Coming clean on the Ganga

Cleaning the Ganga may have been the focus of Monday's Ganga Manthan but for Uma Bharti, face-saving was very much on the agenda too. The event was well attended by sadhus from Varanasi who had taken umbrage at the Bharatiya Janata Party's claim that it would make the Ganga pavitra and shudh, forms of purification to which the sadhus lay exclusive claim. So Bharti made it a point to assure them that this was not the intent. "I will burn my tongue before I say such a thing," she told the sadhus in Hindi, and went on to explain that the exercise was more in the nature of a prayaschit or atonement for what has been done to "mother Ganga".