As soon as Nawal Kishore approached his boat the dogs began to circle.

They had watched him countless times before, dropping the children’s corpses into the Yamuna river in Delhi – a stinking slick of sewage, rubbish and chemical waste – to comply with Hindu custom. They had seen, too, how they could catch the bodies that slipped their weights and floated to the surface, or dig up the ones he buried on the bank.

“For 16 years I’ve been doing this. My father did it before me. Who knows how many children we’ve given to the Yamuna?” Mr Kishore, 42, told The Times, perching on the edge of his boat.

Four years into India’s economic boom, Delhi is getting a facelift to match, sprouting shopping malls and metro stations while clearing its streets of cows, food stalls and rick-shaws. Yet this is how the city of 14 million people still disposes of its dead children – 1,000 a month, according to Mr Kishore’s records.

Until May this was one of the Indian capital’s dirtiest secrets, a practice that was rarely talked about in private, let alone in public or the media.

Now, however, a single Indian businessman is leading a campaign to ban the custom and force the Government to open dedicated crematoriums and cemeteries for children.

“We have these shopping malls, this stunning growth rate, yet we have no place to bury our children,” said Shantanu Sharma, 34, a US-educated entrepreneur. “It’s mind-boggling and deeply troubling.”

Mr Sharma’s experience highlights the extraordinary divide between India’s modern and traditional faces, but also shows how individuals, especially from the middle classes, are slowly bridging the gap.

His quest began when his one-year-old nephew died in April. The family took the corpse to the local state crematorium, where the Hindu faithful burn their dead on funeral pyres and then sprinkle the ashes in the Yamuna – one of India’s five holy rivers. But the priests refused to accept the child because he was under 3 and should therefore be immersed in the river whole. Staff at a second crematorium said the same thing.

Both directed him to the patch of river bank where Mr Kishore and his ancestors have plied their trade since 1951. There he found what is officially not a river but an open drain, since it carries only sewage, rubbish and industrial effluent. Shocked by the filthy black water, Mr Sharma opted to have his nephew buried on the banks – although they were littered with bottles, condoms and human excrement. Even as Mr Kishore was digging the grave, stray dogs dug up another and tore apart a child’s corpse, Mr Sharma said. He covered his nephew’s grave with rocks and hired a private guard. The guard started to run away at night because he was scared.

Suddenly Mr Sharma snapped. “Something woke me up and I thought: I won’t let it be like this,” he recalled. With the help of a friend who was a Supreme Court lawyer, he launched his own investigation and filed a public interest suit.

He found priests to dispute the idea that young children could not be cremated. He confronted politicians, including Delhi’s Chief Minister, and mobilised the media.

Finally, a Delhi court ruled in his favour last month by ordering the city’s 62 crematoriums – all state-owned – to accept children of all ages. Since then, city authorities have put up signs to that effect in all crematoria, and more by the river forbidding the immersion of children. The Government says it is planning to allocate land for children’s cremation and burial. But Mr Sharma and other activists remain sceptical.

Ravi Agarwal, the head of Toxic Links, an environmental NGO, said that the Government was reluctant to get involved in matters of religion for fear of alienating voters.

“They’ll put up barriers and signs, they’ll say they’ve done a lot, but no local councillor is going to fight with the community that elects him,” he said. Without clear penalties and enforcement, any ban would be useless, he added.

Burial beliefs

The Toraja, an indigenous tribe in Indonesia, traditionally hold animist beliefs. A dead baby or child is placed in a coffin and hung from ropes on a cliff face or from a tree, possibly for years, until the rope disintegrates

Some Amazon Indian tribes have been accused of burying alive babies and children who have a physical defect, in the belief that they have no soul. Twins and triplets, who they believe are cursed, may also meet the same fate The burying alive of a person on temple premises was banned in Tamil Nadu, India, in 2002 after 105 children were buried alive and retrieved immediately as part of a festival. The state housing minister was sacked for taking part in the event

Choctaw North American indians had many different ways of dealing with the corpses of children, including suspending them on scaffolding and placing them in the hollows of trees

Sources: Toraja-treasures.com; agencies

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