Rivers, up close and personal

Rivers, up close and personal

There was a time when there was a river in everybody’s life. Cultures developed alongside rivers. Rivers sustained farmlands; they were home to a variety of fish; they were conduits of commerce and cultural exchange. People followed waterways, from canals to great rivers, to build businesses, communities and new lives. Rivers were revered and feared. The river was a playmate to a child to splash about or joy for a woman after a hard day’s work. A river could also be the unpredictable elder who inspired awe. Flooding at many times turned a harbinger of life and prosperity into a raging torrent that destroyed human lives and ruined crops, leading to food shortages and starvation.

But people learned to live with such vagaries. They learnt about its ebbs and flows. They tried to avoid places where its raging waters would strike, and settle where it would be at its nurturing best. They learnt to make use of the silt left by its floodwaters and to avoid the sand which harmed their crops. But even then rivers flooded, changed courses and wreaked havoc. People learnt to take that in their stride, sometimes with wit our folklore is replete with.

Over the past 150 years or so, this connection has been severed. The change happened sometime during colonial rule. Colonial water planners and water engineers introduced the idea of tapping rivers. Colonial intervention transformed seasonally inundated floodplains into sites for irrigation, involving construction of barrages and weirs. But colonial understanding of hydrology could not come to terms with the idiosyncrasies of Indian rivers. Replete with sand and sediment, most of them refused to flow between banks. Unfortunately, our planners did not take note of this failure of the colonial state when they devised plans for Indian rivers.

At the same time, the people also lost the spiritual connect with rivers. There is probably a river in each of our lives. But it is distant. Today many grow into adulthood without having seen a river in its full glory. Many of the mighty rivers have been reduced to a trickle.

A lot of us still venerate rivers. In fact, the number of pilgrims thronging the sites associated with big rivers, the Ganga, Yamuna and the Brahmaputra, seems to be growing. But there is a discord between such ritual veneration and the ways we treat our rivers. Every pilgrimage adds to the burden of trash on rivers. Many of our rivers have turned into veritable sewers. Some of them are toxic cesspools. We have even lost rivers—we are a generation that has turned flowing fresh water rivers into rivers of sewage and garbage. Today in official documents these rivers have been renamed as drains. There cannot be a bigger loss, a bigger travesty.

In this Independence Day special, we bring this collection of writings to celebrate the river—what it was in our lives and what it must be tomorrow. India’s independence is meaningless if we cannot save our rivers.

My entire childhood and young adulthood had passed in close connection with rivers, so it was like a great viraha (pain of separation) when I found that my marital home did not have a river flowing right next to it. But soon I was introduced to three small rivers flowing nearby. The Chudaman river is also known as the Khadak (boulder) river because its path lies between huge black boulders.

Compared with the big boulders, the tiny river sliding between them struck one as too small, even fragile, but its water was always crystal clear. Diving off one of the boulders into the doh (deep pool within riverbed) was a thrilling experience. A number of village children turned up there to learn swimming. Neither they nor we adults ever missed a swimming pool.

This river flowed in beautiful curves, enriching the farms along its banks. The banks were lush with greenery and its curves created many large and small natural dohs along its course, which held water during the four summer months when the river dried up. One very deep doh, aptly named Junepani (old water), was known to have water right through the summer into the monsoon when “new” water refreshed the river.

Some dohs were reserved for cattle to drink and bathe, some for women. Some of the shallow dohs were ideal for washing linen and heavy drapery like durries and blankets. On sunny days in the sharad (early winter) season following the monsoons, families would load their dirty laundry on bullock carts and go to the river. The accumulated dust of summer and the damp smells acquired through the long monsoon wash off easy in the river, and it is easier to dry these heavy pieces on the sun-warmed boulders than at home. Returning home with stacks of crisp, fresh linen also freshened up the people.

Time flew collecting shells and rocks, making architectural masterpieces out of sand, and watching birds, fish. Boredom, the bane of modern childhood, was not known to river children As childhood turned to teenage, the river was around to absorb the pain of romantic disappointments. There was no distress the river could not absorb. It was counsellor, loving elder and shrink

Using the river for daily washing jobs made sense. Washing at home would mean drawing up well water manually. After finishing chores, women would take a laundry basket and make a beeline for the river, trailed by small children. The river, for women, is a cleanser of dirty clothes, refresher of sore body and healer of hurt soul, all rolled in one. Pounding the clothes on stones, rinsing them in the running water, squeezing them out and drying them on the sand, all act as a catharsis against the accumulated hurts of a rough day. Can’t talk back to the mother-in-law? Give her sari a good pounding. Longing to grab that insensitive husband’s collar? Well, do it now! Utensils serve the same purpose. A mixture of sand and mud, and some force, and presto, both vessel and heart are clean!

