River Dialogues: Hindu Faith and the Political Ecology of Dams on the Sacred Ganga by Georgina Drew (review)

When King Bhagirath had done penance in the Himalayas for countless years, the goddess Ganga descended to earth, following the king from the mountains all the way to the Bay of Bengal, where her water blessed the ashes of the king's sixty thousand great uncles, who were finally freed from their curse. Since then, the goddess has continued to bless the people along the banks of the River Ganga, her physical form on earth.

Most people in Georgina Drew's book River Dialogues agree on this story. However, the story's implications for current affairs are more ambiguous. Set in the Garhwal region of Uttarakhand, in the Indian Himalayas, this nuanced ethnography discusses the shifting activist stances regarding hydro-power developments on the "main" tributary of the River Ganga, named after King Bhagirath. Working mostly with female activists, Drew describes a shift in their positions vis-à-vis hydro-power dams – from unconditional rejection at the time the hydro-power companies began construction on the dams to a more compromising stance once the construction had been stopped and the area had been declared an "ecozone." Drew's material suggests that Garhwali women are not so much defending a river as they are struggling to maintain meaningful lives, which include viable and dignified livelihoods and a stake in the decisions affecting the economic development of their region. Ganga – as river, mother and goddess – serves as an important idiom for embodying and voicing these concerns.

Drew makes clear that there is no single Garhwali movement for or against dam building in the area. Instead, her ethnography portrays various groups at different scales, which occasionally seem to bond strategically to further their projects. Scale is a key topic in her analysis, with recurrent tension between the region and the nation, the tributary and the catchment, and local traditions and generalised religion. In their discussions on the region's infrastructural development and environmental conservation, Garhwali women find themselves systematically marginalised by male experts from the Indian plains. It is certainly useful for activists that the Ganga is considered a "national river" that represents the "culture of India," as this translates their concerns into an idiom that is plausible to a wider constituency. Simultaneously, however, this larger frame of reference erases the specificity of their particular motivations and worries. Is the conflict about the Ganga as an entire river, or is it about specific sites of worship and other everyday uses along a Bhagirathi tributary? And are the conservation measures for the region a victory for local antidam campaigners or another patronising gesture from the Indians of the plains who are said to regard the mountains as a "religious playground and endless source of resources" (135)? Many Garhwali activists are left with the lingering conclusion that, for them, there is little difference between dams and an ecozone. Both are decided on and managed from elsewhere; the benefits of both always flow to the plains.

People's relations with and discussions about the Ganga take centre stage in the book. The enigma of what this goddess-river is for different people in different situations stays with the reader. Etymologically related to the verb to go, the divine Ganga manifests only in flowing – as opposed to dammed – water, which suggests that the term may relate to a more general association of movement and life (Krause 2013). Some female activists invoke Ganga as mother, emphasising the love and care she extends to the people along her banks but also justifying their special relation to the goddess-river. The Ganga also figures as the gracious goddess who extends her blessings and provides economic prosperity in the form of hydro-power projects, but equally as the furious avenger if she feels violated by infrastructure development. At times, it seems that when activists speak of Ganga, they refer to more than the motherly goddess-river and invoke the entire landscape with its life...