<div>The river Saraswati has flowed through the minds of Indians for many centuries, with legends talking of the mighty river rising in the Himalayas, coursing through vast stretches of upper and western India and emptying into the Arabian Sea. It flowed through uncharted territories before India, Hindustan or Pakistan were known by those names and later sank from the mi-nds into the collective unconscious of people. But it nourishes memories just as it had perhaps nourished habitations on its banks in long-lost times. Retrieving it from myth and memory and locating it in the shifted geographies of the present has been an enterprise of faith and a part of the search for history for many. The project had preoccupied the previous NDA government, which lau-nched an exploration programme, and the present one, which set up a research institute, a museum and a committee to discover and map the river and its lost course.<br /><br />The committee has reported that the river did exist once and that it had two branches which joined near present day Patiala in Punjab to run its 4,000-km course to the sea. Some rivulets and water channels like the Ghaggar, the Sarsuti and the Hakra were part of the river system. It later dried up, lost its way in the deserts of Rajasthan and became subterranean. <br />Rivers, cities and structures hidden in time have been found in other countries and continents, and they have shed light on lost civilisations. The Saraswati has been mentioned in the Vedas and other ancient literature, and there is a view that the Harappan civilisation flourished on its banks as on the banks of the Indus to the west. But there are contestations, too, which trace it to Afghanistan and to Persian legends. An invisible Saraswati also joins the Ganga and the Yamuna at the Sangam in Allahabad.<br /><br />Rivers change their courses or vanish for many reasons like geological movements, geographical shifts and climate changes. It is not known why the Saraswati dried up or disappeared under the earth. The search for the river as an academic and historical project would help discover and understand the past better, and so the evidence to be presented by the committee will be looked forward to. However, the search for the Saraswati has given the impression that it is not all about finding the remains of a river but about the revival of a Vedic and Puranic past with all its glories. In any case, with or without the politics that runs through the project, it is doubtful whether the committee’s findings will clear all the doubts and settle the controversies conclusively. <br /><br /></div>
<div>The river Saraswati has flowed through the minds of Indians for many centuries, with legends talking of the mighty river rising in the Himalayas, coursing through vast stretches of upper and western India and emptying into the Arabian Sea. It flowed through uncharted territories before India, Hindustan or Pakistan were known by those names and later sank from the mi-nds into the collective unconscious of people. But it nourishes memories just as it had perhaps nourished habitations on its banks in long-lost times. Retrieving it from myth and memory and locating it in the shifted geographies of the present has been an enterprise of faith and a part of the search for history for many. The project had preoccupied the previous NDA government, which lau-nched an exploration programme, and the present one, which set up a research institute, a museum and a committee to discover and map the river and its lost course.<br /><br />The committee has reported that the river did exist once and that it had two branches which joined near present day Patiala in Punjab to run its 4,000-km course to the sea. Some rivulets and water channels like the Ghaggar, the Sarsuti and the Hakra were part of the river system. It later dried up, lost its way in the deserts of Rajasthan and became subterranean. <br />Rivers, cities and structures hidden in time have been found in other countries and continents, and they have shed light on lost civilisations. The Saraswati has been mentioned in the Vedas and other ancient literature, and there is a view that the Harappan civilisation flourished on its banks as on the banks of the Indus to the west. But there are contestations, too, which trace it to Afghanistan and to Persian legends. An invisible Saraswati also joins the Ganga and the Yamuna at the Sangam in Allahabad.<br /><br />Rivers change their courses or vanish for many reasons like geological movements, geographical shifts and climate changes. It is not known why the Saraswati dried up or disappeared under the earth. The search for the river as an academic and historical project would help discover and understand the past better, and so the evidence to be presented by the committee will be looked forward to. However, the search for the Saraswati has given the impression that it is not all about finding the remains of a river but about the revival of a Vedic and Puranic past with all its glories. In any case, with or without the politics that runs through the project, it is doubtful whether the committee’s findings will clear all the doubts and settle the controversies conclusively. <br /><br /></div>
