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World History Final Project Directions

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Whole Group: Mao Zedong

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Group 3&4

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Group 2

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Group 1

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An extract from "People's Century" (1997)

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Hiroshima 70th anniversary: The bombings explained

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On August 6th 2015, it is 70-years since the USA dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima - killing at least 140,000 people in the Japanese city. Report by Ashley Fudge. Like our tunes? Find them all at http://stoneocean.info Current affairs, amazing footage and incredible stories. Welcome to ODN - On Demand News.

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Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) 1893 - 1976 http://www.cloudbiography.com Mao Zedong was a Chinese revolutionary and founder of the People's Republic of China. See a related article at Britannica.com: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/363395/Mao-Zedong All content is either in the public domain or licensed pursuant to a Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ Attribution: http://cloudbiography.com/attribution.html

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Revered the world over for his nonviolent philosophy of passive resistance, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was known to his many followers as Mahatma, or "the great-souled one." He began his activism as an Indian immigrant in South Africa in the early 1900s, and in the years following World War I became the leading figure in India's struggle to gain independence from Great Britain. Known for his ascetic lifestyle-he often dressed only in a loincloth and shawl-and devout Hindu faith, Gandhi was imprisoned several times during his pursuit of non-cooperation, and undertook a number of hunger strikes to protest the oppression of India's poorest classes, among other injustices. After Partition in 1947, he continued to work toward peace between Hindus and Muslims. Gandhi was shot to death in Delhi in January 1948 by a Hindu fundamentalist.

Early Life

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869, at Porbandar, in the present-day Indian state of Gujarat. His father was the dewan (chief minister) of Porbandar; his deeply religious mother was a devoted practitioner of Vaishnavism (worship of the Hindu god Vishnu), influenced by Jainism, an ascetic religion governed by tenets of self-discipline and nonviolence. At the age of 19, Mohandas left home to study law in London at the Inner Temple, one of the city's four law colleges. Upon returning to India in mid-1891, he set up a law practice in Bombay, but met with little success. He soon accepted a position with an Indian firm that sent him to its office in South Africa. Along with his wife, Kasturbai, and their children, Gandhi remained in South Africa for nearly 20 years.

Did you know? In the famous Salt March of April-May 1930, thousands of Indians followed Gandhi from Ahmadabad to the Arabian Sea. The march resulted in the arrest of nearly 60,000 people, including Gandhi himself.

Gandhi was appalled by the discrimination he experienced as an Indian immigrant in South Africa. When a European magistrate in Durban asked him to take off his turban, he refused and left the courtroom. On a train voyage to Pretoria, he was thrown out of a first-class railway compartment and beaten up by a white stagecoach driver after refusing to give up his seat for a European passenger. That train journey served as a turning point for Gandhi, and he soon began developing and teaching the concept of satyagraha ("truth and firmness"), or passive resistance, as a way of non-cooperation with authorities.

The Birth of Passive Resistance

In 1906, after the Transvaal government passed an ordinance regarding the registration of its Indian population, Gandhi led a campaign of civil disobedience that would last for the next eight years. During its final phase in 1913, hundreds of Indians living in South Africa, including women, went to jail, and thousands of striking Indian miners were imprisoned, flogged and even shot. Finally, under pressure from the British and Indian governments, the government of South Africa accepted a compromise negotiated by Gandhi and General Jan Christian Smuts, which included important concessions such as the recognition of Indian marriages and the abolition of the existing poll tax for Indians.

In July 1914, Gandhi left South Africa to return to India. He supported the British war effort in World War I but remained critical of colonial authorities for measures he felt were unjust. In 1919, Gandhi launched an organized campaign of passive resistance in response to Parliament's passage of the Rowlatt Acts, which gave colonial authorities emergency powers to suppress subversive activities. He backed off after violence broke out-including the massacre by British-led soldiers of some 400 Indians attending a meeting at Amritsar-but only temporarily, and by 1920 he was the most visible figure in the movement for Indian independence.

Leader of a Movement

As part of his nonviolent non-cooperation campaign for home rule, Gandhi stressed the importance of economic independence for India. He particularly advocated the manufacture of khaddar, or homespun cloth, in order to replace imported textiles from Britain. Gandhi's eloquence and embrace of an ascetic lifestyle based on prayer, fasting and meditation earned him the reverence of his followers, who called him Mahatma (Sanskrit for "the great-souled one"). Invested with all the authority of the Indian National Congress (INC or Congress Party), Gandhi turned the independence movement into a massive organization, leading boycotts of British manufacturers and institutions representing British influence in India, including legislatures and schools.

After sporadic violence broke out, Gandhi announced the end of the resistance movement, to the dismay of his followers. British authorities arrested Gandhi in March 1922 and tried him for sedition; he was sentenced to six years in prison but was released in 1924 after undergoing an operation for appendicitis. He refrained from active participation in politics for the next several years, but in 1930 launched a new civil disobedience campaign against the colonial government's tax on salt, which greatly affected Indian's poorest citizens.

A Divided Movement

In 1931, after British authorities made some concessions, Gandhi again called off the resistance movement and agreed to represent the Congress Party at the Round Table Conference in London. Meanwhile, some of his party colleagues-particularly Mohammed Ali Jinnah, a leading voice for India's Muslim minority-grew frustrated with Gandhi's methods, and what they saw as a lack of concrete gains. Arrested upon his return by a newly aggressive colonial government, Gandhi began a series of hunger strikes in protest of the treatment of India's so-called "untouchables" (the poorer classes), whom he renamed Harijans, or "children of God." The fasting caused an uproar among his followers and resulted in swift reforms by the Hindu community and the government.

