Ganga, the river, according to myths, was a maiden exceedingly proud of her power. She condescended that she would come down to earth to liberate the accursed souls of ancestors of King Bhagirath but warned earthlings to prepare themselves for the trail of horrible devastation her furious torrential flow would unleash sweeping all that stood in her way. To cut a well-known story short, Shiva came to the rescue of humanity. He received the celestial waterfall on his head covered with matted hair taming the river chastening her with the lesson that it’s unwise to be proud of one’s untamed power. There is always a force mightier and more compassionate to discipline you.
Since then much water has flown down a meandering path from the glacial melt at Gaumukh to where the life-sustaining stream meets the sea. But the image of the Ganga has survived as a beloved and loving mother who happily takes on herself people’s sins absolving them of all guilt.
The holy river has been commemorated in exquisite artwork: sculpture, painting, poetry and dance. A monolith carved all over at Mahabalipuram dating back to early Pallava dynasty circa sixth century AD, moving poems by Kalidas, Adi Shankaracharya and Iqbal, folk paintings and lithographs executed by Raja Ravi Varma bear testimony to how it has cast an incomparable spell on our mind. Pt Jawaharlal Nehru claimed to be agnostic but paid a moving tribute to the Ganga—‘the River of India’—in his will.
Sadly, recent events have brought us extremely painfully down from the realm of myth to harsh reality. Pictures of thousands of unburned corpses floating on this consecrated waterway to heaven are a living nightmare that will continue to haunt us for long. There are some ‘leaders’ with steel in their heart who have the nerve to callously comment that throwing dead bodies in the Ganga is an age-old customary practice and that those who are consigned to it are ensured mukti (liberation). But most Indians are constrained to ask increasingly distressing questions. Indeed, devout Hindus ritually immersed ashes collected after cremation of dead family members in the holy river but such a large number of unburned corpses is unprecedented.
The correlation with the coronavirus pandemic and with the plight of the poor who can’t afford wood for the burning pyre is difficult to overlook. The state government’s efforts in Uttar Pradesh to deploy police to deter and apprehend ‘offenders’ responsible for this crime have only helped tarnish more its already tainted image and infuriated the helpless bereaved.
Most unfortunately, dead bodies floating on the Ganga polluting it dangerously have, like much else in contemporary India, become an image problem. Rather than cope with the challenge, the government’s priority appears to be damage control, changing the narrative, putting a different spin, mounting a distracting sideshow whatever. Image of an individual is paramount. Institutions (and we are not talking of the Central Pollution Control Board!) are paralysed or emasculated. Sooner or later the body count will come down but lasting damage to India’s image will be hard to repair. What concerns us even more is not what the world thinks of us, but how can we live when the hubris of our rulers have blinded them to the systematic choking of a once great life-sustaining stream?
Kannada poet Gopalakrishna Adiga had once reminded us that there flows a Ganga within us all. Antah salila-sadanira. We don’t have to travel thousands of miles to bathe and wash our sins away in its cleansing waters. Alas, this stream within seems to have dried up. Can the physical river survive when our conscience is dead? We move around like zombies or a herd of sheep unable to distinguish between right or wrong blindly following commands of those who have usurped the role of leaders. It is specious to argue that the elected have the mandate of the people. Those who betray the oath to protect the Constitution and Rule of Law should be put in the dock for profaning the sacred.
The Constitution of India is not a sectarian scripture, nor a collection of myths. It is a document that represents a confluence (like the Sangam at Prayag) of myriad historic memories of the Indian people—of shared joys and sorrows, struggles and dreams for future. It, like the Ganga, has many contributories, tributaries and distributaries. We can’t afford to let it suffer from pollution or witness silently drying up of what has been reduced to a trickle. It is only the Fundamental Rights enshrined in it that guarantee Liberation and Dignity to the living and the dead alike.
Many years ago, another great Assamese poet—Bhupen Hazarika—had written some poignant lines about ‘Burha Luit’ (Old Man Luit), also known as the Brahmaputra river. This poem was translated by Pt Narendra Sharma using Ganga in place of Luit. The words continue to resonate eerily. Vistaar hai apaar, praja dono paar, kare hahakar... O Ganga tum, O Ganga behti ho kyun? Hazarika had sung these lines with great feeling not as hopeless lament but in protest expressing outrage.
Pushpesh Pant
pushpeshpant@gmail.com
Former professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University