Sacred Waters, Shared Responsibility: A Cultural Studies Analysis of the Ganga and Aquatic Environmental Sustainability

Abstract

The Ganga (Ganges) river occupies a singular position among the world's waterways: it is simultaneously one of the most heavily used freshwater systems on Earth and one of the most intensely sacralized. This paper undertakes a cultural studies analysis of that duality, asking how the cultural and religious construction of the Ganga as a living goddess shapes, enables, and complicates efforts toward aquatic environmental sustainability. Drawing on theoretical resources from the anthropology of religion, political ecology, and science and technology studies, the paper first traces the textual and ritual construction of Ganga's sacrality across Puranic mythology, pilgrimage practice, and everyday devotional life. It then examines the documented environmental consequences; both regenerative and degrading; of mass ritual practice, drawing on water-quality data from the Central Pollution Control Board, the 2025 Maha Kumbh Mela, and the Namami Gange Programme's decade of implementation. The paper argues against two equally reductive positions: the romantic view that sacrality alone guarantees ecological care, and the secular-technocratic view that culture and religion are obstacles to be managed or bypassed by engineering solutions. Instead, it develops a framework for understanding religious institutions, ritual calendars, and sacred narrative as potential infrastructures of environmental governance, provided that cultural mobilization is integrated with, rather than substituted for, robust wastewater treatment, industrial regulation, and hydrological management. The paper concludes with policy-relevant reflections on how cultural narratives might be responsibly mobilized for sustainable water management in India and, by extension, in other contexts where rivers carry deep cultural and cosmological significance.