Sivanupandian v. The District Collector, Tirunelveli District
WP(MD) No. 18560 of 2026 · WP(MD) No. 18560 of 2026
Coram: Justice G.R.Swaminathan · Justice B.Pugalendhi
Yes, subject to a condition. Immersion of ashes is treated differently from the dumping of clothes and articles, the performance of rituals being an integral facet of the religious right guaranteed under Article 25. The ashes may be carried only in unfired earthen pots, which dissolve at once; ashes may not be thrown along with fired pots.
Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974 — s.24 — Tamil Nadu Public Health Act, 1939 — s.36 — Constitution of India — Art.21 — Art.25 — Art.51A(g) — River as a juristic person — Encroachment on a river bank —
Encroachment — River bank — Bank not to be divorced from the river —
Held: The bank of a river cannot be divorced from the river proper and must be maintained free of any encroachment; no title can be claimed over what is in truth an ancient monument standing on it. (¶3)
Constitution of India — Art.25 — Art.21 — Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974 — s.24 — Pollution in the name of religion —
Held further: No one has the right to pollute a water body even in the name of religion; the freedom to practise religion is subservient to public health, and regulating rituals on a river bank breaches no fundamental right. (¶6, ¶8)
River as a juristic person — Personhood as a deity — Right not to be polluted —
Held further: Personhood is conferred on the river not because it is a river but because She is worshipped as a deity, and only for the limited purpose of the right not to be polluted; no other right or liability springs from it. (¶13, ¶15)
Directions — Continuing mandamus — Immersion of ashes permitted —
Held further: Dumping of clothes and articles in the river stands banned as a continuing mandamus, while immersion of ashes is permitted in unfired earthen pots alone. Petition disposed of. (¶21, ¶23)
In the Court's own words
Paragraph 22At the same time, immersion of ashes in the river will have to be treated differently. Performance of rituals is an integral facet of one’s religious right guaranteed under Article 25 of the Constitution of India (Commissioner, Hindu Religious Endowments v Sri Lakshmindra Thirtha Swamiar of Sri Shirur Mutt (1954 SCR 1005). Even an agnostic like our first Prime Minister Shri Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru willed that a portion of his ashes should be immersed in river Ganga. He wrote thus : “My desire to have a handful of my ashes thrown into the Ganga at Allahabad has no religious significance, so far as I am concerned. I have no religious sentiment in the matter. I have been attached to the Ganga and the Jumna rivers in Allahabad ever since my childhood and, as I have grown older, this attachment has also grown. I have watched their varying moods as the seasons changed, and have often thought of the history and myth and tradition, and song and story, that have become attached to them through the long ages and become a part of their flowing waters. The Ganga, especially, is the river of India, beloved of her people, round which are intertwined her racial memories, her hopes and fears, her songs of triumph, her victories and her defeats. She has been a symbol of India’s age-long culture and civilization, ever-changing, ever- flowing, and yet ever the same Ganga. She reminds me of the snowcovered peaks and the deep valleys of the Himalayas, which I have loved so much, and of the rich and vast plains below, where my life and work have been cast. Smiling and dancing in the morning sunlight, and dark and gloomy and full of mystery as the evening shadows fall, a narrow, slow and graceful stream in winter, and a vast roaring thing during the monsoon, broad-bosomed almost as the sea, and with something of the sea’s power to destroy, the Ganga has been to me a symbol and a memory of the past of India, running into the present, and flowing on to the great ocean of the future…. I am proud of that great inheritance that has been, and is, ours, and I am conscious that I too, like all of us, and a link in that unbroken chain which goes back to the dawn of history in the immemorial past of India. That chain I would not break, for I treasure it and seek inspiration from it. And as witness of this desire of mine and as my last homage to India’s cultural inheritance, I am making this request that a handful of my ashes be thrown into the Ganga at Allahabad to be carried to the great ocean that washes India’s shore.”
Paragraph 23Chithra Subramaniam is a well known journalist who exposed the Bofors scandal. In epilogue of her book Bofors Gate-A Journalist’s Pursuit of Truth, she refers to Andrew, her son-in-law. Andrew’s grandfather, Dr.Samuel Pickens, was a leprosy expert who had a clinic in Madurai. In his Will, Dr.Pickens wished for his ashes to be immersed in the Bay of Bengal. That shows the sentimental and emotional attachment of Indians to the waters of rivers and oceans. We, therefore, permit the immersion of ashes. We add a caveat. The ashes to be immersed in the river will be carried only in unfired earthen pots. If the pots are unfired, they will dissolve in no moment. Ashes cannot be thrown along with the pots if they are fired. Unfired pots containing ashes alone can be dumped as such in River Tamirabarani.
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