In 1934, Gandhi announced his retirement from politics in, as well as his resignation from the Congress Party, in order to concentrate his efforts on working within rural communities. Drawn back into the political fray by the outbreak of World War II, Gandhi again took control of the INC, demanding a British withdrawal from India in return for Indian cooperation with the war effort. Instead, British forces imprisoned the entire Congress leadership, bringing Anglo-Indian relations to a new low point.

Partition and Death of Gandhi

After the Labor Party took power in Britain in 1947, negotiations over Indian home rule began between the British, the Congress Party and the Muslim League (now led by Jinnah). Later that year, Britain granted India its independence but split the country into two dominions: India and Pakistan. Gandhi strongly opposed Partition, but he agreed to it in hopes that after independence Hindus and Muslims could achieve peace internally. Amid the massive riots that followed Partition, Gandhi urged Hindus and Muslims to live peacefully together, and undertook a hunger strike until riots in Calcutta ceased.

In January 1948, Gandhi carried out yet another fast, this time to bring about peace in the city of Delhi. On January 30, 12 days after that fast ended, Gandhi was on his way to an evening prayer meeting in Delhi when he was shot to death by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu fanatic enraged by Mahatma's efforts to negotiate with Jinnah and other Muslims. The next day, roughly 1 million people followed the procession as Gandhi's body was carried in state through the streets of the city and cremated on the banks of the holy Jumna River.

PHOTO GALLERIES

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Revered the world over for his nonviolent philosophy of passive resistance, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was known to his many followers as Mahatma, or "the great-souled one." He began his activism as an Indian immigrant in South Africa in the early 1900s, and in the years following World War I became the leading figure in India's struggle to gain independence from Great Britain.

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Independence Movement in Vietnam

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Hours after Japan's surrender in World War II, Vietnamese communist Ho Chi Minh declares the independence of Vietnam from France. The proclamation paraphrased the U.S. Declaration of Independence in declaring, "All men are born equal: the Creator has given us inviolable rights, life, liberty, and happiness!" and was cheered by an enormous crowd gathered in Hanoi's Ba Dinh Square. It would be 30 years, however, before Ho's dream of a united, communist Vietnam became reality.

Born in 1890, Ho Chi Minh left Vietnam as a cook on a French steamer in 1911. After several years as a seaman, he lived in London and then moved to France, where he became a founding member of the French Communist Party in 1920. He later traveled to the Soviet Union, where he studied revolutionary tactics and took an active role in the Communist International. In 1924, he went to China, where he set about organizing exiled Vietnamese communists. Expelled by China in 1927, he traveled extensively before returning to Vietnam in 1941.

There, he organized a Vietnamese guerrilla organization-the Viet Minh -to fight for Vietnamese independence. Japan occupied French Indochina in 1940 and collaborated with French officials loyal to France's Vichy regime. Ho, meanwhile, made contact with the Allies and aided operations against the Japanese in South China. In early 1945, Japan ousted the French administration in Vietnam and executed numerous French officials.

When Japan formally surrendered to the Allies on September 2, 1945, Ho Chi Minh felt emboldened enough to proclaim the independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam. French forces seized southern Vietnam and opened talks with the Vietnamese communists. These talks collapsed in 1946, and French warships bombarded the northern Vietnamese city of Haiphong, killing thousands.

In response, the Viet Minh launched an attack against the French in Hanoi on December 19, 1945-the beginning of the First Indochina War. During the eight-year war, Mao Zedong's Chinese communists supported the Viet Minh, while the United States aided the French and anti-communist Vietnamese forces. In 1954, the French suffered a major defeat at Dien Bien Phu, in northwest Vietnam, prompting peace negotiations and the division of Vietnam along the 17th parallel at a conference in Geneva. Vietnam was divided into northern and southern regions, with Ho in command of North Vietnam and Emperor Bao Dai in control of South Vietnam.

In the late 1950s, Ho Chi Minh organized a communist guerrilla movement in the South, called the Viet Cong. North Vietnam and the Viet Cong successfully opposed a series of ineffectual U.S.-backed South Vietnam regimes and beginning in 1964 withstood a decade-long military intervention by the United States. Ho Chi Minh died on September 2, 1969, 25 years after declaring Vietnam's independence from France and nearly six years before his forces succeeded in reuniting North and South Vietnam under communist rule. Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, was renamed Ho Chi Minh City after it fell to the communists in 1975.

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Vietnam independence proclaimed - Sep 02, 1945 - HISTORY.com

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Hours after Japan's surrender in World War II, Vietnamese communist Ho Chi Minh declares the independence of Vietnam from France. The proclamation paraphrased the U.S. Declaration of Independence in declaring, "All men are born equal: the Creator has given us inviolable rights, life, liberty, and happiness!"

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By the 1880s, India was becoming a very poor country. But Britain got richer and richer by taking all of India's wealth (as the British were also doing in Iran, and many other countries). In 1885, Indian resisters organized the Indian National Congress. The Congress tried to get more Indian men into power in the government.

During World War I, the British asked a lot of Indian men to serve in the British army fighting the Germans. After the war, this gave the Indian National Congress more power. First, Britain was much weaker after losing so many men in the war. Second, more Indian men, especially Sikhs, were trained in modern warfare and could fight the British. Third, Britain needed to stay friends with India in case they needed Indian men to fight for them again. The Indian National Congress, under the leadership of Mohandas Gandhi, began to push for full Indian independence.

