INDIA, October 10, 2019 (OZY): Sitting in the gardens of the Kapil Muni Temple on Sagar Island, Sanjay Das seems unperturbed by the fact that the temple over which he presides is not, in fact, the original. “Three or four have already been lost in the sea,” he says, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the nearby beach where thousands of pilgrims have come to pray and submerge themselves in the waters. At the confluence of the holy River Ganga and the Bay of Bengal, Sagar Island attracts millions of Hindu devotees each January for the Ganga Sagar festival. Last year, in the space of two days, an estimated three million Hindu pilgrims came to bathe in the holy waters.
However, Sagar Island — and with it, the future of the festival — is under threat. Rising sea levels and coastal erosion are encroaching upon the land all across the Sundarbans, a delta of tiny islands nestled between east India and Bangladesh. The Kapil Muni Temple, where pilgrims offer prayers after a dip in the sea, has been moved several times to avoid being submerged. While researchers argue over the extent to which climate change is to blame for the disappearing land, a recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has a stark prediction: If current trends of warming and Antarctic ice melt continue, sea levels globally will rise by as much as one meter by 2100 — this would submerge most of the Sundarbans.
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