River of Life, River of Death: The Ganges and India's FutureIndia is killing the Ganges, and the Ganges in turn is killing India. The waterway that has nourished more people than any on earth for three millennia is now so polluted with sewage and toxic waste that it has become a menace to human and animal health. Victor Mallet traces the holy river from source to mouth, and from ancient times to the present day, to find that the battle to rescue what is arguably the world's most important river is far from lost. As one Hindu sage told the author in Rishikesh on the banks of the upper Ganges (known to Hindus as the goddess Ganga) - 'If Ganga dies, India dies. If Ganga thrives, India thrives. The lives of 500 million people is no small thing.' Drawing on four years of first-hand reporting and detailed historical and scientific research, Mallet delves into the religious, historical, and biological mysteries of the Ganges, and explains how Hindus can simultaneously revere and abuse their national river. Starting at the Himalayan glacier where the Ganges emerges pure and cold from an icy cave known as the Cow's Mouth and ending in the tiger-infested mangrove swamps of the Bay of Bengal, Mallet encounters everyone from the naked holy men who worship the river, to the engineers who divert its waters for irrigation, the scientists who study its bacteria, and Narendra Modi, the Hindu nationalist prime minister, who says he wants to save India's mother-river for posterity. Can they succeed in saving the river from catastrophe — or is it too late? |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 31
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... Thames and Britain, the Ganges is 'the golden thread' of Indian history.3 On its banks are great cities, some living, others ruined and abandoned, that have been there for thousands of years and date back to the era when India was the ...
... Thames and Britain, the Ganges is 'the golden thread' of Indian history.3 On its banks are great cities, some living, others ruined and abandoned, that have been there for thousands of years and date back to the era when India was the ...
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... Thames, the Rhine, and the Chicago River. I also realized (as do growing numbers of worried Indians) that it is absurd for devout Hindus to try to separate in their minds the actual physical filth of the river from its eternal spiritual ...
... Thames, the Rhine, and the Chicago River. I also realized (as do growing numbers of worried Indians) that it is absurd for devout Hindus to try to separate in their minds the actual physical filth of the river from its eternal spiritual ...
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... Thames was vile and yet you claim to be shocked by our polluted rivers.' I have been on the receiving end of such criticism in China and South-east Asia, but surprisingly few Indians have bristled resentfully about how the Western media ...
... Thames was vile and yet you claim to be shocked by our polluted rivers.' I have been on the receiving end of such criticism in China and South-east Asia, but surprisingly few Indians have bristled resentfully about how the Western media ...
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... Thames in 1929: 'The St Lawrence is water, the Mississippi is muddy water, but the Thames is liquid history.' 4. Angus Maddison said India accounted for 33 per cent of world gross domestic product in the first century AD; China had 26 ...
... Thames in 1929: 'The St Lawrence is water, the Mississippi is muddy water, but the Thames is liquid history.' 4. Angus Maddison said India accounted for 33 per cent of world gross domestic product in the first century AD; China had 26 ...
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... seem peculiar to someone who, if asked to think of a river, imagines the reliable if seasonal flow of the Thames in London, say, the Nile in Cairo, or the Potomac in Washington DC. But they do not detract from the importance.
... seem peculiar to someone who, if asked to think of a river, imagines the reliable if seasonal flow of the Thames in London, say, the Nile in Cairo, or the Potomac in Washington DC. But they do not detract from the importance.
Contents
Holy Waters | |
How to Build a Megacityand Save the Ganges | |
Dolphins Crocodiles and Tigers | |
Why Population Growth Is Not a Dividend | |
Why the Taps Run | |
Engineering the Ganges | |
Ganga on Film | |
Foreigners on the Ganges | |
Boats on the Ganges | |
Calcutta and Bengal | |
Indias Capital for a | |
Broken Promises | |
Toxic River | |
Superbug River | |
Mission Impossible? How to Clean the Ganges | |
Notes | |
Bibliography | |
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Common terms and phrases
Allahabad antibiotics Asia August bacteria Bangladesh banks bathe Bay of Bengal Bihar boats Bollywood British Calcutta canal cent century Chambal city’s cleaning the Ganges climate change country’s dams decades Delhi delta dolphins downstream east effluent environmental factories Financial fish floods flow Ganga Ganges water Gangetic Gangotri Gaumukh gene gharials ghat glacier goddess groundwater Haridwar heavy metals Himalayas Hindu holy Hooghly human Indus industrial Interview irrigation Kanpur kilometres Kolkata Port Trust Kumbh Mela living mangrove million Modi’s monsoon mouth Mughal Muslim Narendra Modi north India official Pakistan Patna pilgrims pollution population prime minister problem projects pumping religious resistance river sadhus Sagar Saraswati says September 2016 sewage treatment Shiva Singh Sinha stream Sunderbans tanneries temple Thames there’s tigers toilets told town toxic treatment plants tributaries Uma Bharti upper Ganges upstream Uttar Pradesh Varanasi Victor Mallet village waste waterways wildlife Xuanzang Yamuna