But when Britain called for Indian men to fight in World War II, Gandhi asked for independence in exchange - and the British put the entire Indian National Congress in jail! Most Indian soldiers fought for Britain in World War II anyway. But other Indians, like Netaji Subhash Bose, supported Nazi Germany and Japan. Japan fought the British in India.

After the war, Britain was even weaker, and India's fighting abilities were stronger. Britain tried to keep control of India and its wealth by promising more rights for Indians. But more and more Indians participated in Gandhi's huge non-violent demonstrations. People protested to end the hated salt tax and pressure Britain for full independence.

In 1947, the Indian National Congress negotiated a deal for independence from Britain, but Britain insisted on breaking India into two countries. Pakistan (divided into two pieces, West Pakistan and East Pakistan) would be an Islamic country, while India would be a Hindu country. Gandhi fought to make India and Pakistan back into one country, but in 1948 a Hindu man shot and killed him. Ten million Indians moved to live in the "right" country for their religion, and a million more died in the riots that pushed people to move.

Learn by doing: get training in non-violent civil disobedience
Modern India
More about India

Bibliography and further reading about Indian history:

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Indian National Congress (1885) By the 1880s, India was becoming a very poor country. But Britain got richer and richer by taking all of India's wealth (as the British were also doing in Iran, and many other countries). In 1885, Indian resisters organized the Indian

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7th Grade World History II:  Southeast Asia Government Review

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Why do you think governments with command economies eventually begin to give up some of their control and let citizens run businesses?

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Varun Soni, dean of Religious Life at the University of Southern California, discusses the goals and beliefs of Hinduism, the third largest religion in the world. Most Hindus believe all humans and living creatures possess a soul, which is a reflection of God, and that the soul is reincarnated over many lifetimes.

Get more information on OWN's groundbreaking seven-part series Belief, including episode discussion guides, journals and videos.

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Varun Soni, dean of Religious Life at the University of Southern California, discusses the goals and beliefs of Hinduism, the third largest religion in the world. Most Hindus believe all humans and living creatures possess a soul, which is a reflection of God, and that the soul is reincarnated over many lifetimes.

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What Is The Ancient Japanese Religion Shinto?

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The Buddha's philosophy teaches us that our desires are at the root of our restlessness - and that calm can be achieved through willpower and spiritual exercise. If you like our films, take a look at our full shop too: https://goo.gl/aGTlez FURTHER READING "The story of the Buddha's life, like all of Buddhism, is a story about confronting suffering.

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CashVille Kidz Episode 1: The History About Money

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In this episode, we will learn that there are other things that are more important than money like friendship, life and health. However, having said that, money is still an important part of our daily life because without money, we can't buy the things we need or want.

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What Was China's Cultural Revolution and Why Was It So Violent?

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What Was China's Cultural Revolution and Why Was It So Violent?

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https://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/isr/

https://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/sau/

https://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/tur/

https://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/irn/

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OECD (Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development)

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OECD (Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development)

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Data visualisation for key OECD data - OECD

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opec organization of the petroleum exporting countries petroleum organization opep oil energy world cooperation security supply demand market development

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OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) is an intergovernmental organization oil demand supply market upstream downstream Vienna Austria

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 “Can the Middle East Survive without Oil” 

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 “Can the Middle East Survive without Oil” 

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Can The Middle East Survive Without Oil?

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Is Saudi Arabia Going Bankrupt? http://bit.ly/22gcq6a Who Controls The World's Oil? http://bit.ly/1RJMSqu Subscribe! http://bitly.com/1iLOHml As oil prices remain low, oil-rich Middle Eastern countries search for new revenue sources. How are oil states diversifying their economies? Learn More: Saudi Arabia to run out of cash in less than 5 years http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/25/investing/oil-prices-saudi-arabia-cash-opec-middle-east/ "Not even the mighty Middle East can survive cheap oil forever."

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How Much Oil Is Left On Earth? http://bit.ly/1Ocnvyk Subscribe! http://bitly.com/1iLOHml The U.S. might produce more oil than any other country, but that doesn't mean they control the oil market. Who exactly controls the world's oil? Learn More: Total Petroleum and Other Liquids Production 2014 http://www.eia.gov/beta/international/rankings/#?prodact=53-1&cy=2014 Background: What caused the 1970s oil price shock?

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Poor Countries and Rich Countries

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Why Some Countries Are Poor and Others Rich

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The reason why some countries are rich and others poor depends on many things, including the quality of their institutions, the culture they have, the natural resources they find and what latitude they're on.

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Login to your USATestprep student, teacher or administrator account.

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Video: "Rise and Fall of Ottoman Empire"

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Video: "Rise and Fall of Ottoman Empire"

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Rise and Fall of the Ottoman Empire 1300 - 1923

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Land and Religious conflict in the Middle East PowerPoint

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Land and Religious conflict in the Middle East PowerPoint

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REUTERS/China Daily The unhealthy smog that settled over Beijing earlier this year, capturing international media attention, is not the only visible sign of China's rapid economic growth and the resulting environmental hazards.

Countless rivers and lakes have also been contaminated by nearby factories, and sometimes, dumping by local residents.
Jump straight to the pictures "
This March, more than 2,000 dead pigs were found floating in a Shanghai river, a main water source for the city's 23 million residents.