All this done, women dive into the river. The children have been playing in the river or the sand all along. A little swimming against the strong current, a good scrub with fine river sand, unburdening with friends, and at the end of the long day of work we are again fresh, full of energy, and hungry! I often wonder how much of the unavoidable stress in women’s lives has been absorbed quietly by rivers over centuries. What role do rivers play in giving women the strength to face the odds heaped up against them? My family’s ancestral village of Shendurjana Ghat is flanked by two tiny rivers—the Jivana and the Devana. My husband has many fond memories of the deep friendship between children and these rivers. Since there were hardly any deep spots, children could play there unsupervised. Children spent their entire day, barring school hours, either near the river or in it. Elders would keep a close watch to ensure that no one defecated or otherwise dirtied the river or its bank. “Play” included important learning activities like grinding calcium-rich lime nuggets found in the river to make toothpaste. Then there was climbing on tamarind trees along the river to collect and eat tamarind, collecting gum from babool trees and using it to make kites. Climbing and swimming, skills for which parents pay a packet now, were learnt effortlessly. In the process, children also got lessons in independence, team-work and safety.

The river, for women, is a cleanser of dirty clothes, refresher of sore body and healer of hurt soul. The cleaning process acts as a catharsis against the accumulated hurts of a rough day The Chudaman river has eight dams proposed along its course. Two have already been constructed. The driedup riverbed is now good only for dumping garbage

Time flew swiftly in collecting colourful shells and rocks and making architectural masterpieces out of sand, watching all the wonderful birds, fish, insects. Boredom, the bane of modern childhood, was never known to the river children. The eyes of adults who grew up beside these rivers light up when they talk about the river. Friendships were formed and forged, and life-and-death secrets shared in the witness of the river. As childhood turned into teenage, the river was around to absorb the intense pain of romantic disappointments. Its assuring touch would wash away the endless intense agitations of adolescence. There was no distress that the sight of the clean, bubbling river could not absorb. No expensive psychiatrists were needed for teen problems. The river was counsellor, loving elder and shrink.

The river was a mother and a bosom pal to women, children, farmers, cattle, birds, insects, animals, all. A visit to the river meant cleansing and freshening up, inner and outer. You went back from the river rested and healed. The only relic of that intense relationship left today is the practice of taking a dead person to the river bank for her final rest.

When I told my sons I was going to write about my relationship with the rivers, they were surprised. What is there to write? And what rivers? They are just dirty nullahs! The truth of this strikes me when I look at those rivers now. Sewage, plastic bags and pigs… What happened to all the small rivers that flowed through every village? First, deforestation has destroyed nature’s source of perennial flow. Second, with forests gone, loose silt has filled up all the life-giving dohs. Today if I dive into the doh where I used to, I will attain swift release through a smashed head.

Then there are the dams that have stopped their natural flow. The Chudaman river has eight dams proposed along its course. Two have already been constructed. At the spot where trees used to lean into the crystal clear water, there is an ugly wall and not a spot of green. The dried up bed of the river is now good only for dumping garbage.

Some 30 years back, these rivers would flow for at least eight months a year. Even when they dried up, there was enough water for cattle and daily needs. Farmers near the river would build small check-dams to irrigate their winter crops. The turmeric crop, for which this region was known, was made possible by the river. Today the flow does not last for even the four monsoon months. The self-sufficient turmeric cultivation is gone, and now farmers have to either invest in wells and borewells for irrigation, or try to earn enough political clout to get dam water.

But more than that, somewhere the connection between river and people has been lost. There is no desire left to connect with the river, to at least protect what is left, to once again build up at least a bit of the great relationship that is lost.

Translated from the original Marathi version by Aparna Pallavi

Six years ago, I took some of the roads and trails that pilgrims on the Char Dham Yatra follow to reach Gaumukh. I went not as a devotee but as a journalist, wanting to see the glacier where the Ganga originates, where Shiva’s locks begin to stream down, carrying the mighty goddess of a river gently to the plains.

I knew that the Gangotri glacier is only one of the sources of the great Ganga. In terms of sheer volume of water, the glaciers and rivers of Nepal are equally important sources. But I felt I could not write a book about the Ganga river basin without laying eyes on the source that most Hindus consider singular and sacred.

I chronicled this trip in the first chapter of my book Dirty, Sacred Rivers. It did not have a title yet; at that point it was far from being a book. But a central question was very much in my mind: why are the rivers of South Asia, so sacred in the minds of Hindus, so filthy and so abused? The question helped keep me focused for five years as I tried to grasp some aspects of South Asia’s water and river crisis.

