International Courant
Varanasi, India – “Hum paani ke jeev hain. We’re water creatures,” says 29-year-old Vishwakarma Sahni.
Sahni belongs to the group of round Varanasi 8,000 Mallahthe boatmen whose lives are deeply intertwined with the Ganges – a river thought of sacred in India and which they deeply revere.
To them, the Ganges is not only a river; it’s their lifeline.
A boatman prays earlier than boarding his boat (Uday Narayanan/Al Jazeera)
On its journey eastward from the Himalayas, the Ganges traverses greater than 2,500 km (1,550 mi) earlier than emptying into the Bay of Bengal within the northeastern Indian Ocean. Alongside the way in which, the route passes by a number of areas together with the traditional metropolis of Varanasi, also referred to as Kashi or Banaras in Hindi. “Banaras” is derived from the phrase “Banarasi” within the Pali language.
At dawn a cruise ship passes by. In 2018, the federal government of India launched three personal cruise ships to function alongside the ghats of Varanasi. The skippers declare the cruise ships are negatively impacting their livelihoods (Uday Narayanan/Al Jazeera)
Varanasi has lengthy fascinated historians, anthropologists, artists and storytellers and is commonly thought of one of many oldest inhabited cities on this planet. It additionally occurs to be the constituency of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who got here to energy in 2014 a promise to rework Varanasi right into a Kyoto-style good metropolisand which faces one other election later this month. Nonetheless, the lives of Varanasi’s boatmen are largely neglected, they are saying.
In 2018, regardless of widespread group protests, the Indian authorities granted permits to a few personal cruise ships to function alongside Varanasi’s ghats – the small steps that descend to wharves and cremation amenities alongside the river.
‘Youngsters of the Ganges’ – The mallah group of Varanasi in India | Staff’ rights
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