Polluted water sources have been linked to a rise in "cancer villages," or areas where cancer rates are high among people who live along tainted waterways.

Time's Gu Yongqiang contends that China's failure to address environmental problems isn't a product of technical or financial constraints, but rather an overwhelming lack of motivation by authorities.

Mounting public outrage, largely aided by the power of social media, is starting to push officials to take action.

Last week, the state-run China Daily newspaper announced the country's plan to spend $16 billion over the next three years to deal with Beijing's pollution, Reuters reported.

An infusion of cash is only the beginning of a massive and much-needed cleanup effort in a country where it's not uncommon to see rivers turned bright green by algae blooms or thick with garbage and dead fish.

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If You Think China's Air Is Bad, You Should See The Water

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REUTERS/China Daily The unhealthy smog that settled over Beijing earlier this year, capturing international media attention, is not the only visible sign of China's rapid economic growth and the resulting environmental hazards. Countless rivers and lakes have also been contaminated by nearby factories, and sometimes, dumping by local residents.

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PowerPoint

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What Happened in the Persian Gulf War? | History

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Afghanistan and the Taliban Explained (2015 - Present) | Real Matters

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► Subscribe on YouTube : http://bit.ly/2uQHX6B ► Instagram : http://bit.ly/2uQIq8R The Afghan government and military, backed by the United States and NATO have been fighting a brutal war against the Taliban and ISIS (2015 - Present). Lets look at the origins of the war and where the conflict is today..

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1948 arab–israeli war (military conflict)

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How The State Of Israel Was Born - Zionism in Animation

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Zionism in Animation - how the state of Israel was born. The first clip in a new series which will tell the story of Zionism in animation. To our crowd-funding campaign http://jewcer.com/project/zionism-in-animation

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Ganges hit by alarming pollution levels during Kumbh Mela

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Ganges hit by alarming pollution levels during Kumbh Mela

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But as 10 million people gathered there on Sunday in preparation for the 4am immersion, there were signs that efforts to keep the tent city clean had reached their limits. Hindu ascetics in saffron robes with matted dreadlocks defecated openly on the roadside as other worshippers made their way to the river banks.

Dr Suresh Dwivedi, head of health and sanitation for the Indian festival, denied the government had not made enough sanitary provision but admitted there was a problem of "open air defecation."

"It is a social problem in our country," he said. "A lot of people come here and defecate in the open, so we constructed pits."

In the rivers themselves, tons of rotting marigolds, coconuts and other offerings formed a scum on the surface, as worshippers drank the holy water. The river is polluted by the ash from thousands of cremations, rotting animals, and the human waste of millions of people. Of the 660 million gallons of sewage produced by cities along the river, only a third is treated.

Regardless of the pollution, Hindus believe bathing in the Ganges will purify them and help them achieve their desired Moksha, an end to continual reincarnation.

Swami Chidananad Saraswati, head of the Parmath Niketan Ashram, the largest in the holy chi of Rishikesh, has dedicated his order to saving the river. Hindus, he said, focused too much on their Creator but did not care enough for his creation.

"What's the point in coming here and having one dip in the holy river but not taking care of it? We need waste management, sewage management, the sewage should be in a canal, but it is not being done. It's not just the government but lal the stakeholders," he said.

Nonetheless, he said he will still bathe in the river this morning. "The water is dirty but the Ganga is pure. That purity never ends."

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Ganges hit by alarming pollution levels during Kumbh Mela

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But as 10 million people gathered there on Sunday in preparation for the 4am immersion, there were signs that efforts to keep the tent city clean had reached their limits. Hindu ascetics in saffron robes with matted dreadlocks defecated openly on the roadside as other worshippers made their way to the river banks.

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Across India, environmentalists battle a tide of troubles to clean up a river revered as the source of life

Smithsonian Magazine |

A blue stream spews from beneath brick factory buildings in Kanpur, India. The dark ribbon curls down a dirt embankment and flows into the Ganges River. "That's toxic runoff," says Rakesh Jaiswal, a 48-year-old environmental activist, as he leads me along the refuse-strewn riverbank in the vise-like heat of a spring afternoon. We're walking through the tannery district, established along the Ganges during British colonial rule and now Kanpur's economic mainstay as well as its major polluter.

I had expected to find a less-than-pristine stretch of river in this grimy metropolis of four million people, but I'm not prepared for the sights and smells that greet me. Jaiswal stares grimly at the runoff-it's laden with chromium sulfate, used as a leather preservative and associated with cancer of the respiratory tract, skin ulcers and renal failure. Arsenic, cadmium, mercury, sulfuric acid, chemical dyes and heavy metals can also be found in this witches' brew. Though Kanpur's tanneries have been required since 1994 to do preliminary cleanup before channeling wastewater into a government-run treatment plant, many ignore the costly regulation. And whenever the electricity fails or the government's waste conveyance system breaks down, even tanneries that abide by the law find that their untreated wastewater backs up and spills into the river.

A few yards upstream, we follow a foul odor to a violent flow of untreated domestic sewage gushing into the river from an old brick pipe. The bubbling torrent is full of fecal microorganisms responsible for typhoid, cholera and amoebic dysentery. Ten million to 12 million gallons of raw sewage have been pouring out of this drainpipe each day, Jaiswal tells me, since the main sewer line leading to the treatment plant in Kanpur became clogged-five years ago. "We've been protesting against this, and begging the [Uttar Pradesh state] government to take action, but they've done nothing," he says.