I went to Gangotri and Gaumukh in September, 2007. There was some rain, a long day and night of it, but not such a deluge as recently fell in Uttarakhand. I enjoyed my visit to the bottom of the glacier because I love walking in the higher reaches of the Himalayas under almost any circumstance. But the sight of Gangotri’s magnificent snout was not the signal event of this foray into the Indian Himalayas. The really riveting experience was on the return trip. As I rode with other tourists, pilgrims and residents in one of the mountain jeep-taxis that ply the rough roads of Uttarakhand, we were twice stopped by landslides.

The Uttarakhand disaster, along with similar events involving wind or water, are usually called natural disasters. But we frequently find that human error caused or compounded them Some call the Himalayas fragile. That may be the wrong word. The Himalaya are just busy being the youngest— walls of mud cascading down hills, rivers changing course. All of this has been going on for 50 million years

The late monsoon rainfall had caused sodden earth to slide down hillsides all along the road from Gangotri to Uttarkashi, obstructing the road with piles of gooey mud and rocks—ranging from pebbles to boulders the size of a small hut. The debris was cleared within a few hours, thanks to all the road- and tunnel-building equipment on hand in Uttarakhand. People who live and travel in this region are used to such delays. I have to admit I kind of enjoyed it. The roads are rough, the drivers are tough, the construction guys work fast to clean up landslides so that tourists and pilgrims in jeeps can continue their journey.

Getting stuck in a minor landslide for a while can be part of the adventure for someone like me, a stranger in a strange land; especially when one is pretty quickly freed by intrepid guys on bulldozers. But the memory of those landslides, and of having barely missed being caught under one of them, allows me to begin to imagine recent events. In June 2013 mudslides destroyed towns and people’s lives. Those landslides were magnified a hundredfold, even a thousandfold, over the typical hillslope failures that temporarily obstruct the narrow, winding roads of the Indian Himalayas.

The Himalayas are young and unstable. Some refer to the mountain environment as fragile, but maybe that’s the wrong word. The Himalayas are just doing their thing; they’re busy being the youngest (and the highest) mountain range on earth, going through their own growing pains. Walls of mud cascading down hillsides, rivers jumping their banks or changing their courses. None of this is new; it has been going on for about 50 million years. And now the rambunctiousness of the Himalayas are being compounded by anthropogenic climate change.

What is, perhaps, new is the number of people who frequent the region and the extent of construction in it, and global warming’s effect on the monsoon—altering where rain falls, in what quantity, whether it comes early, or late, or not at all. The heaviest rains in decades this early in the season fell in Uttarakhand this past June. Whether or not the deluge was due to global warming, the “atmospheric brown cloud,” normal variation or some combination of these, coming years are likely to bring more unexpectedly heavy rains.

The Kosi flood occurred after a part of the embankment crumbled under far less than catastrophic stress. The river was higher than land around it because sediments had been trapped behind an embankment Across the globe there must be planning for disasters that may become regular as extreme climatic events collide with misguided development. The subcontinent has reason to be wary of climate change

People venture into this region at their own peril—or they ought to. The first men who tried to get to the top of the Everest knew this. Many of the thousands who now try to reach that summit each year, with all their altitude-subduing high-tech equipment, seem to forget that. Attempting to climb the Everest is relatively easy now: all you need is a lot of money and comparable fitness. But people still die there. Something similar may apply to road and hotel building in Uttarakhand so that thousands of people can reach the four holy spots on the famous Char Dham Yatra. If humans can build or travel, they will, whether it is wise or not. Thus, tens of thousands of people travel up to Kedarnath and Gangotri in buses and jeeps, where once only barefoot sadhus toiled up mountain paths for weeks to reach pilgrimage sites that were meant to be remote.

The Uttarakhand disaster of 2013, the floods in Pakistan in 2010, along with similar events involving wind or water throughout the world are usually called “natural disasters”. Digging a little deeper we frequently find that human error caused, or seriously compounded, the death and destruction that may follow extreme floods.

I also spent some time in Bihar, where floods are almost yearly occurrences. Nepal’s Himalayan rivers cascade down to the Gangetic plain, bringing tonnes of Himalayan sediment along with surges of monsoon rain, all of which once travelled on to the Bay of Bengal. That downrush created Bangladesh and Calcutta. Challenging though it was, people in North Bihar once knew how to live on their land; they adapted to the monsoon rain and silt and used it to grow crops. Then came embankments, the result of engineering dreams meant to control the monsoon and keep people “safe.”

