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Published: February 19th 2018
The goddess Ganga
...on her traditional crocodile transport. The cormorants were a live extra!This all sounds very complicated – which it is!
I've said before that to understand Hinduism you have to be born
A diya on the Ganges
These little lamps are set afloat on the river to signal hope and fulfilment of wishes. into it.
This great river, born in the Himalayas, flows south, east, then south again into the Bay of Bengal. Along its 2,500kms, it supports over half a billion people – that’s more than the entire populations of Russia and the USA combined!
It irrigates the land, sustains industries, and provides hydroelectricity and drinking water. It's India’s longest and most sacred waterway - the embodiment of the divine, the aforementioned goddess Ganga. Yet, perhaps inevitably in a land where poverty and illiteracy are still commonplace today, it’s also become a depository for all manner of waste.
It’s estimated that more than 1.5 Billion litres of untreated sewage and 500 Million litres of industrial effluent from tanneries, chemical plants, textile mills, distilleries, slaughterhouses and hospitals are pumped into the river every day. Certainly, while we saw how clear the water was near its source at Devprayag, Rishikesh and Haridwar, it was opaque and dark grey by the time it reached Varanasi a thousand kilometres downstream.
Village rubbish, mainly food waste and plastic bags and bottles, adorns many of its steep banks, eventually to be swept downstream during monsoon floods.
Dead animals are put in the river.
The fast-flowing Ganges...
...and a chain to help bathers from being swept away. We saw several bloated carcasses of cows, goats and dogs on our journeys.
The bodies of certain humans – those from the very poorest families, unmarried women, children and those killed by snakebite, for example - are weighted with rocks, taken to the centre of the river and simply lowered into the water.
Others are cremated on the banks and their remains, sometimes only partly burnt if relatives had been unable to afford sufficient wood for the funeral pyre, are consigned to the river.
All these things have combined to make the Ganges one of the world's most polluted rivers.
Is it not ironic that the people who worship the river are killing the very thing they revere?
Surely, the Ganges is far too toxic to be holy any more. Last year, a court in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand tended to think so and ordered that the Ganges (and its main tributary, the Yamuna) be accorded the status of living human entities. That decision effectively meant that polluting or damaging the rivers would be legally equivalent to harming a person - but how could infringements be effectively monitored or enforced in such a
vast and impoverished country?
Pollution threatens not only humans of course. The many fish and amphibian species which live in the river, including endangered Ganges River Dolphins, are all at risk too. Although we spent time actually on the river, we didn’t see the latter, nor did we see any frogs or turtles. Downstream of Allahabad, there were a few fishermen, using nets suspended from floats made of plastic bottles or expanded polystyrene, wooden fish traps and traditional ‘Chinese’ lift nets. There were even cormorants - fish-eating birds, close to notoriously-polluted Varanasi. So, it seems that, against all the odds, some life does somehow continue to exist in this water.
The government is said to be investing heavily in cleaning up the river. Just last year, the title of ‘Ministry of Water Resources’ was suffixed with the additional tag of ‘River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation'. There's little evidence, however, to suggest that India's politicians are prepared to commit long-term to what would be an immensely costly 'rejuvenation'. In any case, an even greater obstacle is likely to be the significant change in centuries-old culture needed to reverse this river's decline.
While a clean river may be pie
in the sky, at least for generations to come, perhaps Prime Minister Modi’s
‘Swachh Bharat’ mission will help to ‘Clean India’ of at least some of its refuse by the target of October 2019.
Perhaps...
Meantime, immersion in the waters of this holy river continues to wash away the sins of the devout. In places, however, it’s also likely to make the living very sick. Hepatitis, typhoid, cholera, amoebic dysentery and a variety of other waterborne diseases and skin afflictions, most carried by the faecal/oral route, are prevalent here. Yet many who bathe in the river, wash their clothes in it, brush their teeth with water from it and drink it too, still fail to make a connection between disease and the sanctity of the river.
Despite everything, holy water from the river’s upper reaches is often bottled and carried back by the devout to their homes rather like it is at other holy places elsewhere in the world. Plastic containers of many sizes are sold in markets beside the river for pilgrims to collect the water for themselves.
I once saw a group of pilgrims carrying Ganges water that they’d collected in large, weighty pots and
Har-ki-Pauri
The day before Makar Sankranti suspended from stout canes over their shoulders. It transpired that they were walking to Bateshwar, many hundreds of miles to the south, to give the water as an offering at their own Shiva temple.
Oh, and if you can’t visit the Ganges yourself, pop over to eBay, where you can buy 100ml of its water for around a fiver!
For now at least, the pollution becomes apparent only as the river broadens and slows in its middle and lower reaches. Here in
Haridwar, the ‘Gateway to God’, one of the seven holiest places in Hinduism, the ice-cold water flowing from nearby glaciers to the north remains sparkling and clear.
Our tour had been planned so as to be in Haridwar for 14 January, the day of the ancient
Makar Sankranti festival, one of few observed according to the solar cycle (as opposed to the lunar one of the lunisolar Hindu calendar). According to religious texts, the sun enters the Zodiacal sign of
'Makara' (Capricorn) and starts moving to the north, marking a change in seasons. This time is regarded as important for spiritual practices and people take a holy dip in rivers, especially the Ganges, for
merit or absolution of past sins. They also pray to the sun and give thanks for their successes and prosperity.
