Death of a Historic River
Cities and civilisations flourished on the banks of rivers, rivulets, canals and creeks—popularly known as “riverine ecology.” Holwell (1771) noted that ‘a small brook’ near Kalighat ‘was deemed to be the original course of the Ganges’ by the local Brahmins. By 1771, however, Adi Ganga had shrunk and in the surveyor Ranell’s map it is only a faint line. This channel was shown to be draining into the Bidyadhari (upper Matla) below Baruipur in the 1778 Bengal Atlas of James Rennell (Sheet no. 1). The initial written accounts of its moribund course, described in the early maps variously as the Govindapur Creek, Gunga Nullah, Surman’s Nala etc., were provided by the Calcutta Review (1852) and Sherwill (1858). Subsequently Hunter (1875) identified it as the Adi Ganga and observed how ‘the Hindus consider the route of the channel sacred and burn their dead on the sides of the tanks dug in its bed.’ During 1775-77, a connection was made by Maj. Willaim Tolly between the Hooghly and Bidyadhari by means of a 27 km long canal which mostly followed the Adi Ganga in its western section upto Gariya (Buckley, 1883). After the death of Major Tolly, Mrs Tolly was given the right to levy tolls and it was taken over by the government in 1804. Apart from playing a huge role in trade and transportation, the canal acted as an outlet for waste water of the city. It is interesting to note that the water-borne traffic (including Tolly’s Canal and other canals) to Calcutta was seven times more than what was carried by the Eastern Bengal State Railway during the 19th and early 20th century (O’Malley 1998). Once the Adi Ganga was revitalised by William Tolly, a number of ghats grew up on the banks of the canal including Balaram Basu’s Ghat, Mukherjee’s Ghat, Hindu Mission Ghat, Kalighat, Ghatak Ghat, Prasannamayi’s Ghat, Rashbarir Ghat, Tarpan Ghat, Kudghat, Rathtala Ghat, etc. The tract was a lively route and the locals are still nostalgic about how Bhatiali(boatman songs) was sung under the full moon sky providing an intense satiety to people living on its banks. But gradually since the 1960s the water route lost its vigour though it still continued to be a discharging outlet for the southern part of the city. The once navigable canal transformed into a mere nullah (drain) due to lack of restoration and maintenance.
A number of Mangalkavyas described the Adi Ganga course of the Bhagirathi as a principal navigational channel to the Bay of Bengal. The temple of Lakhindar still stands in Boral burning ghat. Two old maps can be found in the National Library, Kolkata. One by the Portuguese, Jao de-Barros, dated back to 1550, and the other by the Dutchman, Van Den Brock was of 1562 vintage. In both maps Adi Ganga was about 3 km wide, and Portuguese pirates used this route to plunder and pillage south Bengal. Pratapaditya held sway over this region. His general, Madan Malla, used to confront these pirates.
The strand of Adi Ganga was known as Jangal and it was down this path that Sri Chaitanya along with four companions trudged from Nabadwip to Puri. According to Chaitanya Bhagabat, when he reached Atisara village (now Baruipur) he spent the night (14th Falgun, 1510) singing kirtan in the hut of Sadhu Anantaram. This tradition of singing kirtan continues in Baruipur for 500 years. A temple has come up on this spot. Even in the early 1970s, honey gatherers from the Sundarbans brought honey and bamboo up the river in their boats, and tied up below the bridge that leads to Tollygunge.
The derelict condition of this important water channel can be partly attributed to the fact that Calcutta’s canals were excavated for two reasons—trade-transportation and drainage-sewerage-sanitation.
Though it was properly maintained during the colonial period (due to its important role in riverine ecology), in the post-independence period it turned into a sewer because the water channel was neither restored, nor maintained. Huge amount of silt was deposited when the heavy silt laden water of the Hooghly River entered the canal especially during high tides resulting in the increase in the bed level at alarming proportions ranging between 6 and 12 feet.
A large number of sewerage drains belonging to the Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC) and the Calcutta Metropolitan Water and Sanitation Authority (CMWSA) discharged untreated effluent directly into Tolly’s Canal. These networks did not have lock gates to check and regulate the flow of water during high and low tides. The canal carried effluent from the southern part of the city and discharged it in the eastern marshlands (later called the East Kolkata Wetlands). It was also polluted by household garbage from local residents.
Over a period of time, several “illegal” settlements grew up on both banks of the entire stretch of the Tolly’s Canal. The settlers were mostly from different areas of rural West Bengal who migrated to Kolkata thinking of the opportunities of work that the city would have provided. For 40 years the canal bank was occupied with people who were already victims of development from the countryside facing landlessness, alienation of land, poverty and flood (Seabrook 2002).
Time and again there had been plans promises to turn Kolkata into Venice by reviving her inland water transport. But till date there is no such initiative. Kolkata may be an “ecologically subsidized” city (Ghosh 1997); but the way we have ignored our ecosystems, especially water bodies, is making the “delta city” more vulnerable to environmental changes. Environmental activist Subhas Datta says, “It’s a major scam, it’s a story of systematically murdering the river with encroachment, effluent discharge and all kind of possible degradation, under the obvious patronage of political powers.” Pollution control board data shows the dissolved oxygen level along most stretches of the Adi Ganga is zero, so no life can exist in it. The coliform bacteria count is between nine and 16 million per 100 millilitres of water. The national standard for water fit for bathing is 500 per 100 ml. Apart from the garbage, 57 drains containing untreated waste water flow into the Adi Ganga.
My recent visit to the Rashbarir Ghat showed me again how much plastics and waste we put into this historical river which once played an important role in trading Muslin, Indigo and many other products.Spend some time along this river and you might be able to hear its sobbing.