The Kosi flood of 2008 was called a natural disaster after a section of the Kosi embankment crumbled under far less than catastrophic stress. But the catastrophe was not monsoon rain; the biggest problem was that the river was higher than the land around it because sediments had been trapped behind an embankment for almost half a century. And as in Uttarakhand, construction in former channels of the Kosi river was swept away. When an embankment or a moraine breaks, water will find its way into old channels as gravity takes it downstream. Thus losses of homes and lives are compounded.

The government in Uttarakhand seems to be acknowledging that the recent devastation was not entirely natural. Before the death toll was complete, the government banned all construction along the rivers. But if there are no similar floods for five, 10 or 20 years, will people and governments remember? Or, will construction encroach once again on riverbanks and in channels that Himalayan rivers have temporarily abandoned?

All around the world there must be planning for “disasters” that may become regular events as extreme climatic events collide with misguided development. The subcontinent has a very long history, and reason to be wary of what climate change can do. The Indus Valley Civilisation may have declined, or at least decamped, because of shifting rivers and errant monsoons. Back then, there were plenty of good places to move to; it is very possible some of the Harrappan folks settled in the Gangetic plain or made their way up to the Kathmandu Valley.

But there is nowhere else to go now. The subcontinent has much at stake and challenges as great as those of any region on the planet. What happened along the Alaknanda and the Bhagirathi in June seems like a timely warning to reconsider the kinds of development that are safe and sensible in the Himalayas.

Will it be heeded?

In the summer of 1842 a young officer in the English East India Company’s army, Lieutenant Cunningham, was deputed to camp on the banks of the Sutlej river at Wangtoo in the territory of the Rampur-Bushahr state (in present-day Himachal Pradesh). He was directed to keep an eye on the Khalsa general Zorawar Singh whose armies had overrun Ladakh, expelled the Tibetan authorities from Garo and come down into Spiti. The British were nervous that Zorawar Singh will cross the river and intrude into their territory on the eastern bank of the Sutlej. Zorawar Singh never crossed the river and the Sutlej kept intact its reputation of being an important border marker due to the difficulty of crossing its turbulent stream.

However, one morning Cunningham found a caravan of a few dozen mules trundling along the route up from Wangtoo to Shipke. Enquiries revealed that the caravan hoped to go further to Garo and thence to Lhasa, where they were to deposit their wares of exotic birds, spices, forest products and handloom as the tribute of the Rampur king to the court in Peking. This trip was put to a hasty stop by the startled Cunningham, who reported to his superiors in Delhi that the Raja of that hill state claimed that they had sent this tribute to Peking “since times immemorial”.

The Sutlej is the only river that cuts through the impassable Himalayas to flow from Tibet into the plains of India For a long time the river was the only route open to cross the Himalayas in winters, when heavy snow blocks passes

A few years earlier in 1819, just after David Ochterlony and William Fraser had defeated the Gurkhas and conquered the region between the Sutlej and the Kali from the Gurkha kingdom, the British had organised an expedition to find a way through the mighty Himalayas into Tibet and further into Central Asia and China. In a fascinating account, Captain J D Herbert, who led this exploration, discovers that the Sutlej was the only route possible for armies to move from the “plains of Hindoostan” to the “desolate” lands of Tibet. While he managed to identify a route for the army, he also reported on the difficulties of sustaining an army in the cold desert beyond and, thus, no British army ever traversed this valley. Earlier, in 1808, Captain F V Raper had gone up the Ganges only to find that this valley did not provide a good route into “Tartary”.

The rivers of the Himalayas have fascinated the people of the north Indian plains from antiquity. These mighty streams of water, irrigating their agriculture and nurturing their lives, arbiters of their prosperity, have been deified and have become well known all over the subcontinent, even in far off geographies where they do not flow. The most famous of these today is, of course, the Ganga flowing out of Shiva’s hair. The river is a goddess with the holiest of cities on its banks. The Indus to the west gave the land between the Himalayas and the oceans its name. Bringing up the eastern flank, the Brahmaputra, as the name suggests, is the son of the creator of the world.

However, the Sutlej is perhaps the most unique of the Himalayan rivers. Known to the ancients as Satadru, it is the only river which cuts through the Himalayan mountain ranges to flow from Tibet into the plains of north India, as the British “discovered”. Of the three rivers originating in Tibet the Indus traverses the entire northern aspect of the mountains till it finds a way out where the Himalayas meet the Pamir Knot, while the Brahmaputra flows east till the Himalayas meet the mountains of north Burma before finding a way into the southern plains. The Sutlej, on the other hand, flows through gorges in between the snow mountains of the Himalayas. Other than these three, all the other Himalayan rivers originate in the southern aspect of the snow mountains. (A caveat here about the origins of the Sutlej: while the actual source of the river is Rakshastal lake, for centuries it has been assumed that this lake and its river have their source in the overflows of the Mansarovar lake).

