Ganges

Bathing ghats on the River Ganges in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India. Varanasi is one of Hinduism's seven holy cities, and the Ganges one of the seven holy rivers. The city is visited by millions of pilgrims every year.

Dawn on the sacred river Ganges at Varanasi, India. The river is regarded as holy by several religions but especially by Hindus, who make pilgrimages to bathe in its waters. The banks are lined with temples and sites for funeral pyres. After cremation, the ashes are scattered in the river.

The remains of funeral pyres on the banks of the sacred River Ganges at Varanasi, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India. Varanasi is one of Hinduism's seven holy cities. Hindus cremated here have their ashes scattered in the river.

Major river of India and Bangladesh; length 2,510 km/1,560 mi. It drains a fertile and densely populated basin, approximately a quarter of the total area of India, and is the most sacred river for Hindus.

Its chief tributary is the Yamuna (Jumna), length 1,385 km/860 mi, which joins the Ganges near Allahabad, where there is a sacred bathing place. The Indian political leaders Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Indira Gandhi were all cremated on the banks of the Yamuna at Delhi. The Ganges is joined in its delta in Bangladesh by the River Brahmaputra. The Ganges' most commercially important and westernmost channel to the Bay of Bengal is the Hooghly, which receives untreated sewage and chemical waste from more than a hundred cities and has also been subject to silting and incursions of sea water. The Indian government attempted to remedy these problems by diverting Ganges water from the Farakka Barrage at the apex of the delta to flush and raise the water level of the Hooghly, though this has caused a dispute with Bangladesh which claims that this diversion deprives its people of essential water supplies.

Religious significance The Ganges rises in the Himalayas from an ice cave of the Gangotri glacier, a place considered sacred for Hindus as the place of origin of the goddess Ganga. At this point the river is called the Bhagirathi, after King Bhagirath, whose penance brought the river of the gods to earth, where Shiva himself received it on his head so that its force would not cause devastation. At Varanasi, thousands of pilgrims come to bathe. Hindus favour cremation and scattering of ashes into the Ganges here.

Course The name Ganges is adopted where the river unites with the Alaknanda. Until the Ganges reaches the plains at Haridwar, it flows generally southwest, and from there southeast until it reaches its delta area where it flows south into the Bay of Bengal. In the second half of its course across the plains, the Ganges is joined by important tributaries, most of which originate on the southern slopes of the Himalayas: the Ramganga, Gumti, Ghaghara (Gogra) in Uttar Pradesh, and in Bihar the Gandak, Burhi Gandak, Ghugri, and Kosi. The River Son and the Yamuno are the only important tributaries from the south.

The Gangetic plain and delta Together with wind-blown deposits from the drier northwest, enormous quantities of gravel, sand, and clay from the upland areas have been washed down to create the Gangetic plain. Within the last 10,000 years, these deposits have in places built up to over 1,500 m/5,000 ft thick in the trough that separates the Himalayas from the Deccan. The Ganges turns southward as it reaches its delta, and divides; the Padma is the main, easterly, channel, which meets the Brahmaputra at Goalanda in Bangladesh. It joins with the Meghna, which then carries most of the Ganges's water into the Bay of Bengal. It is here that the delta is still actively developing; in contrast, the Ganges's westerly distributary, the Hooghly, has had to be replenished by diverting water at Farakka. The scheme has aimed to prevent silting and tidal flows encroaching on this great commercial stream, site of the Kolkata and Haora city, port, and industrial complex. The delta's low-lying landscape is prone to devastation by frequent cyclones. The tidal forests and swamps of the coast make up the Sundarbans, an area protected by the Indian and Bangladesh governments as a reserve for wildlife, including the Bengal tiger.

Irrigation and agriculture Efficient water management has been a priority since independence, although three-quarters of the Ganges's waters flows unused into the Bay of Bengal. The Upper and Lower Ganges Canals, developed in the British period, utilize much of the water and snowmelt of the Himalayas for dry-season irrigation in the area between the Ganges and the Yamuna. Wheat-growing predominates throughout the upper plains but rice assumes more importance in the lower plains and delta region. Non-traditional wheat areas of Bihar and West Bengal are now growing higher-yielding wheats, for which controlled water supplies are essential.

Navigation The Ganges used to be navigable from the Bay of Bengal to Allahabad but the reduced flow, mainly due to the use of increasing amounts of water for irrigation, has seriously affected navigation. Deforestation of the upper basin has also contributed to the problem: it has reduced the water retention properties of the soil and sub-soil and made it easier for soil erosion to take place in the catchment areas of the river. These factors have caused a quicker run-off of rainwater, and therefore flooding during the wet season and a resulting lower water level in the river during the dry season.