Who Owns the Ganga? A River of Many Faiths, Not One

My husband’s family is from eastern Uttar Pradesh. The river Varuna flows close beside his home; the Varuna is a tributary of the Ganga and together with Assi it creates the name of India’s holiest city beside the mighty Ganga, Varanasi. On my first visit as a new bride to my in-laws home, I remember him proudly introducing me to the river that flows past his ancestral lands with a fragment of this song: Ganga maiya tohre piyari chadhaibo… (O Mother Ganga, I offer this yellow dhoti to you…) A wealth of love, and pride, lay hidden in these simple words. On each subsequent visit, over the years, I have whispered these words to the river upon first catching sight of it as it glimmers beside the road or flows beneath a bridge.

Today, it feels strange, and sad, that FIRs are being lodged against 14 Muslim men for taking a boat out on the river and opening their fast on the Ganga; they are being accused of hurting the sentiments of the majority community. But what of their sentiments? And that of their forefathers? What of those people, such as my husband’s family, who have lived beside the Ganga for generations and have nothing but the greatest affection and regard for this special river that has nurtured civilisation for millennia? In the New India that is Bharat we have already divided up colours (saffron is Hindu, green is Muslim), food (sattvic vs halal), etc; are we also going to decide who has first rights over rivers and mountains?

This might be a good time to revisit the vast amounts of Urdu poetry written on the Ganga by Urdu poets. And the perfect place to start might be the vast ouvre of Iqbal, the poet we are constantly being taught to hate: the much-despised Muhammad Iqbal. Writing his Tarana-e-Hind (The Song of India) in 1904 as a patriotic song for children that went on to become one of the most popular songs for school choruses till its political baggage was discovered and it was promptly discarded, Iqbal begins with ‘Saare jahan se achha Hindostan hamara’ (Our India is the fairest in the entire world) and contains these memorable lines:

Ai aabrood-e-Ganga woh din hai yaad tujh ko 

Utra tire kinaare jab kaarvaan hamara

O waters of the Ganga do you remember that day

When our caravan had halted beside your banks

Waves upon waves of people came over the centuries and settled down in the fertile lands watered by this mighty river. Flowing for a distance of 2,525 km, all the way from the mountains to the sea, it has fostered an entire civilisation and a way of life. In a long poem entitled ‘Ganga’, Suroor Barabankvi addresses the river thus:

 

Ai aabrood-e-Ganga uff rii tiri safaai

Ye tera husn dil-kash ye tarz-o-dil-rubaai

O waters of the Ganga, such is your purity

Your beauty is so heart-tugging it steals my heart

The last of the great classical Mughal poets, Dagh Dehlvi, speaks naturally, effortlessly, organically of bathing in the Ganga in this sher:

Gham se kahiin najaat miley chaiyn paaen hum

Dil khoon mein nahaaye to Ganga nahaaen hum

If we were to escape sorrow and find some peace

Our heart would bathe in blood and we bathe in the Ganga

That the Ganga is a synonym for purity is found in a poem about Urdu written by Sardar Jafri:

Haseen dilkash jawaan Urdu

Zabaan woh dhul ke jis ko Ganga ke jal se paakeezgi mili hai

Beautiful, alluring, youthful Urdu

A language that has been washed in the waters of the Ganga to attain purity

Waseem Barelvi likens his city to the river in this nazm:

Shahr mera udaas Ganga sa 

Koi bhi aaye aur apne paap 

Kho ke jaata hai dho ke jaata hai

My city is like the sad Ganga

Whoever comes here with his sins

Loses them by washing in the river

The boat on the river image is re-imagined thus by Ibn Safi:

Husn banaa jab bahti Ganga

Ishq hua kaaghaz ki naav

When beauty turned into a flowing Ganga

Love became a paper boat

That the Ganga is loved equally by all is evident from this whimsical sher by Nida Fazli from a ghazal that has the following lines too Brindaban ke Krishn Kanhaiya Allah Hu:

Jaisa jis ka bartan waisa us ka tan 

Ghat-ti badh-ti Ganga maiya Allah hu

A person’s body is akin to the size of his utensil

Mother Ganga rises and falls, Allah, O Allah

In a lyrically tender poem entitled ‘Tere Khushbu Mein Basey Khat’ (Letters Drenched in Your Fragrance) Rajinder Nath Rahbar writes about surrendering his most treasured possessions in the safekeeping of the river:

Umr-bhar ki jo kamaaii thhi ganvaa aayaa hoon

Tere khat aaj main Ganga mein bahaa aayaa hoon

I have thrown away whatever was my lifelong earning

Today I have floated away your letters in the Ganga

Two modern Hindi poets writing the ghazal in Hindi have written about the Ganga thus. First Gopaldas Neeraj:

Aag bahtii hai yahaan Ganga mein Jhelum mein bhi

Koi batlaaye kahaan jaa ke nahaayaa jaaye

Fire flows in the Ganga and in the Jhelum too

Someone should tell me where I should go to bathe

And Dushyant Kumar:

Ho gayii hai peer parvat sii pighalnii chaahiye

Iss Himaale se koi Ganga nikalnii chaahiye

The pain is so immense that the mountain should melt

A Ganga should emerge from this Himalaya

Then there are the countless film songs that celebrate the Ganga, such as Ganga aaye kahan se, Ganga jaaye kahan re… from the film Kabuliwala, Tu ganga ki mauj main Jamuna ka dhaara… from Baiju Bawra, Hum uss desh ke waasi hain… from Jis Desh Mein Ganga Bahti Hai, Mere man ki Ganga aur tere man ki Jamuna… from Sangam, Ganga maiyya mein jab tak ke paani rahe… from Suhaag Raat, Ganga tera paani amrit …from the eponymous film. Each, in their own way, reinforced the image in the nooks and crannies of the popular imagination that had been fostered by the Urdu poet for a long, long time.

Rakhshanda Jalil is a Delhi-based writer, translator and researcher. 

The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.