Rivers were used to grow crops and transport goods and people, but respect for the power of flowing water was the bedrock on which people engaged with rivers. The numerous shrines, temples, dargahs, mosques, and burning ghats that garland the river bear testimony to this collective belief. As you sail with Antara on our cruise ships in India from Calcutta to Varanasi and on to the Ganges delta, you get ringside views of these spiritual and historical experiences along the way.
Prayers Along the River
At Sultanganj, you will see the beautiful Buddhas carved or cast between the sixth and eighth centuries AD, which are now housed in museums in Patna, Birmingham, and elsewhere. On another bend of the Ganga, which changes its flow every 25 years or so, are a series of shrine-jetties that rise above its banks to perhaps match the changing levels of water, and which are dedicated to various gods including Shiva, Narasimha, the Goddess, and others. These are carved in a folksy style, reminiscent of some Gupta-period art. On the river cruise, you sense that people entered the river with a prayer but also valued it as a channel for transporting themselves and their things. Even the Iranian traveller Ahmad Behbahani who sailed on the Ganga in 1806 remarks on the purity and sweetness of its water, and the fact that many Muslim holy men find its banks an appropriate place to conduct their spiritual work.
Cultures Along the River
People who lived along it in places were indentured and transported to faraway lands such as Trinidad, British Guyana, Surinam, Mauritius and Fiji to work on European-owned sugar plantations. Across the Bhojpuri speaking communities of the Purvanchal area and beyond, songs such as “Kalkatiya balamwa” and the dramas of Bhikhari Thakur bear testimony to the lives of people who have travelled far away to earn their livelihood and gain adventure. It is not surprising then that as you sail on the river cruise in India from Patna to Munger, from Raj Mahal to Farakka and then Kolkata, the entrepreneurial activities of settler communities created new forms of urban culture in places like Murshidabad, Chinsurah, Chandernagore, Serampore, Cossimbazar, etc. where missionary activity and commerce happened side-by-side.
Transformation Along the River
The kind of social transformation that happened in the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries on the banks of the Ganga as it flows through the eastern plains is much like the kind of changes India is undergoing since liberalization. People who were from small, locally powerful families became immensely more powerful and wealthy as they became zamindars who collected taxes and rents. Or they became bankers and built fabulous rajbaris or palaces and displayed their piety by building temples, ghats and making generous donations to institutions which are still very alive today.
On the river cruise from Calcutta, you will witness this. Both Rani Rashmoni who built the intricate terracotta temples at Baranagar, the Dakshineshwar temple, and gave funds to the Imperial Library (now the National Library) in Kolkata as well as Dwarakanath Tagore, the founder of the illustrious family which has made its mark in business, literature, education, the arts and civic life for generations, are products of this extraordinary moment in the subcontinent’s history. They along with many others made their fortunes and thus their identities along and through the waters of the Ganga.
Sail with us on our cruise ships at Antara to become a part of the millenia-old connection between people and the river.
