At dawn, the steps of Banganga look the way they have for centuries: stone, temple bells, priests and early walkers. Then you look at the water. Hundreds of fish float on the surface, and the smell reaches the lanes of Walkeshwar before you reach the tank.
The tank was built in 1127 AD by Lakshman Prabhu, a minister at the court of the Silhara kings, and it is among the oldest surviving structures in Mumbai. A freshwater spring still feeds it, just metres from the Arabian Sea. This is a living heritage site, not a museum piece, and it has been failing the same way due to the negligence for years.
Not a Surprise, a Schedule
Call it a tragedy if you like, but it is closer to a calendar event. In 2008, thousands of fish dying after Pitru Paksha rituals and noted that the previous year had been just as bad. In 2022, clean-up crews hauled away several truckloads of fish. In 2025, the BMC cleared at least 10,000 kg of dead fish, flowers and other waste, loading it into seven dumper trucks.
The date of Pitru Paksha is known years in advance. The crowds are predictable and so is the fish kill. Yet the city keeps responding after the fact, with trucks, a stench and a meeting.
It Probably Isn’t Poison
Mass fish deaths are usually blamed on “pollution,” which sounds like chemicals. In a ritual tank, the likelier killer is more ordinary: running out of oxygen.
Rice balls, flowers, flour, ghee and cooked offerings are organic matter. When tonnes of it enter still water, microbes decompose it and consume the dissolved oxygen the fish need to breathe. Oxygen is naturally lowest just before sunrise, so a tank can crash overnight, and the dead fish surface by morning. Officials have linked the earlier deaths to oxygen loss, though this year’s exact cause is still under investigation.
That changes what the fix looks like. You can ban plastic and still lose every fish if the offerings are food.
Four Uncomfortable Contradictions
The fish are fed out of devotion. Many devotees feed them for blessings, and the neighbourhood’s vegetarian culture has kept them safe from anglers for generations. The same affection crowds a small tank with far more fish than it can support during a stress event. Unrestricted feeding itself adds organic load.
The pitru paksha ritual. Pinda rituals associated with flowing water are being performed in a stepped, largely closed basin.. This pinda immersion should be done through some articficially created pond nearby so that immerson should not pollute the Banganga’s still water and will not disturb the aqua life
The priests are blamed, but they aren’t the whole problem. Hereditary priests earn their living from these essential sanatan rituals. A ban that ignores their livelihood will be ignored in turn. Any workable plan has to include them, which is why the BMC’s meeting with priests and residents matters more than it looks.
What Activists Are Proposing
Citizens’ groups have asked for separate artificial immersion ponds during Pitru Paksha, similar to the ones the BMC sets up for Ganeshotsav, so that offerings never reach the main tank. Others suggest a demarcated ritual area away from the water. A trust member has claimed the tank holds more than 220 fish species, a figure I’d treat cautiously until a proper survey backs it, but it points to how little ecological data exists.
A cleaning-only approach has a fatal flaw: it removes the evidence, not the cause.
Practical Ideas Few People Mention
- Aerate before the rush, not after. Oxygen support and water monitoring in the days around the final ritual day would cost far less than a 10,000 kg clean-up.
- Test the water at 4 to 5 a.m. Oxygen bottoms out then. A reading taken at noon will look reassuring and tell you nothing.
- Collect offerings at the steps. Volunteers with large trays at the entry points can take pinda and flowers before they reach the water.
- Offer food that feeds something. Some families offer cooked food to cows and birds, or immerse only a small token portion at home. If this is done near a artifially created pond with the help of priest may solve the problems to a big extent.
- Spread out the crowd. The worst pressure comes on one peak day. Staggered time slots and a public appeal for earlier days would flatten it.
- Stop feeding the fish that week. Skip or restrict the extra puffed rice and bread. Fewer additions means less rot.
The Honest Part
The tank’s problem isn’t faith, and it isn’t simply carelessness. A 900-year-old ritual space is being asked to absorb a modern crowd with no system built around it, while the city treats the symptom every autumn.
The question for the BMC meeting isn’t whether to stop people from honouring their ancestors. It is whether Mumbai can design a way to do it that doesn’t kill the creatures living in the tank. Until that happens, expect the same photographs next year