We’d arrived the day before the festival, yet on our afternoon walk through the town we encountered huge crowds preparing themselves for the great event.
Men sat cross-legged in a line of barbers near the banks of the river to have their faces and heads shaved with cut-throat razors, in readiness for the next day's rituals. Women shopped for bangles and beads. Vendors encouraged visitors to buy their
diyas - floating lamps made of carefully-folded leaves bound together with twigs and filled with red rosebuds, bright orange marigold petals and tiny
clay cups with solidified
ghee (purified butter) and a wick. Others sold strings of yellow and maroon marigolds like those used as garlands to welcome guests into homes and hotels, but today to be draped on statues of gods or cast into the sacred waters.
Little shops, one after another, all selling similar brightly-coloured goods, abounded in the narrow lanes. Vast quantities of beautifully displayed vegetables, sparkling bangles and, somewhat weirdly, tropical seashells
(we’re thousands of miles from the sea) were common sights. Above the streets,
a tangle of cables supplied electrical power. Beneath our feet, sandy, uneven paving or roadways strewn with innumerable parked cars and motorbikes enabled difficult movement of people, cows and dogs. All around were enticing smells of spicy street-food being cooked and the heavy scent of incense sticks, their smoke spiralling skywards. The air was rent with the noise of a thousand conversations, vehicle horns, high-pitched singing from oversized loudspeakers, ritual bells, and more.
Some things could never be easily found in this holy city - notably alcohol and meat. It’s officially ‘dry’ and vegetarian! Foreign tourists too were noticeable by their absence; in our three days here, we saw only five or six of them. Indian tourists - or more correctly: pilgrims - were here in their thousands though and we met many who’d come great distances especially for this festival.
At sundown, we reached a place called Har-ki-Pauri, the ‘Footstep of God’
(‘Har’ refers to the god Shiva or Vishnu,’ki’ = of, ‘Pauri’ = step), so called because Hindu theology states that Shiva or Vishnu (they're one and the same entity, it seems) visited this place in antiquity and an impression of Vishnu’s footstep is said to
After a ritual bathe in the river
Swimming costumes seem to be unheard of! be found here, on a wall somewhere beneath the fast-flowing river.
It's considered that the holy river leaves the mountains and enters the plains here and it's become a very auspicious place, of equal status to the revered Dashashwamedh Ghat in the most holy city of Varanasi. Consequently, Haridwar's
ghats (a series of steps leading down to the water) see many hundreds taking a dip in the Ganges every day of the year, women fully dressed in colourful saris, men stripped down to their equally-colourful underpants, and most holding tightly to thoughtfully-provided chains to prevent being swept away by the rushing current.
When we eventually found a suitable place to sit, it was here that we witnessed our first ever
aarthi.
As evening turned to night, hundreds gathered on both sides of the river. On the opposite bank from where we sat, temple bells rang, red-robed priests blew conch shells and rang little hand-bells. Their chants and singing filled the evening air with praise to Shiva, Surya the sun god, Ganga, and the entire universe. In a choreographed spectacle, the
aarthi (a ritual of worship, a part of
puja or prayer) was completed with great fireballs being
waved round and round, above the priests' heads, to the side, and towards the sacred Ganges.
This was followed by hundreds of
diyas being set adrift on the river, the flicker of the lamps casting shadows in the fast-flowing stream.
Next day, accompanied by a local guide, we set forth to discover more about this fascinating city. The scene then, however, was quite different to our previous foray. The crowds had swollen to multitudinous proportions...
The panoramas at the top of this blog make a slideshow.
There are more photos below and, if you double-click on them or on any of those within the text above, they will be enlarged. If you don't already receive email notifications of my blogs, click the 'Subscribe' button above my name on the right of this page.
Accommodation:
If you plan to visit Haridwar - and I'd recommend that you do, be sure to stay at the
Devnadi Hotel (http://www.devnadi.com/). It's situated right on the banks of the Ganges and is a peaceful eight-room haven within easy reach of all the sights and sounds of this amazing city. It was originally built as a summer
retreat for the Queen of Nepal with a private bathing
ghat on the river bank and was later owned by a Bollywood film director.
Today, after much tasteful and careful restoration, this charming house is operated as a hotel by the lovely Saigal family. Rohan Saigal and his wife Jasmeet, a delightful young couple who were both educated in the UK, run the hotel and provided a truly warm welcome. They went out of their way to help us with all the information and arrangements we needed, both before we arrived
(email: md@devnadi.com) and during our stay.
Our well-appointed bedroom with its high ceilings, private bathroom and 'art-nouveau' touches was immaculately clean and very comfortable. It even had access to a private terrace looking out to the river and to the
ghat below. The service from a happy and enthusiastic team of staff was very good indeed.
In summary, we found this a friendly, convenient and reasonably-priced heritage hotel. I'll certainly stay there again when I return one day to Haridwar.
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Grey haired nomads
David & Janice The grey-haired-nomads
Old Mother Ganges
Yes, Mike, you paint it as it is. Only time will change the lives of those who so revere this ancient river, and a new passion for education so evident today can only accelerate the process. Want to borrow my rose-tinted spectacles? Thank you for sharing your great love of this country with me. Big brother, David