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Rekha Dixit
Rekha Dixit

HOLY WATER

Exploring Ganga's divinity as a scientific exercise

PTI7_11_2017_000260A (File) River Ganga | PTI

The science of divinity. It is a topic that the minister of water resources, river and Ganga rejuvenation, Uma Bharati, is keen on establishing. The minister has often said that the river's purported self-cleaning property has to be studied. Now, the ministry has sanctioned a sum of Rs 4.96 crore to understand the “non-putrefying'” properties of both the river water as well as sediments. The National Environment Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) is tasked with this research, which is an extension of work the institute has already been doing to study the special properties of the river. The amount has been sanctioned under the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG).

The Ganga's divine properties have been a matter of wonderment in the scientific community for centuries. The ancients called it brahma dravya, and liberally used the river water for rituals and cleansing. The river's self cleaning properties have also found mention in Akbarnama. Apparently, it is the only river whose water, when stored, does not begin putrefying. This, despite the polluted mess that the river has become.

A study released last year by the Chandigarh-based Institute of Microbial Technology (IMTECH) said the river water showed presence of certain bacteriophages, which perhaps, kept the waters clean.

Bacteriophages are a type of virus that devour bacteria. The presence of bacteriophages was actually established for the first time by British scientist Ernest Hanbury, who, in the late 1800s, worked on cholera outbreaks in India and noticed that gangajal, and even the Yamuna river waters had bactericidal properties. He said that unboiled water of the river killed cholera bacteria in less than three hours. When the river water was boiled, however, it did not show the same property. Hanbury compared this with water from wells where he noticed the cholera bacteria thrived on being introduced, boiled or not. He concluded there was some element in the Ganga water which possessed bactericidal properties.

French Canadian researcher Felix D'Herelle, credited with the discovery of bacteriophages, did pioneering work in treating cholera. During a visit to India, he was amazed to find no contaminating bacteria below the bodies of infected victims which were disposed into the river. An English physician C.E. Nelson reportedly picked up Ganga water from the Hoogly, a point at which it is heavily polluted. Yet, he noticed that the water remained fresh throughout the voyage back to England.

Indian scientists like C.S. Nautiyal, who studied the river water for over a decade, said it remained fresh even after 16 years.

The bacteriophages could be one of the reasons that the river, despite the high levels of pollutants that are dumped into it, manages to remain a “living entity” as one high court recently called it. Despite the scientific evidence in support of Ganga's divine properties, research so far has been sporadic and piecemeal.

The NEERI report will identify the range of bacteriophages, as well as their distribution across the 2,500km length of the river. Will the NEERI study also be able to identify other properties that make the Ganga a cleanser? Bharati's other pet project related to the Ganga is the identification of the natural, original vegetation that existed along the river's banks from source to delta and then reintroduce it. Bharati believes that this flora, too, had a role in the river's self-cleansing properties. Much of the original vegetation has been stripped off and replaced with agricultural crops and commercial forestry for timber.

The Dehradun-based Forest Research Institute has prepared the report. Under the Ganga rejuvenation plan, these plants are to be reintroduced along the river banks in a phased manner. The ministry says plantation drives have already begun. 

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