Abstract
This edited volume compiles writings focused on the river Ganga, exhibiting that, across time, the river continues to be a primary subject and an important character for philosophers, travellers, political leaders, scholars from myriad disciplines, poets and authors of fiction. The editors take their readers on a journey of the history of the Ganga’s significance in Hindu religion, in Indian social life, culture, political practice and more contemporarily in ecological debates. Selecting works to be included in such an ambitious volume could not have been simple; hence, the editors shape the introduction around a discussion of how and why they chose these particular writings. Doron, Barz and Nelson say they used two philosophers, Vallabha from medieval India and Vyasa who is considered the compiler of the Mahabharata, as their guides.
Vallabha’s three degrees of perceiving the Ganga as ‘material, spiritual and divine’, and Vyasa’s division of the Ganga into the numinous and the historical become the criteria for selecting particular writings and organising the order of the volume (pp. xi–xiii). None of these categories operate entirely exclusive of the other in each work or chapter and this intercontextuality of the experience of the river becomes the central theme of the book. The Ganga cannot be compartmentalised as either a natural body of water, as a goddess or as a source of livelihood and sustenance only. To experience the Ganga is to be met with a variety of conceptual frames, emotions and contradictions. For instance, the editors observe, ‘the reality of everyday life is often much less dignified than that portrayed in mythical imagination’ and this juxtaposition of a deep reverence for the river and the harsh lives of those who live along it flummoxed travellers to India in the 19th century as it surprises scholars writing more recently (p. xvi).
Moving from the numinous to the material, the volume begins with translated passages from epics such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, particularly the sections describing the descent of the Ganga onto the surface of the earth. These excerpts help establish the divinity, purity and power of the mighty river—a magnificence that continues to mesmerise even today and sets up a context for the description of religious rituals, beliefs and practices that are elaborated in later essays. The next section consists of a set of translated poems in which the Ganga functions as both a setting and a divinity to whom prayers are offered and, curiously, it also includes an excerpt from Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s will in which he expresses his desire to have his ashes strewn in the Ganga’s waters. It is perplexing why the editors have attached the will to this section as opposed to the one on historical writings. Another problem with this section is that none of the poems are analysed in any detail, their background explained or their usage mentioned, and for a reader who is not familiar with these, the poems may seem simplistic.
The next section consists of travelogues from the 19th century to more contemporary pieces, the former including texts only by foreigners and the latter consisting of both Indian and Western travel writers. Particularly fascinating are Ahmad Behbahani’s records from the early 19th century where he describes the city of Patna as ‘the Paradise of India’, with its flourishing markets and magnificent buildings and especially its beautiful setting on the banks of the sweet-watered Ganga (p. 57). James B. Fraser’s journey to Gangotri reveals that ritual and actual geography can differ, and for a devotee of the Ganga, they can co-exist without being in conflict. While Behbahani’s account allows us a glimpse of a time when economic life on the banks of the Ganga flourished and the cities along its course were considered the glorious cities of India, with Fraser, the reader encounters the dualism that operates in life around the Ganga. These themes will become important later in the book as the reader begins to trace continuities and contrasts in the work of contemporary scholars.
In the travelogues from more recent years, we glimpse the steady deterioration of the Ganga, the overcrowding, pollution, displacement and the severity of damages from disasters such as floods. The concern with pollution and deterioration continues into the section on fictional writing situated along the Ganga. Here, perhaps more severely, the authors associate the pollution of the Ganga with the seeming loss of morality in the Indian society, the injustice of deep-rooted socio-economic inequality, the prevalence of corruption and the growth of the cult of caricature-like god-men in religious practices.
The last section consists of scholarly work on the Ganga where the themes from earlier sections and different time periods come together and the reader is witness to a Ganga that appears burdened by the general flux and uncertainty faced by the modern Indian nation-state. The sense of Ganga being not only of the northern Gangetic plain but of all of India emerges from Diana Eck’s description of its sacred geography that encompasses the whole country and then in the descriptions of the Kumbha Mela at Allahabad by Vikram Seth where characters from different parts of India come together on the river’s bank every four years. The latter essays are chiefly concerned with the seeming contradiction between a deep reverence for the Ganga in religious practice and its continued neglect and pollution, by both the political class as well as by the religious institutions that claim to govern its worship. Why has there not been a socio-cultural and political revolution around the need to clean the river and to restore its environmental purity and socio-economic vibrancy, is the concern that the volume ends with.
As an introduction to the complex and rich life of the Ganga in the lived experience and imagination of India, this volume will be handy to all readers, a single point of reference for a range of genres of writing on this significant river.