I certainly wasn’t the first to write a book about Ganga Ma (Mother Ganges), the holy river which flows across northern India. And I’m glad to see that I haven’t been the last. (Though I think I’m still the only foreigner to have walked the entire length of the river.)
Edmund Hilary took a jet boat up the river. Eric Newby took a slow boat down the river (actually quite a lot of miles were accomplished in a chauffeur-driven car but that was omitted from the book). And the English-born broadcaster and writer Julian Grandall Hollick (what a great name on the title page of a book!) published a new book about the river in 2007. He didn’t go by boat or on foot, but moved swiftly from place to place at the speed of all journalists and with all the limitations and dangers of myopia that that entails. How, Hollick wants to know, can Indians pollute Ganga yet at the same time worship her a goddess? How to explain this paradox? This is the lynch-pin of his book, “Ganga”.
I bought the book while in India in 2008 and sat down eager to learn more about this river that is still very special in my heart. I was looking forward to sharing Hollick’s journey with him, to revisiting familiar places and laughing and crying with him at the contradictions and perfections of India. But I have to say I was sorely disappointed.
Hollick set out to make a series of radio programmes about the holy river, so he travelled in an SUV vehicle filled with recording equipment, tents, portable generator and all the other paraphenalia of a “sahib” on safari. This has two important drawbacks. First, he was at once disconnected from the lives of the people who’s beliefs, attitudes and behaviours will determine whether Ganga Ma survives as a river. And second, by his own admission, he was never alone. Yet I would contend that only by being alone with the river, only by sitting for hours beside her, and opening onself to her energies can anyone begin to move the locus of their interest from their head to their heart. And without this, which every Indian living along the banks of the river takes utterly for granted, how much understanding can there really be. True, lots of facts and figures and quotes and all the other intellectual busyness of mind. But understanding? Empathy? Perhaps that’s not the task of the reporter.
Another drawback is that the journey down the Ganges was not done as a single journey, with all the focus and absorption which that implies, but was broken up into three trips in which the time at the source of the river was disconnected from the main body of travel and from the “tail” in the Bay of Bengal.
Nevertheless, Hollick’s “Ganga” has lots of interesting information and anecdotes; for example, he makes a valiant attempt to determine why the Ganges is “pure”. (Yes, the river water really is self-cleansing to a remarkable degree.) Throughout the book, he asks many more questions than he answers – literally! It’s a technique of radio that doesn’t often translate to other media; what’s meant to emphasize what’s being spoken quickly becomes more grating than enlightening or entertaining when so many sentences end with a question mark on paper. Much of the book reads like a transcription from the radio programmes. This is a great shame.
In the end, Hollick’s original question about why the river is polluted while the Ganga is worshipped as the goddess of purity, is explained in the disconnect between ecology and mythology.
“An awful lot of this debate about Ganga anyway is probably not really about mythology at all. It’s basically people fighting over an economic resource. Ganga is indeed a symbol in the debate of rape versus respect of nature, about the misue of resources, the loss of respect for the river as life-giver, of its irraparable effect on the lives of people. Destroy Ganga and you will therefore destroy the essence of India.
“The greatest danger to the river comes from the goddess herself. I believe that the faith in the ability of goddess Ganga to sure herself leads to avoiding the life and death issues the river faces.”
Buy now: Ganga: A Journey Down the Ganges River
