By Anadish Kumar Pal
The Ganges, the river that washed away sins and led our dead to salvation now seems to lie in neglect and mired in dirt. Politicians who float projects to cleanse the holy river seem to be overawed by the gigantic task. Around 400 million Indians living on the banks of the river are directly dependent on it. Yet, it continues to be one of the most polluted rivers in the world. Despite this, an essential anachronism persists – how can one even think of cleaning the goddess of purity?
The role of religion
To fully understand the situation, we have to trace the origins of the Ganges as a sacred river. In order to do this, we must visit the mind of a mythical Bhagirath and the teachings of Gautama Buddha. Hindu mythology tells us that King Bhagirath released the river from the crown of Shiva to carry away the bones of Bhagirath?s ancestors to the sea. Essentially, the river was given the task of washing away mortal remains. Later, Buddha too exhorted his followers to cremate the dead rather than burying them. Hence open-air cremation was encouraged by almost all the ancient faiths in North India. Thus, the Hindu ritual of immersing the ashes in the river Ganga became the trend.
The cost associated with modern practices
Keeping religious sentiments aside, the Ganges has always been considered a carrier of waste. One only needs to look at the population density around the river to understand this. In a map of 1994, the river charged the wells all around and carried away the waste. The ground water was easily available via conventional wells and ponds in the Indo-Gangetic plain. Post-independence, as city sewer networks grew, they emptied in the river or its tributaries. Ironically, the development of sewer networks actually proved to be detrimental for the Ganges.
In my first visit to the Churdhar Mountains in Himachal Pradesh in 1986, I was directed to relieve myself on the dry face of a hill from where no?pahari nullah?originated. As a result, all the human waste would naturally disintegrate before finding its way into any stream. However, by 1993, the practice had declined. People with new sneakers got wary of spoiling their fancy and expensive shoes during their visits to the ?dung hill?. Thus, water from all the natural streams and springs were so full of coliform bacteria that even the water tasted foul.
To sum it up, post-independence, our toilet habits embraced western ways. To everybody?s disbelief, this process turned this holy river and other rivers into humongous open sewer lines.
Mother Nature always carves her own way
Now let us face the bitter truth. The politicians trusted with cleaning this holy river are dwarfed by the enormity of the challenge. A river of such proportions and flanked by a billion people cannot be cleansed by any bureaucratic effort. Recently, the great floods in the Kashmir Valley cleared Wular Lake of all its hyacinths that had spread like weed all over the lake. In China, the repeated flooding of the Yangtze River prompted the building of Three Gorges Dam. Similarly, a few huge man-made reservoirs can cleanse the water if allowed to grow into naturally diverse lakes. Obviously, there has to be less focus on generating electricity from such lakes.
However, the enormous social and geographical challenges to such a project do not make it seem feasible. Therefore, as global warming makes rainfall erratic and occasionally excessive, River Ganga may cleanse itself by massively flooding the plains around it at regular intervals. After all, the Ganges is the holy cleanser and for it, nothing is impossible.
Anadish Kumar Pal?is an Indian inventor,?poet,?and environmentalist holding 10 US Patents.