Traders from Tibet and beyond would come down to the Lavi fair, held on the banks of the Sutlej at Rampur in November It is a difficult river to cross. It was only towards the end of the 19th century that the first bridge across the Sutlej was built

Think about it for a moment. The Himalayas are the youngest and the highest mountain chain in the world and of all the innumerable rivers which flow through it, just one manages to find a channel through this almost impassable massif. Mythology has not recognised this “achievement”, nor has public perception (and perhaps for good reasons because the Sutlej never cradled a civilisation as the Ganges or the Indus or even the Brahmaputra did). However, this geographical freak/feat has given this river and its valley an interesting history.

In the western Himalayas, the Sutlej has been among the most difficult of rivers to cross. When the Gurkha kingdom expanded towards the east in the 18th century, the difficulty of sustaining supply lines over the Sutlej left it vulnerable beyond its west bank and soon those territories fell to the Khalsa who themselves found it difficult to cross this river in the mountains. It was only towards the end of the 19th century that the first bridges to cross the Sutlej came up, but even today roads to cross this river are rare above the Bhakra Nangal dam, the point where the river comes into the plains.

If the Sutlej was a difficult river to cross, it was an easy route through the mountains; perhaps the only route open during winter when heavy snow blocks the passes. For many decades, if not centuries, before the coming of the Gurkhas, Sikhs and British, traders from Spiti, Shipke and Garo (and sometimes as far away as Yarkand) would come down to the Lavi fair, held on the banks of the Sutlej at Rampur in the first half of November, and return with goods they had exchanged with traders from the plains at a time when all the passes had already closed.

In 1855, the road from the foothills of the Himalayas to Tibet was completed. It was the first all weather road deep into the Himalayas built by the British and followed the ridge of the Sutlej river till Rampur and from there it went along its banks right into Tibet. The Hindustan Tibet road, even today in the 21st century, is perhaps the only route which allows the Indian army easy access to the Tibetan border from the plains; perhaps one of the reasons the Chinese army did not enter Indian territory here in 1962.

A little less than a thousand miles long, the Sutlej is one of the punj ab (five rivers) which give identity to that province. The land between the Sutlej and the Ravi has historically been the agri and cultural heartland of Punjab. Today the river has been domesticated. Its dark silver flow was broken by the Bhakra Nangal dam from where it spreads colour to the Green Revolution. Its muddy golden waters now disappear for a stretch of 27 km from Nathpa, where it is diverted into deep tunnels only to flow out at Jhakri through large turbines producing 1,500 Megawatts of electricity. Between Karchham and Wantoo as well it is held hostage in similar tunnels, which generate another 1,000 MW. Thus, from Karchham—the point at which the Sutlej crosses the Great Himalayan Range—to Jhakri near Rampur town, the river is now largely history, the large dry boulders watching the growing traffic of tourist vehicles and army truck convoys trundling up and down a road, where a river once ferried traders from the plains carrying their wares to Tibet.

From the times people began to settle and live in communities, they have chosen river banks and water bodies as sites for settlements. Ancient civilisations grew on the banks of rivers or perennial streams in India, Egypt, China, South America and elsewhere. In many cases, cities continued to grow and prosper, based on roads and markets, despite the rivers responsible for the initial settlement drying up or changing their course.

Delhi—or shall we say the seven Dillis—was located in the plains irrigated by the Yamuna, or the Jamna as it was known throughout most of its pre-colonial history, and its tributary streams. The river divides the present Delhi into two unequal parts, with two-thirds of the city to the west of the river and a third to its east. All the seven cities were located to the west of the river. Why didn’t anyone locate a capital city to the east of the river is a question that needs investigation. To the west of the river the land rises gradually till it meets the outcrops of the Aravallis, while the plains extend almost endlessly east of the river. It was perhaps the combination of a river and hilly prominences not too far away that contributed to the popularity of the area as an ideal location for capital cities.

All the seven successive cities in Delhi were located to the west of the Yamuna in the hilly prominences of the Aravalli Lal Kot, the first city, did not have much to do with the Yamuna. It depended on wells, step wells, tanks and streams

The hilly prominences of the Aravallis to the southwest of the city were to become the location of two of the first four Delhis—the first, Lal Kot and the third, Tughlaqabad. Ala-ud-Din Khilji’s Siri and Mohammad Bin Tughlaq’s Jahanpanah, the second and the fourth of the Dillis, were located in the plains, relatively closer to the Aravallis than they were to the river.

