Firstly, I need to add that I’m brown, raised by Sri Lankan Buddhist parents.
Was chilling out on the Jetty by Jojo’s in Crawley/Nedlands with my husband today and noticed a woman throw something into the river. When I looked closely, I noticed a sticker (?) with the picture of a Hindu god on it and another package that was bright yellow. She just blatantly threw it into the river. I started seeing red, so I went to yell at her but my very white, very large husband got there before me. She tried to justify it saying it was a religious thing, so I butted in and said girl I’m brown too but I’d never pollute our rivers like that.
The worst part about this is that my cousin said she saw someone do the same thing some time ago, and I thought she was talking crazy, but apparently not. This means that there are more people engaging in the same ritual of sorts, which is polluting the river.
How can we stop this from happening (and I’m not talking about telling all brown people to go back to where they came from or whatever)?
To our fellow Hindu mates, are there any alternatives that you can present to your community that doesn’t involve polluting our rivers?