Half a dozen young fishermen standing by a rowboat offer to take us to a sandbar in the middle of the Ganges for "a better view." Jaiswal and I climb into the boat and cross the shallow river only to run aground 50 yards from the sandbar. "You have to get out and walk from here," a boatman tells us. We remove our shoes, roll up our trousers and nervously wade knee-deep in the toxic stream. As we reach the sandbar, just downstream from a Hindu cremation ground, we're hit by a putrid smell and a ghastly sight: lying on the sand are a human rib cage, a femur, and, nearby, a yellow-shrouded corpse. "It's been rotting there for a month," a fisherman tells us. The clothed body of a small child floats a few yards off the island. Although the state government banned the dumping of bodies a decade ago, many of Kanpur's destitute still discard their loved ones clandestinely at night. Pariah dogs prowl around the bones and bodies, snarling when we get too close. "They live on the sandbar, feeding on the remains," a fisherman tells us.

Sickened, I climb back into the rowboat. As we near the tanneries, a dozen boys frolic in the water, splashing in the river's foulest stretch. Jaiswal calls them over.

"Why do you swim in the river?" I ask one of the boys. "Aren't you worried?"

He shrugs. "We know it's poisonous," he says, "but after we swim we go wash off at home."

"Do you ever get ill?"

"We all get rashes," he replies, "but what can we do?"

Walking back toward the main road, Jaiswal seems despondent. "I would never have imagined the River Ganga could get like this, with stinking water, green and brown colored," he says. "It's pure toxic muck."

I shake my head at the irony. For more than two millennia, the River Ganges has been revered by millions as a symbol of spiritual purity. Originating in the frozen heights of the Himalayas, the river travels 1,600 miles across the teeming plains of the subcontinent before flowing east into Bangladesh and from there spilling into the Bay of Bengal. "Mother Ganga" is described by ancient Hindu scriptures as a gift from the gods-the earthly incarnation of the deity Ganga. "Man becomes pure by the touch of the water, or by consuming it, or by expressing its name," Lord Vishnu, the four-armed "All Pervading One," proclaims in the Ramayana, the Sanskrit epic poem composed four centuries before Christ. Modern admirers have written paeans to the river's beauty, historical resonance and holiness. "The Ganges is above all the river of India, which has held India's heart captive and drawn uncounted millions to her banks since the dawn of history," Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, proclaimed.

For some time now, this romantic view of the Ganges has collided with India's grim realities. During the past three decades, the country's explosive growth (at nearly 1.2 billion people, India's population is second only to China's), industrialization and rapid urbanization have put unyielding pressure on the sacred stream. Irrigation canals siphon off ever more of its water and its many tributaries to grow food for the country's hungry millions. Industries in the country operate in a regulatory climate that has changed little since 1984, when a Union Carbide pesticide plant in the northern city of Bhopal leaked 27 tons of deadly methyl isocyanate gas and killed 20,000 people. And the amount of domestic sewage being dumped into the Ganges has doubled since the 1990s; it could double again in a generation.

The result has been the gradual killing of one of India's most treasured resources. One stretch of the Yamuna River, the Ganges' main tributary, has been devoid of all aquatic creatures for a decade. In Varanasi, India's most sacred city, the coliform bacterial count is at least 3,000 times higher than the standard established as safe by the United Nations World Health Organization, according to Veer Bhadra Mishra, an engineer and Hindu priest who's led a campaign there to clean the river for two decades. "Polluted river water is the biggest cause of skin problems, disabilities and high infant mortality rates," says Suresh Babu, deputy coordinator of the River Pollution Campaign at the Center for Science and the Environment, a watchdog group in New Delhi, India's capital. These health problems are compounded by the fact that many Hindus refuse to accept that Mother Ganga has become a source of illness. "People have so much faith in this water that when they bathe in it or sip it, they believe it is the nectar of God [and] they will go to heaven," says Ramesh Chandra Trivedi, a scientist at the Central Pollution Control Board, the monitoring arm of India's Ministry of the Environment and Forests.

Twenty years ago, then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi launched the Ganga Action Plan, or GAP, which shut down some of the most egregious industrial polluters and allocated about $100 million for constructing wastewater treatment plants in 25 cities and towns along the river. But these efforts have fallen woefully short. According to a 2001-2002 government survey, the treatment plants could handle only about a third of the 600 million gallons of domestic sewage that poured into them every day. (The volume has increased significantly since then). Many environmentalists say that the Ganges has become an embarrassing symbol of government indifference and neglect in a country that regards itself as an economic superpower. "We can send a shuttle into space, we can build the [new] Delhi Metro [subway] in record time. We can detonate nuclear weapons. So why can't we clean up our rivers?" Jaiswal laments. "We have money. We have competence. The only problem is that the issue is not a priority for the Indian government."

Early in 2007 the Ganges' worsening state made headlines around the world when Hindu holy men, known as sadhus, organized a mass protest against river filth during the Kumbh Mela festival. "The river had turned the color of Coca-Cola," says scientist Trivedi, who attended the festival and, against the advice of his colleagues at the Central Pollution Control Board, took a brief dip in the Ganges. ("I was not affected at all," he insists.) The sadhus called off the protests after the government opened dams upstream, diluting the fetid water, and ordered another 150 upstream industrial polluters to close. "But it was a short-term solution," says Suresh Babu. "It didn't achieve anything."