Lal Kot did not have too much to do with the Jamna in meeting its daily water requirements. The Lal Kot-Qila Raipithora area known as Mehrauli depended on deep wells, step wells, huge rain-fed and stream-fed water tanks and a few streams. Some of the wells and tanks have water even today, perhaps not of potable quality. The many step wells, deep wells, the Hauz-e-Shamsi (built in 1230 CE by Sultan Altamash who ruled between 1211-1236), the Rai Pithora ka talao, (excavated about a decade or so ago and difficult to reach now because of all kinds of obstacles, of undergrowth and clashing ownership claims), the channel of the Naulakha Nala, which now carries the untreated sewage of Mehrauli, had clean water flowing till as late as the mid 19th century. Siri, the second Dilli, the capital of Ala-ud-Din Khilji (1296-1316), met most of its water needs from the Hauz-e-Khas, a huge water reservoir commissioned by the Sultan and filled by trapping rainwater and diversion of a few streams. These streams probably included the two that today run through the IIT campus. The reservoir was repaired by Mohammad-bin-Tughlaq. His nephew Firozeshah Tughlaq also carried out extensive repairs on the site, built a madrasa and commissioned his own mausoleum adjacent to the madrasa he had built on the bank of the Hauz.

The third city, Tughlaqabad, completed in 1321, was closer to the Jamna compared to the other three. An inadvertent contribution to the strategic location of Tughlaqabad was made 90 years earlier, in 1230 CE, when the engineers of Altamash diverted the monsoonal overflow of Hauz-e-Shamsi into the Naulakha Nala. The nala was a tributary of the Jamna and due to this diversion began to have a heavy flow during the monsoons. Some of its overflow began collecting in a depression near the foothills of the Aravallis and over the next 90 years a huge lake was formed. Ghyas-ud-Din Tughlaq, chose this site to build his fortified city in 1321, using the lake as a moat for the south facing wall of the fort.

Ala-ud-Din Khilji’s capital Siri met most of its water needs from Hauz-e-Khas reservoir, fed by rainwater and streams Overflow from Naulakha Nala collected in a depression for 90 years, forming a huge lake. This is where Tughlakabad was built

Ghyas-ud-Din Tughlaq located his mausoleum on an island in the middle of the lake while his son built his fort of Adilabad on a hillock to the south of the lake. The two forts were connected to each other with a road that ran atop a barrage that regulated the overflow of the lake to irrigate the fields near Badarpur towards the Jamna. Traces of the sluice gates and an overflow channel can be seen even now near the south-western corner of the Tughlaqabad fort, a little to the east of the main gate of the Kaya Maya Ayurvedic clinic across the road.

Despite their relative proximity to the river and the lake, neither the fort nor the town of Tughlaqabad appear to have used the water of the Jamna or the lake for their daily use, for there were many reservoirs, kunds and baolis inside the fort city and the town.

Due to large-scale construction carried out in recent times in the Bijay Mandal area it is difficult to hazard a guess about how the fourth Dilli—the Jahanpanah, established during 1326-27 CE by Mohammad-bin-Tughlaq (1321-51)—met its water needs. The Jamna, due primarily to its distance from this area, could not have been a source and therefore, wells, manmade or natural reservoirs, perennial and non-perennial tributaries of the Jamna, including the Chiragh Dehli Nala, across which Mohammad bin Tughlaq had thrown a barrage, and several others that criss-crossed the plains, could have been the sources that met the needs of the population residing within the incomplete walls of Jahanpanah.

The other three Delhis, all built on the bank of the Jamna, do not present us with a different picture. Firozabad or Kotla Firozeshah (1350s-1388), Quila-e-Kuhna (1533-1556) and Shahjahanabad (1640-1857) had their backs firmly turned against the river. They were fortress cities that had their own sources of water that included wells, step wells water tanks and, in the case of Shahjahanabad, a canal or two to meet the daily needs of the residents.

The Kotla of Firozeshah has a huge baoli, which has so much water even today that it is used to irrigate all the lush green lawns and flower beds of the fort. There could have been other wells, step wells and reservoirs that supplemented this baoli, but this is only a guess based upon the evidence found in other fortified cities and forts that preceded Firozabad.

The Qila-e-Kuhna or Purana Qila was located atop a hillock and for that reason taking water from the river, flowing next to the eastern wall would not have been very practical. The Purana Quila Baoli and the large well located next to the Hamam, both of which have water even now, could very well have been the major sources of water for the fort. The rest of the city spread out towards the north and west. The sources of water for the people can only be a matter of guess work because almost the entire area has been built over.

