From the heavens
From the heavens
Sometimes I was the mountain,
And carried you on my chest.
A bridge sometimes, also riverbanks,
And now I am an ocean,
But you continue to flow,
Even after disappearing into me.
– Arun Trivedi in Tumhara Nadi-Man
The concept of heaven continues to defy definition. Prophets have offered varying visions. Preachers have propounded conflicting theories; litterateurs have tried to depict it through words; artistes have attempted to render life to the idea, each according to an individual interpretation. But it still remains an inspiration, or desire, at best. Its physical attributes can only be guessed at, never ascertained.
If heaven is a place of eternal peace, irrepressible joy and complete bliss, then it must remain somewhere in the imagination – that is the only place where ideas need not reflect reality. But if it is an address where gods and angels live, it must be a place very similar to Tibet. Kailash, a mountain metaphorically higher than the Himalaya, and Mansarovar, a lake subliminally deeper than the Pacific Ocean, are both located on the Tibetan Plateau. And Tibet has to be heaven because some of the biggest river systems, which sustain nearly half of the world's population, originate in its highlands.
Considered a 'cradle of civilisation' or 'mother river' by some, and 'China's sorrow' by many others, Ma Chu (the Yellow River) is born in Kham, from where it flows eastward through nine provinces and 'autonomous' regions before emptying into the Bohai Sea. Dri Chu (the Yangtze River) – better known these days for the Three Gorges Dam, rather than for having been the mainstay of Chinese agriculture and businesses down the centuries – likewise begins in Tibet before uniting the largest country in the world into one whole, and finally meeting its maker at the East China Sea near Shanghai. The Dza Chu, which becomes the Mekong River after coming out from its headwaters, likewise in Kham, flows south through Yunnan, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam before dumping into the South China Sea. Only the divine, or Mother Nature herself, is capable of creating a route as picturesque and as diverse as that of the Mekong River – without this lifeline, the civilisation of the Indo-China region would not be as vibrant as it is.
Irrigation for agriculture, hydropower for energy, navigability for transportation, water for thirst and hygiene, fishing for food – rivers have so many uses that nearly every ancient settlement developed along riverbanks. But beyond utilitarianism, rivers have also fascinated human beings as gifts from heaven. A trip down the Brahmaputra, a dip in the Holy Ganga, and meditation on the banks of Indus takes the faithful temporarily into the abode of the gods – Tibet – where the sources of all these rivers appear on earth from the eternity of Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh, the Hindu trinity of creator, provider and destroyer.
Tibeto-Southasian
Almost all major rivers to the north of the Vindhyachal ranges originate in the Himalaya, mountains that are believed to store the largest quantity of ice outside of the polar regions. The headwaters of perennial rivers are melted glaciers. Himalayan rivers experience their first high season in the early summer, when the ice begins to melt; the second is during the monsoon, when rainwater runoff augments an already bloated flow, creating flooding wherever banks are low or weak. Every river is thus the creator, provider and destroyer of life and livelihood. More than science or engineering, rivers need understanding and devotion – probably of the intensity of King Bhagirath of the Ikshvaku Dynasty, who turned the flow of the Ganga towards what came to be named her own plains after several centuries.
Despite the sacredness of places along its route in mountains such as Gangotri, Badrinath, Kedarnath, Rishikesh and Haridwar, the Ganga gathers full force only when the Mahakali and then the Karnali-Sarda join her in the plains, after which Prayag and Kashi celebrate her bounty and divinity. But after the Kosi merges into the Ganga – Tibetan waters re-energising a matured flow – the river is transformed into a mighty force, which has created the largest delta of the world in Bengal. Of the three-fourths of the Ganga's water – and considerably more of the silt and bed-load – contributed by rivers flowing down from Nepal, a significant portion is affected by development on the northern face of the Himalaya.
Towards the west of the Southasian heartland, the Indus has a more direct connection to Tibet where it originates near Mansarovar. It then travels through Kashmir, Punjab and Sindh – areas where preliminary drafts of the Vedas might have been recited and transferred down through generations by the process of memorisation and recall. The Indus Water Treaty sets terms of division of its bounty between India and Pakistan. But if its headwaters were to be disturbed, the impact downstream in both countries would be catastrophic.
Called the Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibet and Jamuna in Bengal, the Brahmaputra (Son of Brahma) is one of the rare 'male' rivers in its upper reaches. It provides but does not really nurture until it is given a feminine form and name as it emerges from Assam. It is even more dependent on its Tibetan catchments than the Indus and the Ganga. Further east of the Brahmaputra basin, mightily flows the Salween River from its headwaters in the mountains of Tibet to its estuary in the Burmese state of Mon, supporting over 10 million people along the way. Chinese investors and their Thai front companies have planned a series of mega-dams along the Salween, but their fate too will depend on developments upstream in the Tibetan highlands.
Strangely, few Southasians are aware of, or take an interest in, whatever is happening at the source of their mother rivers in the Tibet Autonomous Region, that 'inalienable part of China' in government speak. The meteorologically sensitive mountains of Tibet are the silent sufferers of the consequences of rapid industrialisation. The head of the China Meteorological Bureau, Zheng Guoguang, warned recently, "If the warming continues, millions of people in western China will face floods in the short term and drought in the long run." For much of Southasia, of course, the consequences of such an eventuality would be equally devastating.
Meanwhile, the effects of deforestation, which is causing the spread of desertification by 39,600 hectares annually in the Tibetan highlands, on the flow of Southasian rivers remains to be explored. Intensive mining, haphazard road-building and the permanent settlement of Han workers in previously uninhabited areas of Tibet are 'developments' that will have consequences for the billion-plus people that live between the Indus and the Mekong, apart from millions of mainland Chinese themselves. "By 2010, we hope to achieve zero growth in deserts and by 2020, half of the desertified land that can still be reversed will be fixed," claimed Meteorological Bureau Chief Zheng in Beijing. Southasians need to pray for his success, because their own livelihoods are tied with the efforts of people like Zheng and those Tibetans who reportedly forced a Chinese company to stop mining near their sacred mountains.
An obsession with scientific progress and techno-fixation has made the post-Nehru and -Jinnah generation of Southasia imagine a dam whenever they see a river. But rivers need to be studied, not tamed blindly, before their implications for human civilisation can be fully comprehended, and measures for the maximisation of benefits can be planned. Dams or river-control works are not always disastrous, as many environmental activists would have everyone believe. After all, it was an Ikshvaku king's bhagirath prayatna (persistent effort), a human intervention of monumental dimension, that turned the course of the Ganga towards a region that became, agriculturally, one of the most productive lands of the world. With a population expected to reach 1.5 billion by as early as 2020, nearly 50 percent of it is surviving on an income below the poverty line, Southasia will need to use all resources at its disposal. But the Chinese road of becoming yet another cheap workshop for the rest of the world is perhaps not the way to go. Tibetans seem to have realised this ahead of the rest of Southasia.