Gangabal Lake is a high-altitude glacial lake situated at the foot of Harmukh, a mountain in the Himalayas in Jammu and Kashmir, India. The lake is called Gangabal, meaning ‘place of Ganga’ in the Kashmiri language, and is considered to be sacred in Hinduism as an abode of Shiva. The lake has been described as a place of pilgrimage in several ancient Hindu texts such as the Mahabharata, the Nilamata Purana and the Vishnu Smriti, and an annual Hindu pilgrimage to the lake starts from the nearby 8th-century Wangath temple complex. Kashmiri Hindus perform their ancestral rites at the lake and immerse the ashes of the dead into the lake after cremation. This photograph depicts a shrine dedicated to Shiva carved into a boulder at the shore of Gangabal Lake.

Photographer: UnpetitproleX

CC BY-SA 4.0

    • Totally Human Emdash User@piefed.blahaj.zone
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      3 days ago

      In fairness, the swastika was important to Hinduism long before Nazi Germany started using it, and one could argue that Indians should not feel that they need to give the symbol up just because some Europeans misused it.

      On the other hand, do you think this would be giving them too much benefit of the doubt? Hindu nationalism seems to be pretty scary, after all.