, “charge as much as $15 per 15-minute phone call, essentially monopolizing commissions extracted from impoverished families and captive consumers.”

A spokesperson for American Securities, which also owns household appliance companies, declined to comment when asked for a response from the company or from Fisch, a managing director of its investment team.

Princeton Theological Seminary declined to comment on American Securities but provided a statement from Walton, who became the seminary’s first Black president on Jan. 1.

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RELATED: Scholar and preacher Jonathan Lee Walton named next president of Princeton Seminary

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“I recognize the complicated web of injustice we face in our society and believe that Princeton Theological Seminary can and should be a leader in addressing injustice in all its forms. As an institution, we must continue to strive for greater transparency and ethical responsibility including shared governance,” he stated.

“As I continue to embrace my new role as President, I look forward to ongoing engagement with the Seminary community across various issues with deeper reflection and action.”

The Rev. Jonathan Lee Walton. Photo courtesy of Princeton Seminary

On its website, ViaPath describes its mission as “to help break the cycle of incarceration through transformative technology and services for incarcerated individuals, their support network, correctional agencies, and returning citizens.”

Princeton alumni and students — including some who have worked with imprisoned people and their families as chaplains, counselors and social workers — say the company gains profits more than it improves connections for people in prison.

One of the signatories, the Rev. Erich Kussman, spent a dozen years incarcerated before gaining his M.Div. from the seminary in 2019.

“The Seminary’s involvement in the carceral state is antithetical to its mission and antithetical to the Gospel of Jesus, which liberates the marginalized and oppressed,” he said in a statement.

“How can it now claim to engage in a system that is out of step with the world, racially biased, and diverts resources from effective public safety investments? It can and must do better. The removal of Michael Fisch is a necessary first step.”

Added Bianca Tylek, executive director of Worth Rises: “We should not elevate and celebrate people who build their wealth preying on the most vulnerable in our society with prestigious positions that require moral integrity.”

The signatories affirmed the seminary’s 2016 decision to analyze its historic links to slavery and welcomed the removal of the name of anti-abolitionist and slaveholder Samuel Miller from the school’s chapel.

They said they considered their request about Fisch as another step toward accountability, echoing previous requests by on-campus organizations of seminarians and other students who have sought greater transparency about the school’s endowment.

“The seminary needs a deeper reckoning,” they wrote, “with its current relationship to and investment in modern systems of enslavement, dispossession, displacement, environmental degradation, and violence, in local and global contexts.”

CHRISTIAN CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Bitter infighting threatens Kenya’s Methodist Church

At the center of a controversy that has been unfolding since 2015 is Presiding Bishop Joseph Ntombura.

One of the closed campuses of Kenya Methodist University, Thursday, March 16, 2023, in the Nairobi city center. Photo by Fredrick Nzwili

March 20, 2023

By 

Fredrick Nzwili

NAIROBI, Kenya (RNS) — Disagreements within the Methodist Church in Kenya are threatening to tear apart the denomination, with some senior clergy seeking to form independent regional conferences.

At the center of a controversy that has been unfolding since 2015 is Presiding Bishop Joseph Ntombura. The church’s senior clergy accuse the leader of mishandling the church’s funds and investments, including church-owned operations, such as hospitals, a resort, a national university and various office buildings.

“He (Ntombura) has displayed total incompetence as a leader. The church has gone down to zero after he took over in 2013. We have institutions of high status,” former Bishop Paul Matumbi Muthuri told RNS in a telephone interview on March 14. “He has run down all these institutions.”

The Methodist Church in Kenya, established in 1862 by the British Methodist Church and made autonomous in 1967, has had a fairly stable history in the country until 2015 when, two years into his term, Ntombura changed the church’s constitution and established new rules.

“He established new rules that are strange to our tradition. So from 2015, the people have had bad leadership all along and they have been in court,” said Muthuri, who was fired as bishop by Ntombura.

Misheck Kobia Michubu, the steward of the Kawangware Circuit in Nairobi, told RNS the church and its institutions are in a precarious place.

“It is like we have lost direction. It is like the church is breaking into pieces,” said Michubu. “Every time the church members want to discuss these matters, (Ntombura) gets a court order.”

Presiding Bishop Joseph Ntombura speaks at a Kenya Methodist University event. Photo via social media

He pointed to the Kenya Methodist University as an example. During Ntombura’s tenure as presiding bishop, which also includes the role of university chancellor, the student population of the school has declined from 13,000 to less than 3,000, and five campuses have closed, according to Michubu.

