The River Ganges or Ganga
Hinduism’s Spiritual Connection to the Past & the Future
Problems & Solutions Regarding This Great River
In Hindu culture, rivers hold spiritual significance, especially the Ganges. Its source can be
found where small streams form from melting glaciers in the Himalaya Mountains. It flows for
1,560 miles southeast and empties into the Bay of Bengal. The Ganges provides water for
people, livestock, and crops like rice, sugarcane, lentils, potatoes, and wheat.
Spiritually, the Ganges holds an important position in Hindu culture. It is mentioned in the
Vedas and the Ramayana. Ganga was the daughter of the mountain god Himavan, also known as
Himalaya. Bathing in the river is believed to wash away a person’s sins, and water from the
river is used in many various religious rituals. It is believed to be good luck to drink water from
the Ganges in the hour before death, and many Hindus ask to be cremated along the Ganges and
then to have their ashes immersed in the river. Additionally, water from the Ganges is believed
to have healing and holy properties; any water, mixed with the smallest quantity of water from
the Ganges, becomes holy and will have healing properties.
Perhaps because of all its spiritual properties, the Ganges has become one of the most polluted
rivers in the world. On a typical Saturday a large crowd of Hindu pilgrims descends the steps of
a ghat, a ritual bathing area, to step into the waters of the Ganges. Because devout Hindus
believe that the Ganges River washes away their sins, children play happily in the river, mothers
bathe their infants, and people wash their hair, their clothes, and themselves in the sacred river.
The river water is also used for drinking and cooking.
Until the 1980s, the Ganges was clean and rich in dissolved oxygen, so disease-carrying bacteria
did not live long in its waters. Because a bacteria-eating virus called bacteriophages lived in the
Ganges, a cup of Ganges water would stay fresh for a long time. This may be why the Hindu
people believed that the Ganges was a goddess.
However, the Ganges today has become so polluted that it cannot clean itself and the waters are
now unhealthful for drinking, bathing, and farming. This poses a serious threat to the population
of India, and solutions to the pollution are needed before the damage becomes irreversible.
The main source of the pollution is untreated sewage because the Ganges flows past some of
India’s largest cities. In the last sixty years, India has struggled to develop a modern economy,
and as a result, population and industry have grown enormously, but sanitation has not been able
to keep pace. Fewer than half of India’s people have modern plumbing, so millions of gallons of
sewage from more than 100 cities empty into the Ganges every day. Because the sewage
treatment plants are able to handle only a very small portion of the sewage, many of the sewer
pipes are broken, and many of the cities along the Ganges have no sewage plants at all, much of
the untreated sewage ends up in the Ganges.
Additional problems facing the Ganges are the cows that swim in the Ganges; the people who
wash their laundry in it, and the dead bodies and body parts that drift in the water. Traditional
Hindus do not bury their dead; they cremate the bodies on the banks of the Ganges. Their ashes
are then put in the river. However, some of the bodies do not burn completely, and because
some people are too poor to buy firewood, they simply place the dead bodies of the loved ones in
the river.
The pollution is particularly bad at Varanasi. To Hindus, Varanasi is the holiest of cities, and
every year, millions of pilgrims bathe at its more than seventy-five ghats. As the Ganges enters
Varansai, it contains 120 times more disease-causing bacteria than is safe for bathing. It then
flows past twenty-four sewers, resulting in a bacterial count that is 3,000 times the safe level.
Each day, more than 1,000 Indian children die of cholera, typhoid, or hepatitis, which are all
caused by these water-borne bacteria.
The life-giving Ganges also suffers from the great number of factories and farms that line the
river. Leather tanning, cloth making, and fertilizer manufacturing use cancer-causing chemicals
that all end up in the Ganges. When farmers spray their crops to kill insects, these poisons also
flow into the Ganges. Therefore, the Ganges, once a life-giving source of spiritual renewal, now
serves as an agent of death.
Dr. Veer Bhadra Mishra, a Hindu priest and water engineer, has been working for many years to
clean up the pollution in the Ganges. In 1982, he began the Sankat Mochan Foundation program
called “Campaign for a Clean Ganga” whose goal is to educate people about the causes of
pollution. He has worked tirelessly with scientists from around the world to secure a healthy
future for the Ganges River. Only time will tell if Dr. Mishra’s efforts to restore the sacred river
will be able to breathe new life back into the Ganges River.