Firozabad and Shahjahanabad had their backs firmly turned against the river. They had their own sources of water Shahjahanabad drew water not from the Jamna next door but from the Jamna 120 km upstream at Hansi and Hissar

There was plenty of water inside the Red Fort flowing through canals, waterfalls and fountains. There was a Tughlaq period baoli that even today has plenty of water. Outside the fort there was plenty of water in the city. None of it was drawn from the Jamna next door; instead from the Jamna at Hansi and Hissar, 120 km upstream of Shahjahanabad and brought to Delhi through the engineering skills of Ali Mardan Khan, a Persian noble in the service of Shahjahan. The construction of this canal had begun three centuries ago by Ferozeshah Tughlaq. The incomplete canal was repaired by Akbar and Jehangir and during Shahjahan’s time it was extended to Delhi.

Almost every significant temple, mosque and shrine and each mohalla or katra had a well. A few are still in use. The massive baoli in Matia Mahal known variously as Baoli Matia Mahal, Masjid wali Baoli and Banjaron ki Baoli, has so much water that even now the Delhi Jal Board uses its water to meet the water requirement of Matia Mahal and a few other residential localities in Old Delhi. Those who use the name Banjaron ki Baoli for it insist that this baoli was built much before Shahjahanabad and that this place was used for organising fairs and melas in the Pre-Mughal days.

The residents of cities had little contact with the Yamuna. Only farmers, fishers and washerfolk depended on it It is only in the past 120 years that Delhi began to draw water from the Yamuna and managed to kill it

With so much water available within the city, is it any wonder that the water of the Jamna was not tapped for drinking or other purposes? The water from the Jamna at Delhi was used only to fill the moat that ran around the Red Fort and the moat that encircled the city running along the Fasil-e-Sheher, the wall around the city.

The large agricultural populations, fisherfolk, washerfolk and others that inhabited the banks of the river, including those who hung around the many temples, would have depended on the river more intimately as they would do even today. The residents of the cities that grew in this region had little or no daily contact with the river, other than boating across it or cremating their dead on its banks.

It is only in the past 120 years or so that we have begun to draw on the resources of the river, and this time has been enough to kill it. A Delhi Jal Board report on water supply in the city has this to say about the history of piped water in Delhi: “The Delhi Water Works was constructed at Chandrawal with a capacity of 4.5 MLD (Million Litres Daily) in the 1890 and the source of water supply was a row of wells sunk along the river. Delhi’s population then was 193,000. After the Delhi Darbar in 1911, Delhi witnessed an increase in population. By 1912, the water demand had exceeded the capacity and necessitated drawing water directly from the river. In 1921, a raw water pumping station was established at Wazirabad and the water was carried to Chandrawal for treatment, where the capacity was raised to 32 MLD. The population served was 304,000. Since then, the capacity of the water works has been gradually increasing in stages and stood at 159 MLD by 1948.”

The rest, as they say, is history.

During the 1980s I spent a number of years investigating religious meanings of rivers in Maharashtra. I read Sanskrit and Marathi texts, called Mahatmyas, praising the Godavari, Krishna, Bhima, Tapi, Purna, and the Narmada rivers. I spoke to fishermen and boatsmen, to priests of riverbank temples and shrines, and to other residents of riverside towns. I met women afflicted by water goddesses and listened to stories about the marvelous riches hidden in the depths of perennial pools in the rivers. I learned about sin and redemption, drought and flood, famine and prosperity. Yet despite discovering that many people place a high religious value on rivers and their water, I did not find those values translated into a concern for preserving the river’s water or its cleanliness.

I heard over and over again, and learned in many different ways, that most Marathi-speakers, like many others in India, consider rivers to be feminine. The names of rivers are almost all grammatically feminine. Public statues, such as the one of the Krishna river at Vijayawada, represent rivers as women, as do murtis in Hindu temples and shrines. (The most common portrayal of a river as a woman is the little Ganga in the matted locks of Shiva Nataraja.) Stories—such as those about Parvati being jealous of the woman in her husband’s hair—portray rivers as female beings too.

The names of rivers are almost all grammatically feminine— Ganga, Yamuna, Sharda Saraswati, Tapi, Godavari, etc Religious texts mention rivers during muddy monsoons as akin to menstruating women (rajasvalaas)

In addition, many rituals dedicated to rivers are ones that are otherwise performed to honour a woman: people in Maharashtra toss haldi and kumkum powder into the water of a river as they would put these on the forehead of a married woman. People “fill the lap (oti)” of a river by putting into it a coconut, grains, haldi and kumkum, a flower, a coin, a piece of cloth for a blouse, and other items placed in a woman’s lap to wish her fertility and happiness. Occasionally people even dress a river in a sari. In September 1988, for example, The Times of India (Delhi) printed a photograph of this rite being performed with the help of boats at a wide part of the Yamuna river.

