page_title: Sultanpur Lodhi
section_title: Sant Babir Singh Ji Seechewal
hierarchical_section_title: Sultanpur Lodhi / Sant Babir Singh Ji Seechewal
caption_attribution_description: Cleaning of Kali Vain
context_page_description: Sultanpur Lodhi is a city and a Municipal Council in the Kapurthala district in the Indian state of Punjab. The town is named after its founder, Sultan Khan Lodhi, who was a general of Mahmud of Ghazni in 1103 AD, and has also been mentioned in the Ain-e-Akbari. Sultanpur Lodhi is located on the south bank of a seasonal rivulet called Kali Bein, which runs 6 miles north of the intersection of Beas and Sutlej Rivers, two of the Five Rivers of Punjab. The word Punj - ab, literally means five river - land.
context_section_description: Kali Bein, a 99-mile-long (160 km) river, is considered sacred by the state's majority Sikh population. Over the past couple of decades, it was reduced to a filthy drain into which six towns and more than 40 villages emptied their waste. Parts of the river dried up, leaving neighboring farmlands parched. Its polluted waters also seeped underground, contaminating the groundwater and causing lethal diseases.
  Seechewal, a Sikh holy man, set out to clean up this mess. Drawing on the Sikh tradition of kar sewa (voluntary service), he and his followers taught locals why they should clean the Kali Bein, enlisting volunteers to do the physical work and raising funds for equipment. At the height of his movement, people from more than two dozen villages were pitching in. The scale of the task was gigantic — volunteers cleared the entire riverbed of water hyacinth and silt and built riverbanks and roads alongside the river. When appeals to government and municipal bodies failed to stop dirty water flowing into the river, Seechewal launched a public-awareness campaign to encourage villagers to dispose of their sewage elsewhere. Some villages revived traditional methods of waste disposal and treatment, and farmers lined up for a share of the treated water. A government order to divert water from a nearby canal was eventually obtained. As the riverbed was cleared, natural springs revived and the river began to fill up. Since then, trees have been planted along its banks and fishing has been banned to preserve bi-odiversity.
  Today, the Kali Bein is thriving. Families head there for picnics and the devout bathe during religious festivals. Seechewal has turned his sight to the tanneries and other factories that dispose of untreated waste in rivers. He is also leading efforts to get residents and the government to clean up rivers and creeks in a more systematic way across the state. "We have proved that it is possible to restore our rivers to a pristine condition if we all come together," says Seechewal. "It is time to do that on a bigger scale."
caption: Cleaning process
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