Along the 4 mile (6.4 kilometres) stretch of terraced bathing ghats in the holy city of Varanasi, the water of the Ganges is a "brown soup of excrement and industrial effluents." The water there contains 60,000 faecal coliform bacteria per 100 ml, 120 times the official limit of 500 faecal coliforms/100ml that is not considered safe for bathing.
For Hindus in India, the Ganges is not just a river but a mother, a goddess, a tradition, a culture, and much more. On November 4, 2008, the Prime Minister of India declared Holy Ganga as the National River of India. But the most sacred river in India is so gunked up with industrial and human waste that many Hindus are now understandably hesitant about diving in it to ritually cleanse their souls, as the Hindu faith directs, and people who are taking baths in it are complaining about skin diseases.
But why doesn't the Ganges spread epidemic disease among the millions of Indians who bathe in it along its course? The Ganges River's long-held reputation as a purifying river appears to have a basis in science.
First of all, the river carries bacteriophages that vanquish bacteria and more. As reported in a National Public Radio program, dysentery and cholera are killed off, preventing large-scale epidemics. The river has an unusual ability to retain dissolved oxygen, but the reason for this ability is unknown.
DS Bhargava, a retired professor of hydrology, who has spent a lifetime performing experiments up and down the Ganges in the plains of India, says that in most rivers, organic material usually exhausts a river's available oxygen and starts putrefying. But in the Ganges, an unknown substance, or "X factor" that Indians refer to as a "disinfectant," acts on organic materials and bacteria and kills them. Bhargava says that the Ganges' self-purifying quality leads to oxygen levels 25 times higher than any other river in the world.
But that was a few years back. Now on the other hand, an eminent river expert and head of the Ganga Research Laboratory, Institute of Technology (IT-BHU), Prof UK Chowdhary urges to save the Ganga, which he says is gradually losing its oxygen absorption and retention capacity, adding that the Ganga was the only river in the world which had 12ppm of oxygen. "The Ganga was once known as the reservoir of oxygen. But, today, it's oxygen has reduced to 4-8ppm," he said. The Ganges' purifying action has strong scientific evidence, but that power of Ganges is slowly giving up.
So, we, the proud citizens of India should try to maintain the Ganga's purity by small caring measures...