This past May, I followed Mother Ganga downstream for 800 miles, half its distance, to witness its deterioration firsthand and to meet the handful of environmentalists who are trying to rouse public action. I began my journey high in the foothills of the Himalayas, 200 miles south of the river's glacial source. Here the cold, pristine water courses through a steep gorge cloaked in gray-green forests of Shorea robusta, or sal trees. From a beach at the edge of a litchi grove below the Glass House, an inn where I stayed, I watched rafts of helmet-clad adventure-tourists sweep past on a torrent of white water.

Fifteen miles downriver, at Rishikesh, the valley widens, and the Ganges spills onto the northern Indian plain. Rishikesh achieved worldwide attention in 1968, when the Beatles, at the height of their fame, spent three months at the now-abandoned ashram, or meditation center, run by the guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (who today resides in the Netherlands). Built illegally on public land and confiscated by the government in the 1970s, the ruined complex rises on a thickly wooded hillside overlooking the Ganges. The place has been unoccupied ever since it was seized-an intragovernmental dispute has prevented its being sold or developed as a tourist resort-but I gave 50 rupees, about $1.25, to a guard, and he unlocked the gate for me. I wandered among derelict, stupa-like meditation chambers high above the river, which still conveyed a sense of tranquillity. Baboons prowled the ghostly hallways of the Maharishi's once-luxurious hotel and conference center, which was topped by three domes tiled in white mosaic. The only sounds were the chorusing of cuckoos and the cawing of ravens.

It's unlikely the surviving Beatles would recognize the busy, litter-strewn tourist town that Rishikesh has become. Down below the ashram, I strolled through a riverside strip of pilgrims' inns, cheap restaurants selling banana lassis and pancakes, and newly built yoga schools. A boat packed with Indian pilgrims, wild-haired sadhus and Western backpackers ferried me across the river, where I walked past dozens of storefronts offering rafting trips and Himalayan treks. A building boom over the past two decades has generated a flood of pollutants and nonbiodegradable trash. Each day thousands of pilgrims drop flowers in polyethylene bags into the river as offerings to Goddess Ganga. Six years ago, Jitendra Kumar, a local ashram student, formed Clean Himalaya, a nonprofit environmental group that gathers and recycles tons of garbage from hotels and ashrams every day. But public apathy and a shortage of burning and dumping facilities have made the job difficult. "It's really sad," Vipin Sharma, who runs a rafting and trekking company (Red Chili Adventures), told me. "All of our Hindus come with this feeling that they want to give something to the Ganga, and they've turned it into a sea of plastic."

From his base in Kanpur, Rakesh Jaiswal has waged a lonely battle to clean up the river for almost 15 years. He was born in Mirzapur, 200 miles downstream from Kanpur, and remembers his childhood as an idyllic time. "I used to go there to bathe with my mother and grandmother, and it was beautiful," he told me. "I didn't even know what the word 'pollution' meant." Then, one day in the early 1990s, while studying for his doctorate in environmental politics, "I opened the tap at home and found black, viscous, stinking water coming out. After one month it happened again, then it was happening once a week, then daily. My neighbors experienced the same thing." Jaiswal traced the drinking water to an intake channel on the Ganges. There he made a horrifying discovery: two drains carrying raw sewage, including contaminated discharge from a tuberculosis sanitarium, were emptying right beside the intake point. "Fifty million gallons a day were being lifted and sent to the water-treatment plant, which couldn't clean it. It was horrifying."

At the time, the Indian government was touting the first phase of its Ganga Action Plan as a success. Jaiswal knew otherwise. Kanpur's wastewater treatment plants broke down frequently and could process only a small percentage of the sewage the city was producing. Dead bodies were being dumped into the river by the hundreds every week, and most of the 400 tanneries continued to pour toxic runoff into the river. Jaiswal, who started a group called EcoFriends in 1993 and the next year received a small grant from the Indian government, used public outrage over contaminated drinking water to mobilize a protest campaign. He organized rallies and enlisted volunteers in a river cleanup that fished 180 bodies out of a mile-long stretch of the Ganges. "The idea was to sensitize the people, galvanize the government, find a long-term solution, but we failed to evoke much interest," he told me. Jaiswal kept up the pressure. In 1997, state and local government whistle-blowers slipped him a list of factories that had ignored a court order to install treatment plants; the state ordered the shutdown of 250 factories, including 127 tanneries in Kanpur. After that, he says, "I got midnight phone calls telling me, 'you will be shot dead if you don't stop these things.' But I had friends in the police and army who believed in my work, so I never felt my life was in real danger."

Jaiswal's battle to clean up the Ganges has achieved some successes. Largely because of his corpse-cleanup drive, a cemetery was established beside the Ganges-it now contains thousands of bodies-and a ban was enforced, obviously often violated, on "floaters." In 2000, the second phase of the Ganga Action Plan required 100 large- and medium-sized Kanpur tanneries to set up chrome-recovery facilities and 100 smaller ones to build a common chrome-recovery unit. Enforcement, however, has been lax. Ajay Kanaujia, a government chemist at Kanpur's wastewater treatment facility, says that "some tanneries are still putting chrome into the river without any treatment or dumping it into the domestic sewage system." This treated sewage is then channeled into canals that irrigate 6,000 acres of farmland near Kanpur before flowing back into the Ganges. India's National Botanical Research Institute, a government body, has tested agricultural and dairy products in the Kanpur area and found that they contain high levels of chromium and arsenic. "The irrigation water is dangerous," Kanaujia says.

