Watching our rivers vanish
By Manohar Malgonkar

OUR ancestors adored their rivers; they extolled them, sang their praises, indeed worshipped some. Our rivers have always been looked upon as the prized gifts of Mother India herself, and like her they are all women: Ganga, Yamuna, Kaveri, Narmada, Tapti, Godavari and Sindhu, (or Indus) which has given our subcontinent its very name, Hindustan.

The collection of Sanskrit hymns which form our Vedas, is believed to be the world’s oldest literature. In the words of the Oxford History of India: "It stands quite by itself, high up on an isolated peak of antiquity" One of these volumes of the Vedas called Rigveda contains a section devoted to our rivers which is called Nadi Stuti, or "an adoration of rivers."

Nineteen of our rivers figure in Nadi Stuti. If only because the rivers of the Punjab get fuller coverage, the author of Nadi Stuti is presumed to be a Punjabi. But he knew quite a lot about some of the other Indian rivers, too. He describes the Indus as "a gigantic mass of moving water without a single obstruction in its course through the plains". The Indus, the poet concludes, "constitutes a blessing to those who have the good fortune to reside in the land through which it flows".

So Sindhu — the Indus — was a mighty river, a boon to the land through which it flowed. But that did not make it a sacred river. In Vedic times, the holiest river in India was — no, not the Ganga — but a river called the Saraswati. Nadi Stuti singles out the Saraswati for special praise — indeed flattery. In its invocation it is addressed as Priyatame, or most-loved, and Naditame, the River of Rivers, and even Ambitame: Most revered of mothers.

The Saraswati was a powerful river — or so Nadi Stuti tells us — so powerful that its waves could shatter the most formidable obstacles that stood in its path.

Over the centuries, these poetic fancies came to be absorbed in the fabric of the rituals of the country’s religion, Hinduism. So the ‘Eight Lines’ of the Hindu wedding service are a memorial to the country’s rivers, and so too, our Brahmins, whenever they take their compulsory daily bath, are believed to say thanks to the rivers which bring their munificence to our land and, by projection, make it possible for him to have plenty of water for his bath. Therefore, as he splashes himself he mumbles the names: ‘Ganga and Yamuna, Godavari and Saraswati, Narmada, Sindhu and Kaveri — my gratitude for bringing water within my reach.

Hindu weddings are solemnised by the chanting of a mantra known as the Mangalashtaka or ‘Eight Auspicious Lines’. Those lines are composed by stringing together the names of our major rivers and begin: "Ganga, Sindhu, Saraswati, Yamuna, Godavari, Narmada."

All of which is proof that, in Vedic times, which are said to be at least three thousand years before the birth of Christ, a river called Saraswati was one of India’s major rivers. Mercifully all the other rivers that figure in the Mangalashtaka are with us today, but the Saraswati has vanished without a trace. No one can tell even its approximate course for sure. Was it the river system which the Oxford History of India tells us, once "flowed down the mountains through Bhavalpur" and has disappeared? Who can say? The same history also tells us that virtually all our rivers have gone on changing their courses in the past so that "the rivers of the rishis are not the rivers of today".

Maybe not. Even so, the fact remains that the major rivers which figure in the Nadi Stuti are still with us, five thousand years from the times of the Rishis — all except the Saraswati which, by all accounts was not only a mighty watercourse but, even in comparison to the Sindhu and the Ganga, important enough to be addressed as Naditame, the River of Rivers and even, Ambitame, the Mother of Rivers.

According to experts who make a study of such things, India does not possess enough fresh water for its needs. Most other countries, it seems, are better served in this regard. Perhaps that is the reason why — our nagging awareness that we don’t have as many freshwater lakes and rivers as we should have — we have always tended to value our rivers so highly, to the extent of deifying them, and also why so many of our riverside temple-towns have become our tirthas, or places of pilgrimage. There is, of course, Varanasi, but there are other towns too, peppered all over the country: Nasik, Onkareshwar, Pandharpur, Ujjain, Mathura, and Prayag.

In fact there is hardly a river in India which is not touched by holiness.

The sad part is that these rivers which are also our lifelines and which have been with us since pre-historic times, are disappearing — and disappearing fast. One reason, of course is our excessive population growth. The same rivers that served our needs 50 years ago now have to serve three Indias in terms of numbers of citizens. But there is something else, even more damaging to our water resources, the insatiable demand for fresh water by our industrial entrepreneurs.

Just as, in the past, you could not think of a river in India which was not, in some way touched with divinity, today you cannot think of a river which has not been polluted by the waste fluids of some industry. If you know of such a river, please guard it well because the scouts of industry are out in packs, looking for just such a river which still remains unpolluted.

No matter how many thousands of years they have been around, the days of our rivers are numbered. Not many of them will still be around a hundred years from now.

Most of the major rivers are facing the fate of the Ganga, of being clogged by the accumulation of the waste matter dumped in them. This is a consequence of the growth of population compounded by the increasing use of plastic bags which are all but indestructible. Anyhow, even before our rivers get clogged with the waste matter of everyday living, they will have ceased to be what we esteem them for, as the providers of fresh water for our needs.

Because industry, too, needs inordinate quantities of water and the demands of industry are of paramount importance to our rulers: whenever the needs of the public, or of the environment, or of the wildlife, come into conflict with the aims of industrial entrepreneurs, industry invariably wins.

And as a rule, industry transforms the water of a river into filthy acid fluids. Trace the course of any river. Somewhere along its course, you will bump into some monstrous plant spewing black smoke into the sky. That is the point where the river stops being a river and turns into an outlet for the effluents of the plant.

There are said to be guidelines which seek to protect environmental pollution as well as wildlife. But these are openly violated. For instance, it is laid down that no major industrial unit should be situated within 25 km, of a wildlife sanctuary.

Twenty-five kilometres! Why, in Karnataka we have an enormous paper mill spewing foul smells and smoke into the atmosphere and thousands of gallons of chemicals into the river which flows past it, and that plant is actually located within a wildlife sanctuary.

A hundred years from now, our rivers will remain only as a mantra of the wedding service — I very much doubt if there will be enough water for a brahmin to indulge in the luxury of a daily bath.