Sacred secrets of River Ganga

Om

Sacred secrets of River Ganga 

It is estimated that 100 million people take Holy bath at Allahabad during this Kubha Mela. Most people raise question that if this many people take bath in such a small place in a water body, will it not cause contagious and harmful diseases?

As we discussed in previous posts, River Ganga Water contains bacteriophage. The bacteria which phages feed on can come from human sewage, or from human bodies when they bathe. The human body in water in fact acts as a catalyst. The higher the concentration of bathers the more food for the phages to feast on. So wherever there are major bathing festivals (the various Kumbh Melas) and high numbers of bathers (Varanasi, Allahabad) phages will flock.

      ‘When there is a Kumbh Mela, that phages help. When sixty million people bathe in a small area, huge amounts of bacteria are rinsed off from their bodies. Suddenly the bacterial concentration is very high. Even though the phage concentration is initially very low, the chance of the proper bacterium meeting a phage is very likely. Having found out its prey, the phage will multiply and the whole area suddenly becomes rich in phages.

 Hence, As more people bathe in Ganga, the river seems to acquire greater powers of self-purification. To some it may also sound like an open invitation to encourage people to dump untreated sewage into Ganga. But no one is advocating this. 

Another interesting fact was revealed in British research during this khumba Mela. Those people who took holy bath in Sacred River are getting free from Psychological and mental problems and to some extent diseases. This is the power of River Ganga. This is the reason why Hindus worship her with utmost respect.

We, Hindus consider River Godavari as sacred and also give equal importance as we give to Ganga. The 2003 Ardh Mela at Nasik (on the Godavari river) that Godavari has also bacteriophages similar to that of River Ganga but anyhow Ganga has its own importance . ‘Six million people bathed there.  Researhers took water samples and found about eight or nine different phages in that water,’ just about what you’d expect when several million take a ‘holy dip’ together.’   

Devendra Swaroop Bhargava is now a retired professor of Hydrology from Roorkee University. In the 1980s and 1990s, Bhargava published many papers in respectable international journals, arguing that Ganga has special chemical and biological properties that allow the river to absorb organic wastes at an astonishingly high rate due to a remarkable ability to re-oxygenate itself. One that stuck in my mind was the claim that animal bones submerged in a tank at IIT-Kanpur had been dissolved within three days. 

source : http://www.ibaradio.org/India/ganga/radio/radio4/sd1.htm

and some part is taken from Paper and NEWS media.