River Goddess Needs Respite?

Rescue me!!! This is the voice of none other than The River Goddess Ma Ganga. Ever since childhood, I heard so much in praise of River Goddess Ganga that I could hardly wait to see her when I was visiting Haridwar with my family for some rituals. The very sight of the holy river and its flowing sound captured me. As I stood there, I thought I heard that somewhere the Bengali song ‘O nodire’ is being played. It was of course playing in my mind. Everything that I heard, read and believed about the Ganga started coming back to me.
...The Ganga winds her way down the Himalayas at Rishikesh on her long eastern journey towards the sea. Sri Ramakrishna would call the Ganga as Brahmavari, that is, Brahmn in the form of water, capable of bringing about dispassion and making one a free soul. This metaphysical attribute of the Ganga is the basis for all the ceremonial rituals performed on its banks, from the tonsure of heads to death related rituals. Yogic literature views the descent of the Ganga as symbolic of the descent of the divine consciousness. Ganga is the divine consciousness itself, flowing from the siva-self, which every seeker intends to merge in. A cosmic touch is felt and experienced each time one bathes in the waters of the Ganga. The water Gangajal is an important element of rituals related to birth and death. A pilgrimage to the various points of the Ganga is a liberating experience. The ‘Ganga Lahiri’ one of the most popular bhajans, composed by Pandit Jaganatha, talks of the river as the mother who alone would care for the outcaste and the wicked sons, while other mothers may be tempted to care only for the good sons. Ganga signifies not just a mere stream of water but it stands for the numerous streams of Indian culture, the evolution and the eternal continuity of Indian Civilisation and the power to redeem the fallen. The daily worship of the River Goddess at dusk by performing aarti on her banks invokes her as the mother who bestows spiritual wealth. It is said that Akbar would relish drinking the Ganga waters, and Gangajal was regularly sent to the emperor in huge jars, wherever he was stationed. Jawaharlal Nehru wrote of the Ganga as the soul, the heart beat of the Indian tradition. It is this living tradition which still calls out, metaphorised as ever flowing water, in which all differences are dissolved, and no separate identities remain in our search for that transcendent reality...
After spending a few more minutes at the Ganga ghat, I walked back towards my family. We lodged at Birla House which was very nearby to the Ganga. It was late afternoon and everyone settled down for a quick nap after having lunch. The rituals were to take place the next day. So we had plenty of time. While everyone rested, I and my elder sister decided to visit the nearby market. As we walked, we came across a bridge under which we noticed dirty sewage water flowing swiftly. To our shock, we further noticed that the dirty, poisonous water was flowing and merging into the Ganga. We walked towards the nearby shops and approached the shopkeepers asking them about the sewage canal merging into the River Ganga. They answered with a heavy heart that there are many such canals merging into the Ganga at different points. These canals are meant to carry rain water however a nearby factory that got constructed some years back is dumping all the waste into the Ganga through these canals. These canals are also carrying untreated sewage water into the Ganga. They were told that the government is planning to do something about it but it has been a decade now with no progress on the same.
Let me walk you through some facts now:
As per study, the sacred river Ganga is put under D category. While A category is fit for drinking, B for bathing, C for agriculture and D is for excessive pollution level. The main cause of high level pollution in Ganga is due to disposal of untreated sewage directly into the river from its starting point in Gaumukh till it reaches the Bay of Bengal. Apart from sewage, disposal of half burnt bodies, industrial effluents and hazardous medical waste are also adding to the pollution levels in the Ganga.


Ganga Action Plan or GAP was a program launched by Govt. of India in April 1985 in order to reduce the pollution load on the river. The program was launched with much fanfare, but it failed to decrease the pollution level in the river, after spending a huge sum of fourteen hundred crore rupees over a period of 15 years. The activities of GAP were declared closed on 31st March 2000. The govt. claims that the schemes under the GAP have been successful, but actual measurements and scientific data tell a different story. The failure of GAP is evident but corrective action is lacking.


Ganga declared as National River by PM Manmohan Singh on Nov 5th, 2008 to achieve the objectives of the clean-up operation.


A group of students in Varanasi participated in a cleanliness drive to clean the River Ganga. They used brooms, cleaned the banks of the river and removed dirt from the river.


Few non-profit and non-governmental organisations like the Sankat Mochan Foundation have been struggling to alleviate the environmental degradation of the River Ganga. The efforts of such organisations to restore Ganga to its pristine purity and glory by preventing discharge of pollutants into it has found support from all corners of the world.


We enquired with a few more local people in Haridwar. The owner of Krishna Tours & Travels confessed that he is well aware of the fact that the waters of the Ganga are polluted, but he along with his family, continue to take dip in the Ganga everyday and drink the Gangajal. He said that he never worried about getting sick because he like almost everyone in Haridwar had faith in Ganga Mata. We stepped out of the market area and while heading back to Birla House we noticed that there was not a single dustbin and the garbage was heaped at different corners. The next morning, we got ready for the rituals and went to one of the Ganga ghats in Haridwar. I noticed a board at one corner of the ghat that mentioned the rules & regulations to be followed while bathing in the Ganga. Let me share one rule that I witnessed was being constantly violated at the ghat. The rule was not to use soap in the Ganga waters. But almost everyone brought soap and was washing themselves and their clothes in the Ganga. It was a sad sight. My consciousness speaks when I land up throwing an ice cream wrapper on the road and I pick it up to find a dustbin. I wondered what about their consciousness. I recalled what my friend, one day, very rightly said that such awareness begins at home. We grow up watching our parents, teachers, society etc. Today, the kid saw his mother washing clothes in the Ganga, tomorrow he would do the same. We left the ghat after the rituals and got ready for our train to Delhi. On my way back home, I had an ocean of thoughts in my head. The Ganga is not just a river but a mother, a goddess, a tradition, a culture and much more. It is so ironical that River Goddess Ganga that purifies everyone needs a little bit of cleaning herself. We are living in an age where we need reasons to do something right. The Ganga now has been declared the National River. Hurray! We have a reason to keep it clean now. The NGO’s, Government and foreign organisations are doing their bit to alleviate the degraded condition of the Ganga by construction of pipelines, sewage treatment plants etc and we have witnessed that from the past 15 years it has been work in progress. Let NGO’s and Government do their bit and I’ll do my bit. We think that how can I make a difference when NGO’s and other groups are finding it so difficult. It’s true, though the students in Varanasi did not think so. They landed in the ghats with brooms and did their bit. We must have heard about the Power of One. Why not apply it here? Each drop can make the Ganga, Each one of us can make the difference. We can do our bit by working for an NGO or the government itself and study why it is taking so long for the implementation of the projects and share are ideas; Promote education and health care programs for the less privileged; Get media attention; Contribute towards maintenance of cleanliness like keeping a dustbin in front of your shop; Spread awareness. It is the miraculous love of River Goddess Ganga and the faith we have on her that despite the waters being so polluted majority of the population is healthy. But for how long? I can’t answer that. All I can answer is that I will do my bit and River Goddess Ganga, I will come back.