It is not just my visit to Rishikesh that sharpened my concern over this issue. Soon after my return, I learnt from K.N. Govindacharya, my friend, ideological colleague and an activist of indefatigable energy, about a unique new initiative that he and his colleagues have embarked upon. They have organised the Ganga Sanskriti Pravah Yatra, starting from Ganga Sagar in West Bengal on February 1 and going right up to Gangotri on March 6, as a mass-education and mass-mobilisation campaign to bring the issue of the river’s defilement to the centre-stage of national debate. The campaign has been blessed by almost all the major jagadgurus and acharyas of various Hindu religious establishments.

Some Muslims like Dr Najmi Rehman of Allahabad are also associated with it, since they believe that, although Islam is their faith, their cultural roots are in the soil of the Ganga. The great Urdu poet Mohammed Iqbal, whom Pakistan considers its national bard, said this about the river: “Ai aab-e-rood-e-Ganga / Voh din hai yaad tujh ko / Utra teyrey kinarey tha kaarwaan hamaara (Ye waters of the Ganga, Remember you the day, When our caravan reached your banks, And settled down to stay?)”

And Kazi Nazrul Islam, the national poet of Bangladesh, wrote this ode to India’s sacred rivers: “Ganga Sindhu Narmada Kaberi Yamuna oi / Bahiya chalechhe ager matan / kai re ager manus kai../mouni stabdha se Himalay temni atal mahimamay . . . (Ganga, Sindhu, Narmada and Kaveri have been flowing down the ages. The Himalaya stands in silent greatness. Where have the people who saw them in the past gone?)”

... contd.