Very few now even remember that the river Saraswati once actually flowed through parts of Northern India. Thanks to the Shiva Trilogy by author Amish Tripathi, at least some readers were reminded of the life giving waters of this mythological prominent river.
Looks like someone else also took notice. The BJP government in the state of Haryana has set up a Saraswati Heritage Development Board. The primary objective of this board is to “revive” the invisible Saraswati by extensive field work to establish the course taken by the river. The Board will also try to develop a tourist circuit by linking tourism and culture.
The Saraswati finds mention in a lot of ancient Hindu scriptures such as the Rig Veda, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. Then about 400 years ago, due to some natural or geographical conditions, the river simply dried up or vanished. There are a couple of theories which say that parts of the river still run underground, away from plain sight and flows all the way to the Triveni Sangam in Allahabad.
There has been a very interesting development in the revival process when labour digging in the Mugalwali village of Yamunanagar district struck water at a shallow depth of eight feet. This digging was being carried out since April as part of the project tracing the original course of the river Saraswati in the state of Haryana. This project is in full swing in the districts of Yamunanagar, Kurukshetra and Kaithal.
An official of the Saraswati Heritage Development Board made a statement that the work should be complete by the end of the month of July.
So, if all goes as planned, the Saraswati may be flowing by the next month. The government has hopes that the good monsoon this year shall aid their river revival plans. The Manohar Lal Khattar government in Haryana had allocated Rs. 50 crores to the project aimed at discovering the river considered sacred by Hindus. Last year in August, Minister for Water Resources – Uma Bharati had said that “finding the missing river” a priority of the Modi government.
Although modern science has denied that any such river ever existed owing to lack of sufficient evidence, the Haryana government is making all efforts to prove them wrong. So much so, that the state government is spending a whopping Rs.50 crores ($7.5 million) of public money on this effort.
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28 July, 2016
Team Rapid