My husband’s family is from eastern Uttar Pradesh. The river Varuna flows close beside his home; the Varuna is a tributary of the Ganga and together with Assi it creates the name of India’s holiest city beside the mighty Ganga, Varanasi. On my first visit as a new bride to my in-laws home, I remember him proudly introducing me to the river that flows past his ancestral lands with a fragment of this song: Ganga maiya tohre piyari chadhaibo… (O Mother Ganga, I offer this yellow dhoti to you…) A wealth of love, and pride, lay hidden in these simple words. On each subsequent visit, over the years, I have whispered these words to the river upon first catching sight of it as it glimmers beside the road or flows beneath a bridge.Today, it feels strange, and sad, that FIRs are being lodged against 14 Muslim men for taking a boat out on the river and opening their fast on the Ganga; they are being accused of hurting the sentiments of the majority community. But what of their sentiments? And that of their forefathers? What of those people, such as my husband’s family, who have lived beside the Ganga for generations and have nothing but the greatest affection and regard for this special river that has nurtured civilisation for millennia? In the New India that is Bharat we have already divided up colours (saffron is Hindu, green is Muslim), food (sattvic vs halal), etc; are we also going to decide who has first rights over rivers and mountains?This might be a good time to revisit the vast amounts of Urdu poetry written on the Ganga by Urdu poets. And the perfect place to start might be the vast ouvre of Iqbal, the poet we are constantly being taught to hate: the much-despised Muhammad Iqbal. Writing his Tarana-e-Hind (The Song of India) in 1904 as a patriotic song for children that went on to become one of the most popular songs for school choruses till its political baggage was discovered and it was promptly discarded, Iqbal begins with ‘Saare jahan se achha Hindostan hamara’ (Our India is the fairest in the entire world) and contains these memorable lines: Ai aabrood-e-Ganga woh din hai yaad tujh ko Utra tire kinaare jab kaarvaan hamaraO waters of the Ganga do you remember that dayWhen our caravan had halted beside your banks Waves upon waves of people came over the centuries and settled down in the fertile lands watered by this mighty river. Flowing for a distance of 2,525 km, all the way from the mountains to the sea, it has fostered an entire civilisation and a way of life. In a long poem entitled ‘Ganga’, Suroor Barabankvi addresses the river thus: Ai aabrood-e-Ganga uff rii tiri safaaiYe tera husn dil-kash ye tarz-o-dil-rubaaiO waters of the Ganga, such is your purityYour beauty is so heart-tugging it steals my heartThe last of the great classical Mughal poets, Dagh Dehlvi, speaks naturally, effortlessly, organically of bathing in the Ganga in this sher:Gham se kahiin najaat miley chaiyn paaen humDil khoon mein nahaaye to Ganga nahaaen humIf we were to escape sorrow and find some peaceOur heart would bathe in blood and we bathe in the GangaThat the Ganga is a synonym for purity is found in a poem about Urdu written by Sardar Jafri:Haseen dilkash jawaan UrduZabaan woh dhul ke jis ko Ganga ke jal se paakeezgi mili haiBeautiful, alluring, youthful UrduA language that has been washed in the waters of the Ganga to attain purityWaseem Barelvi likens his city to the river in this nazm:Shahr mera udaas Ganga sa Koi bhi aaye aur apne paap Kho ke jaata hai dho ke jaata haiMy city is like the sad GangaWhoever comes here with his sinsLoses them by washing in the riverThe boat on the river image is re-imagined thus by Ibn Safi:Husn banaa jab bahti GangaIshq hua kaaghaz ki naavWhen beauty turned into a flowing GangaLove became a paper boatThat the Ganga is loved equally by all is evident from this whimsical sher by Nida Fazli from a ghazal that has the following lines too Brindaban ke Krishn Kanhaiya Allah Hu:Jaisa jis ka bartan waisa us ka tan Ghat-ti badh-ti Ganga maiya Allah huA person’s body is akin to the size of his utensilMother Ganga rises and falls, Allah, O AllahIn a lyrically tender poem entitled ‘Tere Khushbu Mein Basey Khat’ (Letters Drenched in Your Fragrance) Rajinder Nath Rahbar writes about surrendering his most treasured possessions in the safekeeping of the river:Umr-bhar ki jo kamaaii thhi ganvaa aayaa hoonTere khat aaj main Ganga mein bahaa aayaa hoonI have thrown away whatever was my lifelong earningToday I have floated away your letters in the GangaTwo modern Hindi poets writing the ghazal in Hindi have written about the Ganga thus. First Gopaldas Neeraj:Aag bahtii hai yahaan Ganga mein Jhelum mein bhiKoi batlaaye kahaan jaa ke nahaayaa jaayeFire flows in the Ganga and in the Jhelum tooSomeone should tell me where I should go to batheAnd Dushyant Kumar:Ho gayii hai peer parvat sii pighalnii chaahiyeIss Himaale se koi Ganga nikalnii chaahiyeThe pain is so immense that the mountain should meltA Ganga should emerge from this HimalayaThen there are the countless film songs that celebrate the Ganga, such as Ganga aaye kahan se, Ganga jaaye kahan re… from the film Kabuliwala, Tu ganga ki mauj main Jamuna ka dhaara… from Baiju Bawra, Hum uss desh ke waasi hain… from Jis Desh Mein Ganga Bahti Hai, Mere man ki Ganga aur tere man ki Jamuna… from Sangam, Ganga maiyya mein jab tak ke paani rahe… from Suhaag Raat, Ganga tera paani amrit …from the eponymous film. Each, in their own way, reinforced the image in the nooks and crannies of the popular imagination that had been fostered by the Urdu poet for a long, long time.Rakhshanda Jalil is a Delhi-based writer, translator and researcher.