India’s Taj Mahal Cloaked in Veil of Pollution : Environment: The shrine has become a battleground between environmental and industrial interests. The Supreme Court responds by closing 212 polluting firms.

In the moonlight, the teardrop dome of India’s Taj Mahal shines so brightly that, during wartime, authorities have ordered it wrapped in burlap to prevent enemy airplanes from using it for navigation.

Now, cloaked in pollutants belched from the smokestacks of thousands of nearby industries and countless vehicles on Agra’s overcrowded roads, the white marble edifice is yellowing.

“The devastation is mind-boggling,” said Mahesh C. Mehta, an environmental attorney who has spent almost a decade trying to persuade courts to protect the mausoleum. “This is not only a national monument; it is part of the world’s cultural heritage.”

In September, after nine years of warning recalcitrant local industries to abide by pollution regulations, the Indian Supreme Court ordered 212 industries shut down because they used no pollution-control devices. It threatened to close nearly 300 more if owners do not meet a 60-day deadline for installing proper equipment.

As a result, the Taj Mahal--built more than three centuries ago by Mogul ruler Shah Jahan as a memorial of love to house the tomb of his wife, Mumtaz Mahal--has become a battleground between India’s fledgling environmental movement and its entrenched industrial and governmental powers.

Environmentalists hail the Supreme Court ruling as a critical precedent for a Third World country that has virtually ignored the impact of pollution caused by its expanding industries and population. Although courts have acted in isolated pollution cases in the past, environmentalists say this intervention was the most far-reaching.

“This is a landmark judgment on environmental awareness,” said Mehta, who works in a cramped office in a converted garage in New Delhi. “The situation is so bad all over the country. My case is not exclusively to save the Taj, it’s also to save the people of the area.”

Industrialists and many government officials argue that the court’s shutdown of foundries, factories and workshops was unfair, throwing an estimated 13,000 workers out of jobs for the sake of a monument that they say is being damaged more by the half-million tourists who descend on it each year than by the industries, some of which are miles away.

“People talk about the Taj too much,” said Shankar Nath, director of monuments for the Archeological Survey of India, the government agency charged with preserving historic sites. “All white things become ivory with the passage of time. How can you expect a 100-year-old man to look like a 25-year-old man?”

In Agra, a gritty, northern industrial city, about 10% of the 1.1 million residents depend either directly or indirectly on the country’s most popular tourist attraction for their livelihood. But anti-Taj sentiments are growing among citizens who believe the monument is responsible for too many layoffs and business restrictions in the area.

“The biggest issue at present is . . . our survival,” said Sunil Kumar Goyal, 43, whose foundry was closed and will not be allowed to reopen until he installs pollution-control equipment. Goyal said his 50 employees “have gone to look for jobs in other industries. All my clients have stopped payment. I’m just sitting, doing no work.”

Officials who oversee operations of the Taj Mahal said the public resentment is increasing security threats to the monument, which already is considered a high-risk target for terrorism amid the violent political turbulence of South Asia.

The battle here has been bitter. When some Agra industries ignored the ruling in October, officials cut off their electricity and padlocked their doors. In the nearby town of Firozabad, firefighters were called to douse the furnaces of industries that refused to halt operations.

The chief government bureaucrat for Agra, Desh Deepak Verma, who has become the local arbiter between angry industry owners and the courts, said many of his city’s citizens have been “shortsighted.”

“The industries knew they were at fault,” said Verma, taking a break from the daily parade of citizens who appear at his office each day to air grievances on everything from Taj-related job problems to neighborhood sewer deficiencies. “But everyone says, ‘It’s not us; it’s them.’ It’s a question of apportioning the blame.”

Nearly 6,000 industries are located in the Agra area, more than one-third of which Mehta and other environmentalists believe are combining to damage the Taj Mahal and the health of residents. Many of the bigger polluters, including a government-owned oil refinery, remain untouched by the court ruling--and Mehta is preparing to petition the court to expand its decree to cover more of them.