Gange

Way

It takes its source with the glacier Gangotri to 6.600 m of altitude in the the Himalayas where it bears the name of Bhâgiratî. To 210 km of its source, it joins in Devaprayâga the torrent Alaknandâ going down from the Nanda Devî to 7.800 m to form Gange itself.

It runs then since Haridwâr located at 300 m of altitude through the Indian plain of north, called flat gangetic , loser this little of uneven while running out on the remainder of its course while collecting a certain number of affluents like the Yamunâ (1 300 km), the Ghaghrâ (1 080 km) in Châpra, the Gandak (700 km) in Hajipur, Râmgangâ (640 km) little before Allâhâbâd, the Sound or Sone (784 km) with Patna, Dâmodarâ or Dâmodâr (541 km) with south of Kolkata, Koshî (700 km) close to Bhagalpur, the Gumtî or Gomatî (675 km) close to Vârânasî.

It is thrown then in the Bay of Bengal by forming important a delta called Sundarbans, where it mixes with Brahmapoutra. A branch of this delta forms the Hûglî which sprinkles Kolkata, the other connects major which runs with the Bangladesh names Padmâ before joining Brahmapoutra.

When it arrives in the area of Calcutta, it changes name and is called Hoogly or Hougli. It becomes a river then where it is dangerous to sail, subjected to the tides and maritime monsoons, whose funds change permanently.

Religious significance

Gange is regarded as crowned by the Hindu S: The immersion in Gange washes the believer of its sins and the dispersion of ashes in the river can bring a better future life and even make it possible to reach earlier the Moksha or delivery, i.e. the exit of the phenomenal world.

The Hindu excessively pious people make Pèlerinage S to bathe in its water and to practice the Méditation on its banks. Several Hindu crowned sites are along banks of Gange, like Haridwâr (or Hardwâr) and Vârânasî (sometimes called Kâshî or Bénarès).

Yamunâ, important river and almost such a crowned, is a Affluent of Gange, which it meets close to Allâhâbâd. Every twelve years is held, with the confluence of the two rivers an important gathering, the Kumbhamelâ whose last in 2001 saw passing 70 million people over one period of 6 weeks time. With these two rivers associates the Sarasvatî, the mystical and invisible river, in the Hindu belief.

Ecosystem, pollution and use

In spite of a pollution already underlined by the American writer Mark Twain at the time of its passage in the town of Vârânasî, at last century, Gange is a rich ecosystem and private individual who comprises in particular two species of dolphin, the dolphin of Gange or Platanista gangetica and the dolphin of Irrawaddy or Orcaella brevirostris and a shark of fresh water, the Glyphis gangeticus .

The river comprises two principal stoppings. The first close to Haridwâr diverts most of Himalayan melt water in the higher channel of Gange, built by the British in 1854 to irrigate the surrounding grounds. This diversion of water is the main cause of the deterioration of the navigability of the river. The other stopping is an hydroelectric station close to Farakka, close to the principal entrance point of the river to the Bangladesh and which diverts part of water towards Hûglî. The stopping is a source of conflicts between India and Bangladesh since its construction in 1975.

It is estimated that each day Gange receives the remainders of some 475 human corpses as well as 1.800 tons of wood used for the cremations, to which are added the 10.000 carcasses of animals which are abandoned there, which is an important cause of pollution. Various methods were planned to help with its depollution, like the installation of purification plants and their connection with hundreds of kilometers of sewers, the construction of thousands of public toilets and the crematory electric ones - as those of Vârânasî - but they is hardly used but by the poor ones. It was also operated with lâchers of thousands of tortoises necrophagous so that those can devour the corpses insufficiently flarings, but the reptiles were captured and consumed by the poor residents.

In 1985, Gange was proclaimed “national heritage” and a founded Central authority of Gange . The first analyzes which were carried out the following year in an affluent where pour the sewers of Vârânasî and which throws itself in the river downstream from the city revealed a fecal rate of coliformes of 1,5 million units per decilitre, the authorized maximum being of 500 units.

The capital New Delhi daily pours in Yamunâ 250.000 cubic meters of domestic waste water and 20.000 cubic meters of industrial waste water which will end up flowing in Gange. The city had however been equipped as of 1937 with a first purification plant.

Gange however has capacities of self-purification (or autodépollution) consequent, i.e. by the action of the bacterium and the transfer of oxygen since the atmosphere by the surface of the river, most of organic pollution can be eliminated in a few kilometers. This self-purification does not prevent that its quality is very degraded by these rejections.

Cultural impact

In the village of Mahâballipuram, in the Tamil Nadu, is the largest low-relief in the world, often considered as an illustration of the descent of Gange .

In the palate of Jaipur, one can see exposed the two enormous ballot boxes, largest in the world, manufactured with 243 kilograms of money each one and which were used with the maharâja Madho Singh II to transport more than 30.000 liters of water of Gange at the time of its voyage of 1902 to the the United Kingdom.

In 1950, Jean Renoir sign his first realization colors, the River , turned at the edge of Gange and which gains the International prize of the critic to the Festival of Venice in 1951.

See too

List of rivers in the world
List of the rivers of India
Gangâ, the goddess personifying the river
Mahabalipuram for the low-relief descent of Gange

External bonds

water and international law: selective bibliography See Gange and Brahmapoutra (rivers) . Library of the Palate of Peace
Photographs of Gange (Bénarès)

Simple: Ganges

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