Religion’s Mighty Rivers

By Alakananda Mookerjee

Spiritually revered by nearly one billion Hindus and worshipped as a goddess, the Ganga River (or the Ganges as it is known in the West) is India’s “mightiest” river. Its pivotal place in the nation’s collective psyche is best captured in the words of its first prime minister who described it as “the river of India” whose saga “is the [very] story of India’s civilization and culture, of the rise and fall of empires, of great and proud cities …”

That it is also the country’s longest river is a mere geographical footnote. That is to say that the Ganga would still be The Ganga had it not been the 1,550 mile-long river. Its significance—springing from mythology and religion—spills over into politics, economy and popular culture—from the ancient Indian Vedic scriptures to a Bollywood film song. It’s rare to find a pious Hindu household without a small vial of its sacred waters in the private shrine, just as it is impossible to think of a religious ritual or ceremony without it.