“We have seen some items being auctioned. We hear there is a huge debt. We also hear the same regarding the church hospital in Maua (a town in Meru County). The problem has been a massive interference in the running of the institutions by the presiding bishop,” said Michubu.

He also registered concern about missions established by the Kenyan church in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan, which had been running well, according to Michubu, but the current status of them is uncertain.

“They may be running, but very dismally,” he said.

Muthuri accuses Ntombura of defrocking more than 100 clerics, selling church properties and using the remaining ones as security to acquire loans.

Michubu agrees the clergy have borne the brunt of Ntombura’s administration, since those who dissent are not “stationed” or are moved from one station to another, some to as many as five in one month.

“He has been using stationing as a tool to punish those who don’t agree with him,” said the official.

Ntombura has not responded to telephone calls and RNS’ requests for comment, but in January he told Kenya’s Nation Newspaper that he is fighting corruption and that rogue clergy are attempting to block his efforts.

The Methodist Church in Kenya logo. Courtesy image

“The process of cleaning up the church affiliated institutions and restoring the dignity of the church, I have encountered a battalion of enemies. Corruption is fighting back,” he told the Nation on Jan. 19.

The bishop said he took over a church that had no money for mission work and was relying on loans to pay office rent. He also complained the official residence of the presiding bishop had no furniture when he moved in.

He said the church university was in a financial crisis and was borrowing money, while its official books showed a surplus. A forensic audit showed the institution was running on fake financial books, had unpaid statutory dues, loans and credits, according to Ntombura.

“We had to move with speed to restructure the loans and fix the management and save the university from the auctioneer’s hammer,” he told the daily.

Clerics and lay leaders say as a consequence of the infighting, the church’s membership has declined across the country, with people migrating to other churches. Some churches have been cutting links with Ntombura’s leadership, beginning with those in the coastal region, which formed a conference in 2019. In 2020, the Mt. Kenya region conference was established, and another in Nairobi is taking shape. These are partly autonomous and led by their own presidents.

“We are not splitting, but it is the same church which is decentralizing through regional conferences. We have had one conference in Nairobi, under one man or woman, but we feel the church has outgrown its establishment, and we cannot afford to have one center of power,” said Muthuri.

Ukraine’s Hare Krishnas survive war by Zoom and serving neighbors

Many of the estimated 15,000 Hare Krishnas who call Ukraine home have continued their daily practice and serve their neighbors, even as several temples have been damaged or destroyed and their communities scattered.

Ukranians take refuge in the basement of the Hare Krishna temple in Kyiv, Ukraine, during the current war with Russia. A variety of Hare Krishna temples across Ukraine use basements as bomb shelters. Photo courtesy of Acyuta Priya

March 20, 2023

By 

Tori Luecking

(RNS) — With no time even to wash her clothes as the Russians approached Mariupol a year ago, in southern Ukraine, Kalakeli Devi Dasi fled her native city with only a small suitcase filled with her dirty laundry. She also took with her a letter she was unable to deliver to her mother before Kalakeli and her friends joined a large convoy of cars heading southwest to the city of Berdyansk.

“It was very scary and we did not know what to expect,” said Kalakeli of the escape. “We saw much destruction. I saw burnt and torn bodies. It was a terrible and frightening sight. … We kept chanting the holy names of the Lord the whole way.”

Kalakeli is one of an estimated 15,000 Hare Krishnas who call Ukraine home, many of whom have continued their daily practice and serve their neighbors, even as several of their roughly 30 ISKCON temples have been damaged or destroyed and their communities scattered.

The Hare Krishna movement, whose formal name is the International Society of Krishna Consciousness, or ISKCON, has been active in Eastern Europe since 1971, when ISKCON’s founder, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, traveled to the Soviet Union in the company of Shyamsundar Das, a close friend of Beatle George Harrison.

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Hare Krishna founder A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada in Germany in June 1974. Photo by Christian Jansen/Wikipedia/Creative Commons

Prabhupada arrived in New York in 1965 from Calcutta to spread in the West faith in the Hindu deity Lord Krishna. Related to the nearly 500-year-old Krishna consciousness movement in India, ISKCON is a monotheistic tradition within Hinduism whose main spiritual text is the Bhagavad Gita. Its adherents practice vegetarianism and meditation, Bhakti yoga and public chanting of Krishna’s names, and in the U.S. it is best known for its groups of saffron-clad devotees chanting mantras in public spaces or passing out literature on the street.

Having planted the seeds of ISKCON in the U.S., Prabhupada went to the Soviet Union in 1971 to teach the faith. From there, the theology spread underground by word of mouth, despite the Communist Party’s anti-religious agenda, eventually finding its way to Ukraine.

