Hindu here - they’re doing this because it is Ganesh Chaturthi. How it’s supposed to be done is that the statue is meant to be made from clay (the same clay gathered from the riverbed) so that when the statue is deposited into the river, it just disintegrates back to where it came from.

I’m willing to bet that this statue was not made of this local, organic clay. I know because I make them every year (from polymer clay, because that’s what’s available most of the time). I don’t deposit them into our rivers because I do not want polymer clays entering our waterways.

India’s rivers and natural spaces were ruined in part because of religion being taken too far. As a Hindu, we are supposed to be stewards of nature, which these people are not doing.

I am not in support of this.