Finally, there is a hint that rivers are not just feminine in gender but also physiologically female: the mud (rajas) that flows in them at the beginning of the monsoon transforms them into rajasvalaas, menstruating women, and dharmashastra texts warn against bathing in the rivers at this time (as they forbid men to have sex with women who are menstruating).

I also found different kinds of goddesses that people in Maharashtra associate with rivers. The simplest type iconographically are the Saati (Seven) Asaras (Apsaras). Actually, the Asaras are deemed as “parya”, somewhat lesser gods. The Asara, also called Mavalaya (“mothers”), are said to represent certain points of water bodies: certain wells, certain points in ravines, and some spots on the rocky bank of a river. Sometimes the Asaras are completely invisible, while at other times their presence is indicated by seven (or more) red marks made with kunkum powder or red-lead. People who dream about the Saati Asara see them as seven female figures—young girls, or lovely young women dressed in green or white saris, whereas in small metal plaques called taks, they appear as uniform, standing female figures, each with two hands and one head, each wearing a sari.

People who know about the Asara generally fear them as they can cause people to drown, or, more often, cause women to have trouble getting pregnant, to have miscarriages, or to bear children who are colicky, who have trouble nursing or who die young. Women who find out that they have been afflicted by the Asara placate them by placing on the water baskets full of various food offerings, including seven different kinds of fruit.

In several parts of India people offer haldi and kumkum to rivers as they would to a married woman In Maharashtra, Saati Asaras are a kind of lesser goddesses that represent certain points of water bodies like wells

Related to the Saati Asara is another type of river goddess but she has a much more elaborate system of worship. Goddesses of this type have specific names (rather than the generic “Saati Asara”). They are generally understood to live in rich palaces in the deepest part of a river, but they also have temples or shrines on the banks of the river, with subsidiary deities (their guardians, servants or brothers), hereditary priests and other temple functionaries, an annual cycle of special occasions, and at least one major festival that draws pilgrims from far away. The best example I have found of such a river goddess is Bhivai, who has temples on both sides of the Nira river (a tributary of the Bhima, and, in turn, of the Krishna) on the border between Pune and Satara districts. Bhivai’s home is in a deep pool in the river—a pool so deep that you cannot reach its bottom even if you tie end to end the ropes from twelve rope cots and let them down into the water. Here she has untold wealth, in both fish and gold. People offer first-fruits of the harvest at Bhivai’s temple; they bring their children to be floated on rafts in the goddess’s pool (the goddess gives the children back), and shepherds offer sheep to the goddess by throwing them into the river (they too come back safely to the bank).

The third type of river goddess is found in riverside cities and towns rather than in the countryside, and is worshiped in a more modern, urban style than the others. These goddesses embody a river and are named after it. They are represented by three-dimensional female images made of plaster, stone, or metal, including festival images installed in temporary shrines or carried in a palanquin or a chariot during festivals. Modern-style festivals for these goddesses (including lectures, music concerts, tickets for communal meals, and so on) are held at a number of places, but most especially along the Krishna river, including in seven different neighbourhoods in the town of Wai (Satara District). Here the modern river goddess is Krishnabai (“Lady Krishna”), the goddess of the Krishna river.

Why are rivers represented in female form? And what does the femininity of rivers mean to the people who see them this way? In Marathi, rivers, the Saati Asaras, and the various goddesses who live in or embody the rivers are all referred to as suvasinis. The Marathi term suvasini, which has its equivalent in other Indian languages, is generally reserved for a married woman whose husband is alive. Images of river goddesses are regularly adorned with the wedding necklace and bangles of a suvasini, and the aniconic Asara are offered green glass bangles, the mark of even the poorest bride. The rite of filling the lap, performed to the river goddesses as well as directly to the rivers themselves, implies not only the femininity but also the married, unwidowed status of the person to whom it is done. And yet the rivers, the Asara, and the goddesses who live in or embody rivers hardly ever have a husband in evidence.

Theoretically, rivers that flow into the ocean have the ocean as their husband; and Ganga, who sits on Shiva’s head, is a rival to Parvati—river Ganga’s “husband” is, in some sense, Shiva. For rivers and river goddesses within Maharashtra, though, the husband is implied rather than actually present. No one seems to know exactly who he might be, and no one seems particularly bothered about the question of his identity. When I asked about the goddesses’ husbands, people would try to give me some answer, but my impression was that the question does not normally arise.

River goddesses are considered married but their husbands are not mentioned. Thus, they are like devadasis or prostitutes Rivers, like apsaras, are opponents of ascetics. They stand for this-wordly values such as life, plenty, sensuality