The Making of Sacred India

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Local filmmaker Jennifer Pickford found more than the spiritual paradise of her expectations, when she first visited India in 2008. She subsequently embarked upon the personal pilgrimage, 2,500 kilometres down the Ganges River, chronicled in the documentary ‘Sacred India: Plastic Revolution,’ which comes to Mansons Hall on Monday, April 22nd, 2024.  

Jennifer Pickford: “I was involved in yoga studies and meditation, and I really had a longing in my heart to go there. It's not quite the spiritual paradise that my idealistic mind imagined it to be. I was particularly troubled to see a group of people who were burning plastic in a bonfire and actually standing around it to keep warm. I just felt they could have no real clear awareness of what plastic is,  neither its toxic composition nor the fact that plastic is not biodegradable. I found myself wondering how this country, which for centuries sustained itself with its grassroots cottage industry style commerce, became such a mass consumer of commercial plastic? What, if any, recycling programs were in place? Particularly, as a Westerner, I started wondering what is my involvement in this?  How did the colonization of India contribute to this plastic nightmare?”