I'm in a motorboat at dawn, putt-putting down the Ganges in Varanasi, where the river takes a turn north before flowing into the Bay of Bengal. Called Benares by the British, this ancient pilgrimage center is the holiest city in India: millions of Hindus come each year to a three-mile long curve of temples, shrines and bathing ghats (steps leading down to the river) along its banks. With a boatman and a young guide, I cruise past a Hindu Disneyland of Mogul-era sandstone fortresses and green, purple and candy cane-striped temples. None of the pilgrims sudsing themselves in the Ganges, bobbing blissfully in inner tubes or beating their laundry on wooden planks, seem to pay the slightest attention to the bloated cow carcasses that float beside them-or to the untreated waste that gushes directly into the river. If toxic industrial runoff is Kanpur's special curse, the befouling of the Ganges as it flows past the Hindus' holiest city comes almost entirely from human excreta.

The boat deposits me at Tulsi Ghat, near the upriver entrance to Varanasi, and in the intensifying morning heat, I walk up a steep flight of steps to the Sankat Mochan Foundation, which, for the past two decades, has led Varanasi's clean-river campaign. The foundation occupies several crumbling buildings, including a 400-year-old Hindu temple high over the Ganges. I find the foundation's director, Veer Bhadra Mishra, 68, sitting on a huge white cushion that takes up three-quarters of a reception room on the temple's ground floor. Draped in a simple white dhoti, he invites me to enter.

Mishra looks at the river from a unique perspective: he is a retired professor of hydraulic engineering at Banaras Hindu University and a mohan, a Hindu high priest at the Sankat Mochan Temple, a title that the Mishra family has passed from father to eldest son for seven generations. Mishra has repeatedly called the Ganga Action Plan a failure, saying that it has frittered away billions of rupees on ill-designed and badly maintained wastewater treatment plants. "The moment the electricity fails, the sewage flows into the river, and on top of that, when the floodwaters rise, they enter the sump well of the sewer system pumps and stop operations for months of the year," he tells me. (Varanasi currently receives only about 12 hours of power a day.) Moreover, he says, engineers designed the plants to remove solids, but not fecal microorganisms, from the water. The pathogens, channeled from treatment plants into irrigation canals, seep back into the groundwater, where they enter the drinking-water supply and breed such diseases as dysentery, as well as skin infections.

A decade ago, Mishra, with hydraulic engineers and scientists at the University of California at Berkeley, designed a water-treatment scheme that, he says, is far better suited to Varanasi's needs. Known as an "advanced integrated wastewater pond system," the process relies primarily on gravity to carry domestic sewage three miles downstream to four huge pools where oxygen-enriched bacteria break it down and pathogens are killed by sunlight and natural atmospheric action in a "maturation" pond. The projected cost of the system, which has been endorsed by the Varanasi municipal government, is $60 million.

Mishra was named one of Time magazine's Heroes of the Planet in 1999; in 2000, President Clinton praised him for his environmental work. But in spite of the honors that have come his way, Mishra has grown discouraged. The national government and the state government of Uttar Pradesh, which would have to fund the wastewater project, have openly opposed it on grounds ranging from doubts about the proposed technology to objections that treatment ponds would lie in a flood plain.

Meanwhile, the city's population keeps growing-it has doubled to three million in a generation-along with the bacteria count. Mishra says he's especially concerned for the future of India's most devout Hindus, whose lives are entirely focused on Mother Ganga. He calls them an endangered species. "They want to touch the water, rub their bodies in the water, sip the water," he says, "and someday they will die because of it," admitting that he himself takes a dip in the river every morning. "If you tell them 'the Ganga is polluted,' they say, 'we don't want to hear that.' But if you take them to the places where open sewers are giving the river the night soil of the whole city, they say, 'this is disrespect done to our mother, and it must be stopped.'"

But how? Suresh Babu of the Center for Science and the Environment in New Delhi believes that if municipalities were obliged to draw their drinking water from downstream rather than upstream, "they would feel an obligation" to keep the river clean. But growing pressures on the Ganges seem destined to outstrip all efforts to rescue it. By 2030, according to Babu, India will draw eight times the amount of water from the Ganges it does today. In the same time, the population along the river and its tributaries-up to 400 million, or one-third of India's total population-could double. Trivedi admits that the government "lacks a single coherent plan" to clean up the river.

Rakesh Jaiswal tells me that after all the years of small achievements and large setbacks, he finds it difficult to remain optimistic. "My friends tell me I've made a difference, but the river looks worse today than when I started," he says. In 2002, the Ford Foundation gave him enough money to hire 15 employees. But the next year, when the foundation cut its Environmental Equity and Justice Program, Jaiswal had to let his staff go and now works with one assistant out of a bedroom in his sister's house near the river. On his dresser stands a framed photograph of his wife, Gudrun Knoessel, who is German. In 2001, she contacted him after seeing a German TV documentary about his work; a long-distance courtship led to their marriage in 2003. They see each other two or three times a year. "She has a job in Baden-Baden," he explains. "And Kanpur needs me." So he often tells himself. But sometimes, in darker moments, he wonders if anybody really cares.

Writer Joshua Hammer is based in Berlin, Germany. Photographer Gary Knight lives in the South of France.

