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Narmade Har PDF

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||Narmade Har|| Analytical report submitted to Discover India Program Committee, FLAME for partial fulfilment of Discover India Program six credit course. Research Team: Aagam Sheth Aditya Nahar Akshay Jain Amit Doshi Gopi Aravind Kund Sapani Nayantara MB Nishant Shah Siddharth Sheth Urvi Malpani Faculty Mentor: Prof. Ashutosh Mishra AUTHENTIFICATION CERTIFICATE This is to certify that the work incorporated in this report entitled „Narmade Har‟, submitted by the undersigned research team was carried out under my mentorship. Such material as has been obtained from other sources has been duly acknowledged. Research Team Aagam Sheth (________________________) Aditya Nahar (________________________) Akshay Jain (________________________) Amit Doshi (________________________) Gopi Aravind (________________________) Kund Sapani (________________________) Nayantara MB (________________________) Nishant Shah (________________________) Siddharth Sheth (________________________) Urvi Malpani (________________________) Faculty Mentor: Prof. Ashutosh Mishra (________________________) FLAME DIP Narmada 1 Acknowledgements We take this opportunity to thank everyone who has helped us through the course of this journey towards producing this analytical report and presentation for the DIP project. We sincerely thank the Chairman, Mr. Parag Shah and the President, Dr. Indira Parikh for granting us exposure through this project and making it mandatory as a part of the undergraduate program at Flame. We thank FLAME management for providing us the financial resources to meet our expenses like travel, accommodation, etc. We would like to express our gratitude to all the members of the DIP committee especially Prof. Vinay Hardikar and Prof. Nandita Wagle for being a constant support and inspiration to us. Only under their guidance, assistance and directions has our project taken on its current form. We are especially grateful to our mentors Prof. Ashutosh Mishra and Prof. Shirisha Sathe for their insights, criticisms and endless faith in us. They have motivated us in the most difficult times. We thank them for every valuable advice they have provided us and we hope they continues to be a source of inspiration to all the students who would take up this project in the future. Our field trip would not have been as convenient without the assistance provided by Mr. Sumit Maheswari of Navbharat, a prominent newspaper in Madhya Pradesh. The press contacts provided by him in the various cities that we visited helped our research to a great extent. Our accommodation and food at Amarkantak had been very well taken care of by Kalyandas Dharmshala. We received a great amount of help from various others including our drivers Yashwant and Sujay who were with us throughout the journey. FLAME DIP Narmada 2 Table of Contents Chapter 1 - Introduction .................................................................................................................. 7 1. Geographical Location and Significance: ............................................................................... 9 1.1 Physical:............................................................................................................................. 9 1.2 Climate: ............................................................................................................................. 9 2. History: .................................................................................................................................... 9 3. Focus of Work ....................................................................................................................... 10 3.1 Aim of the Project: .......................................................................................................... 10 3.2 Objectives: ....................................................................................................................... 10 3.3 Methodology .................................................................................................................... 10 Chapter 2 - Reference Material ..................................................................................................... 12 1. Myths and Fables: ................................................................................................................. 12 2. Cities...................................................................................................................................... 13 2.1 Amarkantak ..................................................................................................................... 13 2.2 Hoshangabad ................................................................................................................... 13 2.3 Jabalpur ............................................................................................................................ 14 2.4 Omkareshwar ................................................................................................................... 15 2.5 Maheshwar....................................................................................................................... 15 3. Important religious places along the course of the river ....................................................... 15 4. Festivals:................................................................................................................................ 16 FLAME DIP Narmada 3 5. Parikrama .............................................................................................................................. 16 6. Types of Narmada Parikrama ................................................................................................ 17 7. Tribes ..................................................................................................................................... 18 7.1 The Baigas ....................................................................................................................... 18 7.2 The Gonds........................................................................................................................ 18 8. Occupation ............................................................................................................................ 19 Chapter 3 - Primary Data .............................................................................................................. 21 1. Rationale................................................................................................................................ 21 2. Interviews .............................................................................................................................. 21 2.1 List of Interviews ............................................................................................................. 21 2.2 Interviews ........................................................................................................................ 23 2.3 Rishis ............................................................................................................................... 40 Chapter 4 – Journeys ..................................................................................................................... 45 1. Bombay-Bhopal (via Hoshangabad) Train Journey: (The First Glimpse) ............................ 45 2. Jabalpur to Amarkantak: (29th May) by car: ......................................................................... 46 Chapter 5 - Observations & Findings ........................................................................................... 48 1. The Religion of the River Narmada: ..................................................................................... 48 2. Myth Busters ......................................................................................................................... 54 3. Exploring Human Phenomena of “Helping Others” ............................................................. 56 3.1 Method ............................................................................................................................. 57 FLAME DIP Narmada 4 3.2 Normative Data ................................................................................................................ 58 3.3 Discussion ........................................................................................................................ 58 4. Pro-environment behaviour ................................................................................................... 59 4.1 Institutions and people/ why they do what they do: ........................................................ 