Other Hare Krishnas from abroad followed Prabhupada to continue to nurture the movement in the former Soviet Union. One of them, Niranjana Swami, a convert to ISKCON from Massachusetts, entered the U.S.S.R. under the guise of a tourist in the late 1980s but broke away from his tour at night to lecture in small, packed apartments, teaching as many as 100 people on an evening.

“I felt these people were so sincerely looking for God, because it had been suppressed in their lives for so long by the regime, that I felt the regime actually did much to expand God consciousness,” said Niranjana Swami. “Anything beyond the party line was, to them, seen as a potential message from the divine.” 

He was in Russia when the Soviet Union collapsed. “I happened to be in Moscow when Yeltsin was standing on the tanks around the parliament building.”

Niranjana Swami. Photo courtesy of Niranjana Swami and Amritamani Devi Dasi

Now 70 and a governing body commissioner for ISKCON, Niranjana Swami oversees communities in Moldova, Belarus, Lithuania and Ukraine, traveling widely and visiting Ukraine when he can. 

When the war broke out in Ukraine in 2022, local devotees turned to Niranjana Swami for support and guidance, and he began lecturing via Zoom. His collection of lectures about the war were recently compiled and published in a book titled, “Krishna Protects His Devotees.”

Niranjana Swami also helped mobilize the worldwide ISKCON community to raise thousands of dollars for those suffering from the effects of the war. Share Your Care, based in Kyiv, aims to help Hare Krishnas and their families relocate from conflict zones, supplement their loss of income and distribute food. Since the war began, an estimated 2 million plates of food have been distributed by ISKCON to Ukrainians in need.

The war has claimed the lives of at least five Hare Krishna devotees, and devastation in Kramatorsk and Bakhmut has cost the local communities its temples. In the face of this violence, deities have been relocated while larger temple rooms have been closed and their basements converted into bomb shelters. 

The Hare Krishna temple in Kyiv, Ukraine, before the current war with Russia. Photo courtesy of Acyuta Priya

Temple services and programs have resumed in cities in safer locales, while on the streets of Kyiv and other cities west of there, public chanting and book distribution have also resumed.

Much of this activity is overseen by Acyuta Priya, ISKCON’s zonal supervisor for Ukraine. Born to a staunchly Communist family when Ukraine was still a Soviet state, he joined the underground movement in 1980. “Of course I hated the Communist regime, because it wasn’t allowing me to dedicate my life to God,” he said.

The war has ended his normally itinerant existence; he is currently staying in a contact’s basement sauna in Chernivtsi, though he travels to various cities when possible. According to Acyuta Priya, 71 of the nearly 100 Hare Krishna community groups are still operating, serving Hare Krishnas and their neighbors. He said they continue to see new people joining the movement.

The Hare Krishna temple in Kyiv, Ukraine. Photo courtesy of Acyuta Priya

“People just come, they want to help and they have this volunteer spirit,” said Acyuta Priya. “I will tell you honestly, I am native Ukrainian, here from my birth, and I have never seen people be so united. It was unexpected for me.”

He attributes the Hare Krishnas’ resilience to their faith. “You have to understand that the Lord controls everything, and we need to see this war as an opportunity to raise up and to grow, and to grow mostly by giving and not just be in survival mode… There is a need to dedicate yourself to a higher cause, and it should be practical, not just theoretical,” said Acyuta Priya.

But some, like Kalakeli, have found homes outside the country. She moved frequently during the early weeks of the invasion, moving from Berdyansk to Zaporizhia, then to Dnipro, before finally leaving Ukraine and finding shelter with a community of fellow devotees in Denmark.

For nearly two months, Kalakeli was unable to contact or locate her mother, sister and nephews back in Mariupol.

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Kalakeli Devi Dasi, right, with her family. Photo courtesy of Kalakeli Devi Dasi

“My life became just an existence. Only ‘kirtan’ (devotional singing) dulled my pain for a while,” said Kalakeli. “Totally desperate, I began to have thoughts of going back and looking for my family.”

In April of last year, she was finally able to connect with her family via phone. They had all managed to stay safe back in Mariupol, but their home was destroyed in the war. They recently joined Kalakeli in Copenhagen. 

“The war taught us a lot,” said Kalakeli. “The main thing I have learned is that no one can take God away from me. In such difficult situations, there was nothing else we could do but trust in Krishna. Love for God will end all wars. We offer it to everyone and want nothing in return.”