The Sacred and the Profane

My Sustainable Encounter with Kashika Madaan

by Albert Schiller

A Good Day to Doubt

How does a society decide what is sacred and what is profane? We draw lines, creating categories of purity and contamination, often without questioning the logic behind them. The experience of Kashika Madaan, a leader in the sustainability sector, shines a light on a striking cultural paradox that shatters these apparent distinctions. In India, the sacred idols of the goddess Durga, a symbol of divine feminine power, are crafted using an essential ingredient: mud from the entrance of a brothel. Specifically, from Sonagachi, a place society condemns as a red-light district. Kashika’s harrowing visit to this source forces an honest confrontation with this deep-seated hypocrisy. It raises a fundamental question about collective cognitive dissonance. What does this contradiction reveal about the ability to venerate a symbol while systematically exploiting the human reality at its source?

A Pious Transaction

Kashika Madaan entered Sonagachi not as a tourist or a client or tenant, but as a professional on a corporate social responsibility assignment. The reality of the place hit her with the force of a physical blow. This was no 45-minute documentary on poverty or exploitation. Sonagachi was, in her words, a "nightmare". Her body's reaction was immediate: she started to shiver and found no sleep that night. She had witnessed the claustrophobic rooms where a life’s worth of despair was contained. More devastatingly, she learned the truth about the children, who their mothers' clients often gave drugs to keep them from waking and disturbing their sexual transaction. This was the detail that broke through her engineered defenses. She was no longer a professional observing a problem. She was a witness to unbearable conditions, a human being confronting the profane reality from which a pious society sources its sacred symbols.

50 Rupees per Hour

The tradition of using "punya mati," or sacred soil, from a brothel's entrance is meant to be an act of inclusion. The logic is that the ground is made holy by the feet of the men who leave their virtue behind before entering. It is a ritual designed to honor the divine feminine in all its forms, including those society has cast out. Yet, as Kashika's experience reveals, this is a hollow piety. It is a system that values the soil but not the women who stand on it, that reveres a clay idol more than the human beings living for "mere 50 rupees per hour". This contradiction led Kashika to question the very concept of karma. What crime could a person possibly commit to "deserve" a life of such systemic cruelty? The ritual, meant to be a symbol of unity, becomes a glaring spotlight on a society's capacity for cognitive dissonance, a culture that performs an act of symbolic respect while supporting a brutal reality of exploitation.

A Priceless Choice

The hypocrisy of Sonagachi that Madaan describes is not an isolated cultural curiosity. It is a source code for the majority of the modern crises today. We celebrate "sustainable" brands that post beautiful images on social media, while ignoring the exploited labor deep in their supply chains. We champion the clean energy of electric vehicles, while turning a blind eye to the extractive mining required for their batteries. We revere nature in glossy documentaries and photographs, while systematically destroying priceless sites with our relentless consumption. In each case, we collect the sacred mud while participating in the desecration of its source. Kashika’s experience serves as a filter-free mirror that enables us to see our own complicity. The questions her story forces us to ask are terrifying. In our lives, careers, and consumption habits, where are we venerating the symbol while conveniently ignoring the human cost of the reality that produced it, and will we ever be ready to find sustainable solutions that surpass human-centered ambitions? We carry the answers to these questions within us. Soon enough, our fate will reveal whether our actions are merely symbolic or will set us free.

So what can we take from her approach?

Questions for Audience

1. If a society can embed a profound hypocrisy like the one in Sonagachi into its most sacred rituals, can systemic change ever be achieved without first dismantling these deep-seated cultural contradictions?

2. As leaders, how do we create a "filter-free mirror" for our own organizations to see where we might be celebrating a "sacred" corporate value while ignoring the "profane" human or environmental cost in our operations?