59 4.2 Beliefs .............................................................................................................................. 60 4.3 Tribes: .............................................................................................................................. 60 5. Occupations ........................................................................................................................... 61 5.1 Observations .................................................................................................................... 61 5.2 Occupations along the stretch of the river ....................................................................... 61 6. Tribes, the Children of Nature............................................................................................... 66 6.1 The Gonds........................................................................................................................ 66 6.2 The Baigas ....................................................................................................................... 68 7. Reflections ............................................................................................................................. 70 7.1 The idea of happiness ...................................................................................................... 71 Chapter 6 - Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 73 Appendix A – Helping Attitude Scale (Questionnaire) ................................................................ 76 Appendix B – Survey Data ........................................................................................................... 78 1. Question/Participant/Location-wise scores compilation ....................................................... 78 2. Pivot Table ............................................................................................................................ 79 FLAME DIP Narmada 5 Table of Figures Figure 1-1 The Narmada ................................................................................................................. 7 Figure 2-1 the Dhuandhar Waterfall ............................................................................................. 14 Figure 2-2 Shrilal Chande ............................................................................................................. 41 Figure 2-3 Group members with Kalyandas Baba ........................................................................ 43 Figure 3-1 The Narmada Kund ..................................................................................................... 48 Figure 3-2 Shiv ling at Bhedaghat ................................................................................................ 50 Figure 3-3 The 3-word cycle......................................................................................................... 52 Figure 3-4 Malas at a store ........................................................................................................... 61 Figure 3-5 THE GONDS GOING TO THE DAILY MARKET .................................................. 66 FLAME DIP Narmada 6 Chapter 1 - Introduction NARMADE HAR! Narmada, one of oldest rivers of India, flows right through her centre. Emerging from the heavily forested hills near Amarkantak continues its journey westward for 1312 kilometers before meeting the Arabian Sea at Bharuch. The area through which the Narmada flows is diverse starting from the evergreen forests of Amarkantak, the plains in Gujarat and eventually coastal line near its confluence. Unlike the Ganga or the Yamuna, the Narmada originates not because of the melting of snow, but because of the percolation and collection of water in the forests Vindhya and Satpura mountain ranges. Amongst the six major Indian rivers namely the Ganga, Yamuna, Brahmputra, Godavari, Krishna, Saraswati and the Narmada, we chose The Narmada. Why then the Narmada? What was it that got us motivated? Why did we choose to travel along her banks? FIGURE 0-1 THE NARMADA The idea of following a river was given to us by a lady whose passion in life is reading and travelling. The more we read, the more fascinated we were. The more we spoke, the more excited we became. What started out as a lesson in Geography, was soon developing into a sense of adventure, restlessness for travel and a pursuit for discovery. Our priority was no longer the destination but was the journey itself. There were many times when we doubted ourselves as a group, questioned the idea, questioned ourselves and our beliefs. “Maa Rewatharopaaninirmal.... Maa Rewatharopaaninirmal FLAME DIP Narmada 7 khalkhalbehtojaaye Amarkanth se nikli O rewa jannjannkarirayothaarisewa sewa se sab pawemewa, asovedpuranbatayo re” “Maa Rewa” the above song was sung by the Indian Music Group called Indian Ocean. In its literal translation and meaning, the song is addressed to the Maa Rewa or Maa Narmada. It says that „the water of the river Narmada is extremely pure and flows constantly. Ever since You originated from Amarkantak, everyone has been worshipping You without exception. Every person who worships You, finds release from their troubles and this fact has been stated in the Puranas.‟ Any doubt that we ever had about our journey was put to rest during our first interview with Mr. Anil Dave (RajyaSabha MP) on the first day itself. He said “Not many people have the opportunity to be able to experience the river; you definitely have done moral deeds in your previous lives” Following any river is a journey of self-exploration, discovery and enlightenment. The pre- research done by the group indicated a strong sense of spirituality and religion intertwined with each other. It was not understood by us initially, it was only with time and patience that we understood, true realization comes only with experience. With this report and eventually our presentation we don‟t wish to impress you or win you over, but hope to share our journey with you. In our travels, we covered a distance of over 1,400 kilometers and it was the most fulfilling journey of our life. It was challenging to complete this journey without talking about and mentioning the dam. Since the dam was a very sensitive topic, we decided to steer away from further discussion regarding this. FLAME DIP Narmada 8 1. Geographical Location and Significance: 1.1 Physical: The Narmada basin extends over an area of 98796 Sq.km. and lies between east longitudes 72o 32' to 81o 45' and north latitudes 21o 20' to 23o 45'lying on the northern extremity of the Deccan Plateau, the basin covers large areas in the states of M.P., Gujarat and comparatively smaller areas in Maharashtra. The hilly regions are well forested. The upper, middle and lower plains are broad and fertile areas well suited for cultivation. The Narmada basin consists mainly of black soils. The coastal plains in Gujarat are composed of alluvial clays with a layer of black soils on the surface. 1.2 Climate: The tropic of Cancer crosses the Narmada Basin in the Upper plains area. The climate of the basin is humid and tropical, but at some places extremes of heat and cold are often encountered. The four most important seasons are winter, summer, the South west monsoon and post monsoon. Nearly 90% of this rainfall is received during the five monsoon months from June to October about 60% is received in the two months of July & August. The rainfall is heavy in the upper hilly area and upper plains of the basin. It gradually decreases towards the lower plains and the lower hilly areas and again increases towards the coast and south western portions of the basin. 2. History: Mekulsuta, Reva, Murla, Samodhbhava, Trikuta, Vanmala, Shoukatmala, Purv-Ganga, Dakshin Ganga, Mahajva, Nandana, Chandana, Gautami, Mahanand and the Narmada or „The Giver of Pleasure‟. These are just a few of the many names that the river is called by and given. There have been various versions and interpretations of how and when Narmada was born and how it originated. One story goes that Narmada was born from the feet of Shiv while doing tandav, but she was born and brought up in the family, in the house of Maikal, which is a mountain range in Amarkantak and is an origin of 3 rivers, Son, Narmada and Zubida. So the story goes that she FLAME DIP Narmada 9

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Nandita Wagle for being a constant support and inspiration to us. Unlike the Ganga or the Yamuna, the Narmada originates not because of . the saying, "Narmada Ke Kanker utte Shankar", which means that „pebble .. here, that you are going to discover the river Narmada it means that it is destiny,.
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