About Joshua Hammer

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Smithsonian Magazine | A blue stream spews from beneath brick factory buildings in Kanpur, India. The dark ribbon curls down a dirt embankment and flows into the Ganges River. "That's toxic runoff," says Rakesh Jaiswal, a 48-year-old environmental activist, as he leads me along the refuse-strewn riverbank in the vise-like heat of a spring afternoon.

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India's polluted Ganges River threatens people's livelihoods

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India's polluted Ganges River threatens people's livelihoods

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On the banks of the Ganges River in the Indian city of Varanasi, a man in his thirties is washing clothes by rhythmically hitting on them on a granite slab. Surrounding him on the steps that rise out of the water is a brightly colored patchwork of saris, drying in the morning sun. The man's name is Vijay Kumar and his family has been working on the river bank washing clothes for generations.

"Every day I'm here," he said. "I start at 5 a.m., then later in the day I iron everything. In the evening I deliver clothes to the customers."

Vijay Kumar's spot on the river is right next to one of Varanasi's traditional cremation areas - a place where Hindus come to burn the bodies of their dead. As he washes clothes, human ashes are dumped into the water just meters away, and smoke from the burning funeral pyres wafts out over the river behind him.

"It's a problem that the bodies are burning just near to me. But what can I do?" said Vijay. "This is our traditional place to wash clothes, and there is nowhere else to go. The government promised us a new location some years ago, but nothing has changed."
River a lifeline

Kumar's family has washed clothes for generations

Vijay Kumar is just one of the more than 400 million people who depend on the Ganges River for their livelihoods. But he said he's struggling today because local environmental authorities are trying to shut down his business, saying that his soap suds are polluting the river.

This sort of challenge to balance economic interests and environmental protection is one being played out the world over. But with this river - and particularly here in Varanasi - there is another dimension: the Ganges River is not just an economic lifeline, but also a spiritual one.

Hindus worship the river is as a goddess, Maa Ganga - or Mother Ganga. Anthropologist Dr Assa Doron explained: "The city itself is very much associated with Shiva, and of course Shiva himself has a very strong relationship with the goddess Ganga [...] who has a whole purificatory element - both of them together is what really makes this city shine," he said.

Every year millions of Hindu pilgrims come to Varanasi, seeking spiritual purification in the waters of the Ganges. Many other Hindus who come to Varanasi cremate their loved ones and throw the ashes in the sacred river.

Hindus believe that if you die or are cremated in Varanasi, you get moksha - or liberation from the cycles of death and rebirth. But while the river Ganges - known in India as the Ganga - may be pure for religious believers, in secular terms it's in fact gravely polluted.

Hindus believe the Ganges to be purifying
Multiple river threats
Varanasi's cremation grounds, however, are just a small fraction of the wider pollution problem facing the Ganges.

Leading water pollution expert B.D. Tripathi of Benares Hindu University described three major Ganges pollution problems: domestic waste, untreated industrial effluent including toxic and heavy metals, and cremation grounds (two in Varanasi alone).

The river runs for some 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles), with more than two dozen major urban centers located on its banks. With many factories and business dumping toxic chemicals into the river, human sewage compounds the situation.

An estimated 3 billion liters (800 million gallons) of sewage is released into the Ganges each day, of which only a third - according official figures - is processed by treatment plants. Agricultural businesses are also draining the river basin and adding toxic pesticides and fertilizers into the river system.

Tripathi said that if pollution in the Ganges remains unchecked, the river faces a potentially terminal decline. Without conservation measures, he warned, the river will become fragmented into ponds and streams. "The entire structure of the river will be changed," he said.
Changing, and staying the same
As India grows economically, those who depend on the river are already bearing witness to the changing health of the river water.

Jaylal Sahani, a boatman now in his 50s, spends his days ferrying pilgrims and tourists in Varanasi. He remembers a time in his childhood when the river was pure enough to drink.

"If we drink the water now, we will get sick," he said.

Kumar, the clothes-washer, says the big factories and businesses are the real problem.

"The government should control the big business and leave us small people in peace. We have no choice but to work here," he said.

Clothes-washers think the main pollution problem is with industry

While modern pollution is forcing many people to break their ties with the river, Hindu scholar Krishnakant Shukla argued that the Ganges's unique place in Hindu cosmology means the river will remain at the heart of Hindu life - however severe the pressures of modern life may become.

Myth lives on in Varanasi, Krishnakant said. "Due to some inexplicable miracle, you can still find people here doing their daily practices the way they did one thousand years ago," he said. "This is amazing - I really don't think there is any other place in the world."

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India's polluted Ganges River threatens people's livelihoods | DW | 21.11.2013

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On the banks of the Ganges River in the Indian city of Varanasi, a man in his thirties is washing clothes by rhythmically hitting on them on a granite slab. Surrounding him on the steps that rise out of the water is a brightly colored patchwork of saris, drying in the morning sun.

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India's Polluted River Systems | FT World

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India's Polluted River Systems | FT World

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India's  Polluted River Systems | FT World

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Move Over, Smog: China's Water Pollution Off the Charts 

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Move Over, Smog: China's Water Pollution Off the Charts 

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Move Over, Smog: China's Water Pollution Off the Charts (LinkAsia: 3/1/13)

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Air pollution becomes life and death in China 

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Air pollution becomes life and death in China 

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Air pollution becoming life-and-death issue in China

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Thinking It Through: SE Asia Religions Discussion Post

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Thinking It Through: SE Asia Religions Discussion Post

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How can Religious groups impact society?