You should really visit India more or read up a bit more on it. These people do have a choice, obviously. Particularly where these pictures were taken, there are public wells and pumps for them to use (I should know as I helped install one) also, people dont use this as their source of drinking water.
The way this piece was written seems like the propaganda-ish material people distribute. It gives the impression of a sea of dead bodies and people happily playing among them, which is not the case at all.
The people bathing are more than likely doing the prayers that they do every morning right before going home (to a house or shanty) and having a bath before work or whatever they do. Or they are doing prayers after a funeral they have just been to.
Right, because these wells always have water for a village of a million people.
Even in more developed parts of India, water is only available at certain times of the day. Where I was, it was 5 AM that they distributed water. So someone had to get up and turn the pipes on and collect the water in buckets. And this was in the good parts.
What are we arguing about, anyway? That the Ganges water is not drinkable? I know that. They probably know that. And while it may not be common for those people to drink the water from there, I'm sure some do because those wells and pumps you speak of are not always functioning.
Bathing with dead corpses or just simply having them out like that...well, in the name of religion and its rituals, we can overlook it and say that it's just tradition and it may be weird, but who are we to judge?
Are you angry that the Chinese are trying to pass this off as THE way these people live? Again, I'm sure someone in that village has it worse than you think it is from your experiences there. To expand further, someone in another village definitely has it much worse. We know what the river is known and used for. But to some, it's more pivotal than merely a cemetery/graveyard. And that's the unfortunate part.
Are you angry that they may be exaggerating and stereotyping all Indians to live like this? Other places have shitholes, true, but show me where people wake up to a dead body floating in front of their house. Cholera infested water, in front of their house. Their sewage water....in front of their house.
What would you rather be, a crackhead in Compton or a citizen of this village?