08 July 2107

Legend says that this scorched land, this desert once used to be the most sacred of sacred rivers…Ganga they called it. Mother Ganga!

She descended from the snowy peaks of the highest mountains of the Himalayas flowing the plain of India, nourishing the land, making it fertile. She was home to life found nowhere else on Earth, both plant and animal. She was the bloodstream of the land itself. It is said the Ganga descended onto earth from the Gods to purify the souls of humanity and being the mother she judged no one, embracing and cleansing all her children, virtuous or sinful alike.

This arid land once bore the footsteps of millions; of mystics and sages, warriors and devotees, all come to purify their souls in the Ganga. It is by her side and with her blessing that great yogis and sadhus meditated and transcended the earthly realms to the divine heights. Walking amongst the empty ruins of once great ancient cities like Rishikesh, Benaras, Haridwar and of countless villages along the Ganga, it is said that one can still hear in the winds the echoes of temple bells and the chants of Hindu mantras. But they are from a distant time, a distant place. Where there was once an overflow of life there only remains the ashes of a bygone era, a desert writhing in thirst but the Ganga is no longer there to give liberation. Her children, those for whom she came down to give and nurture life, they themselves have condemned her to the annals of history and legends.

They say that every twelve years the greatest gathering took place by the Ganga, the Kumbh Mela, a spectacle so grand it could be witnessed from the moon. Now it is the moon alone that remains as a silent witness to the birth and destruction of this great, all embracing, all nourishing Mother river, whose own children polluted her and ran her dry.

Light can travel for eons carrying with it visions of the surface it was once reflected from. So perhaps somewhere out there in the universe, light from the Ganga still travels. Perhaps out there, in that light, one can still see glimpses of the days of Mother Ganga. Will we ever see that light again?

Commentary:

This may sound like a morbid tale from the future. But it is also a probable future when we take into consideration the extent to which the Ganga is being polluted by sewage and industrial waste and also the impact that global warming is having on the Ganga.

According to a recent UN climate report, the Himalayan glaciers that are the sources of the Ganga could disappear by 2030 as temperatures rise. The World Wildlife Fund in March listed the Ganga among the world's 10 most endangered rivers. A recent study by Uttarakhand Environment Conservation and Pollution Control Board says that the level of pollution in the holy river has reached such alarming proportions the Ganga water is at present not fit just for drinking and bathing but has become unusable even for agricultural purposes.

But all is not doom, gloom and apocalypse as this trend is still reversible. Nature has a great tendency to renew itself and especially the Ganga which is renowned for it self-renewal quality. The Indian Government along with United States and China has refused to support mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions in the interest of economic growth should seriously reconsider its stance. Especially so considering the abject failure the Government’s Action Plan to to clean up the river have been – mainly due to pervasive corruption, mismanagement, and technological bungling arising out of Socialist policies of successive Governments. A fundamental reason for the failure was that the local Hindu community, those most invested in the health of the river were never included in the planning.

Hindus for their own part can raise awareness of the issue and start civilian movements to clean up the river. In fact there have been some such as the Sankat Mochan Foundation, founded in Varanasi in 1982 by Veer Bhadra Mishra, a Hindu holyman and civil engineer who has approached the problem from a scientific and Hindu perspective. However, this has also coincided with the growing industrialisation and destruction of the river and until this becomes a mass movement spanning the entire course of the river, there may be no river left to save.