More than 1,300 members of Satpanth Mandir Santkrupa Ashram at Fazilpur in Maharashtra, who came to Rameswarram for a week-long pilgrimage, cleaned up the Agni Theertham seashore on the occasion of Gandhi Jayanthi on October 2 as part of ‘Swachhta hi seva’ campaign.
Led by Ashram chief Janarthan Hariji Maharaj, the devotees who had arrived Rameswaram island on September 27 for the week-long pilgrimage and ‘Ram Katha,’ a discourse on Lord Ram and Ramayana, took up the cleaning work, responding to a plea by BJP district president K Muraleedharan.
When the discourse was going on, the BJP leader, with the permission of Maharaj, made an appeal to the devotees to spend a few hours on cleaning work and they responded positively. The devotees, including a large number of women from Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, removed sea grass, old clothes and plastic materials from the seashore.
They collected about five tonnes of waste and the same were disposed of by the municipality. “More than the discourse and worship at Sri Ramanathaswamy Temple, the cleaning work gave us immense satisfaction,” Maharaj said. Pointing that people took holy bath in the Agni Theertham sea, he said it was the responsibility of the devotees and yatrikas to keep the sea and seashore clean, instead of looking for the government to do the cleaning work, he said. The ashram also donated ₹ 51,000 to Manolaya, a voluntary organisation working for the betterment of the mentally deranged people in the island.