POSTSCRIPT
Seeing the Ganga at Ganga Sagar
has filled me with hope. I have often felt fearful of Ganga’s future
during this yatra. Can she survive Tehri, toxic chemical dumping and Farakka,
the demands of a rapidly developing India? At Ganga Sagar, with its air of
jubilation, the river feels immortal and invincible. But is she really immortal?
Can Ganga die?
The simple answer is yes,
the river can dry up in certain places in the reaches between Haridwar and
Allahabad for a few very simple reasons. Too much water is being taken out
for irrigation or impounded behind dams huge and small to generate electricity
for an economy thirsty for electricity (the problem can only get much, much
worse as India urbanizes; a city dweller uses ten times as much water as a
villager) and though the groundwater does get substantially recharged from
runoff from the Shivalik hills there simply is not enough water coming in
to Ganga to meet all the demands made on her. The Balganga near Kannauj is
the only substantial river in this whole eight hundred kilometre stretch.
And it’s not enough. This is a simple case of supply and demand, and
supply is inadequate.
Indeed, the more I think about the pressures
on Ganga the more I’m convinced we may also be doing everyone a grave
disservice (and everyone means Indians and non-Indians) by only talking about
the river in terms of either mythology or environmentalism. There’s
a word missing - economics.
If you think of the river as an economic resource,
as a raw material then it should become possible to come up with solutions
that can save this resource for future generations. People need water and
they need things that are derived (such as electricity) from water. But there’s
nothing to say electricity can’t be generated from other sources. It
would be nice to save Ganga’s environmental ecology. But all the time
we should have been thinking of the role Ganga plays in economic life. After
all, that’s really why her environment is under such threat. Indians
are starting to ask too much of this river. She needs time to recover before
it’s too late!
I’d also re-frame the
pollution question. I’m not convinced Ganga will die from pollution.
Yes, pollution from the tanneries in Kanpur is bad, very bad. But pollution
can be mitigated by human agency. Supply can’t. More water would substantially
lessen the pollution problem by diluting the concentration of pollutants and
flushing them away to quieter areas where they deteriorate in tranquil neglect.
(But not toxic heavy metals. Only total prohibition can prevent them.)
I’m not being complacent, just trying
to be realistic. I have many friends and colleagues who’ll be up in
arms and probably never talk to me again because I appear to be minimizing
the dangers of pollution. I’m simply saying Indians can do something
about controlling what goes into the river, but they can’t control how
much water is in there to start with.
Yes, I know there’s always river-linking.
But does anyone seriously think that this will ever come to pass? There are
basic hydrological and geographical reasons why you can’t link river
basins. Another idea, building giant dams in the Nepalese Himalayas isn’t
the answer either. What do you do about the silt washed down by fierce monsoon
rains? Reservoirs have to be at rock bottom before the monsoon, which means
they don’t have enough water to generate electricity or irrigate fields
at precisely the period of year when both are in short supply.
Other ideas such as storing water in vast underground
aquifers such as the Bhabar in the Shivaliks are too futuristic to be taken
seriously. No, if Ganga is not to dry up in stretches less water has to be
taken out, and what water there is needs to be stored better in small check
dams, then used in micro-hydro electric schemes. Or farmers have to find more
profitable and less thirsty crops. Small is still beautiful, no matter how
many times you have to repeat it.
Will this change the status
of the goddess? Can Goddess Ganga survive if the river dries up? Will rituals
wither away?
The last is probably the easiest to answer.
No. Rituals evolve, they’re always evolving. Millions no longer bathe
every morning in Ganga, not just because it may be polluted but because they
no longer have the leisure to do so. Whether you agree or not, the pace of
life even in India is accelerating. I know many city-dwellers who bathe at
home, not in Ganga: they simply add a few drops of Ganga jal to their tap
water. That’s not going to change. For birth and death ceremonies much
the same thing: add a few drops of Ganga jal. Those who believe in the water’s
medicinal powers will continue to drink it, whatever.
But can Goddess Ganga retain her place in people’s
hearts and cosmos if the river shrivels up in places? I see no reason why
not. After all, the river is simply the goddess in liquid form. The important
thing is she is still a generous goddess. If people no longer bathe every
morning she may become less immediate in people’s daily lives, but she
won’t die as a goddess. It’s romantic to link the possible disappearance
of the susu - Ganga’s mount, to the disappearance of the river. But
how many people north of Varanasi have even seen a susu? It’s in their
imagination: actually seeing it won’t diminish the role and place of
Ganga in their hearts.
Indians I respect argue that Ganga has to be
protected because, ‘It gives life so I must protect it. I cannot protect
something unless I respect it, therefore it is sacred.’ Not because
it’s a goddess, but in order to protect Indian society and civilization.
My friend Sharada Nayak in
Delhi goes further. ’Sacred means giving importance to the natural life-giving
substance, to the function. For instance I gaze on a tree that is held to
be sacred: that doesn’t mean that I am worshipping the tree. I am emphasizing
the importance of the tree. Sacred therefore means to me respect for nature.
‘I am not that religious. But I go all
the time to worship Ganga as the goddess. To me Ganga is sacred, in the sense
that life comes from the land. And anything that happens to nature affects
my living and therefore is sacred. It is my relationship with a life-giving
force. I think all the temples along Ganga reaffirm the sacredness of our
natural heritage. What would happen if all the snows of the Himalayas melt
because of global warming and the rivers cease to flow? The Tehri Dam therefore
hurts me personally.’
I agree with Sharada that taking care of Ganga
should be re-framed as an anguished plea in favour of sustained development,
for trying to live in harmony with their environment. If Indians allow Ganga
the river to be raped and pillaged, it means they are destroying their own
habitat, their own birthright. Ganga is therefore a symbol of that birthright,
a metaphor for India’s future.
‘If ecology and mythology were linked
this could be very powerful,’ Sharada continues, ‘because the
myth grew out of sustaining the land and your dependence on it. This is an
agricultural country. We are very much dependent on the land. The ecology
of the land is woven into our basic mythology.’
Mythology and ecology hand-in-hand. Could belief
in a sacred Ganga translate into respect for nature, and therefore for sustainable
development? You cannot stop development. India needs the energy, the land
needs irrigation. But you can respect it. An awful lot of this debate about
Ganga anyway is probably not really about mythology at all. It’s basically
people fighting over an economic resource. Ganga is indeed a symbol in the
debate of rape versus respect of nature, about the misuse of resources, the
loss of respect for the river as life-giver, of its irreparable effect on
the lives of people. Destroy Ganga and you will therefore destroy the essence
of India.
The greatest danger to the
river comes from the goddess herself. I believe that the faith in the ability
of goddess Ganga to cure herself leads to avoiding the life and death issues
the river faces.
I think the other threat to the goddess may
be less from within India than from outside India. I worry that India may
be changing too fast. Like many others I worry that these changes may not
take into account the delicate fabric of traditional and rural India.
I used to think none of this would really matter.
India has suffered many physical and cultural invasions down through the centuries
- Aryans, Moghuls, British - and in each case bent and absorbed them, ‘Indianizing’
them. It’s a comforting scenario, part and parcel of the Indian concept
of circular time. But what if it doesn’t work this time? There’s
no law of physics that states time must always be circular, that it can never
experience a linear deviation. Can one go too far, beyond the point of no
return? Can the river Ganga effectively die?
How to convince those who worship the goddess
that the physical deterioration of the river can affect her essence?
It may be possible, but it will require ordinary
Indians to make that link, not just the members of its elite or outsiders.
