Pre-history: Birth of Sindhu, Ganga and Brahmaputra

Large quantities of water trapped between Himalayan ranges during its formation, lead to great glacier and river system. It is estimated that some 15000+ glaciers store about 12000 cubic km of water in them. These glaciers gave birth to lot of the rivers on the eastern and western side of the India.

Major rivers on the western side – Beas, Chenab, Jhelum, Ravi and Sutlej – feed into Sindhu/Indus river that flows south-west to modern day Pakistan to the Arabian sea.

On the eastern side, Ganga and Brahmaputra are the biggest ones meeting in Bangladesh before draining into Bay of Bengal thru the world’s largest river delta system.

Sindhu and Ganga river systems provided backdrop for organic life forms that relied heavily on water for their sustenance. This includes all human and their humanoid predecessors. Over 50,000 years of human presence and history on the Indian subcontinent that we will attempt to understand here is, on a large part, a gift of these two river systems.

Formation of Indian subcontinent thru tectonic activities may not be a revered event in the eyes of Aryans who later inhabit this land and lay foundation of Vedic religion. But, they definitely understood the importance of the Himalayas and the river systems conferred upon them by the great mountains. And, for this reason, mountains and rivers were deified by Aryans. Maybe, we should start doing the same now. Consider this: the glacier systems in Himalayan ranges are retreating as a result of climate change. This means, the water deposits we have in those glaciers are getting drained at a faster rate. If this continues, then as per UN climate report, by the year 2035 all major river systems in India would disappear. This will happen in two phases – first, the melting of all glaciers in a dramatic fashion….flooding India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and Myanmar. And, then there will be a drought. A long one. A very long one.

So, maybe it’s time once again to treat Himalaya, Sindhu and Ganga as deities and try to make them “happy”.

Pre-history: Birth of the Himalaya

Indian subcontinent sits on a tectonic plate called “Indian Plate”. A tectonic plate is a part of uppermost crust of the Earth’s surface called “lithosphere”. Below this lithosphere is a semi-solid layer of “asthenosphere”. The semi-solid nature of asthenosphere makes tectonic plates of lithosphere float. The Indian Plate is pushing against African Plate and Arabian Plate in the west. It is relatively stable against Australian Plate in the east and south, but is constantly pushing towards Eurasian Plate in the north. The boundary line with Eurasian Plate is where Himalayan mountain ranges are. And, the reason those mountains are getting taller every year is this constant pushing match between the Indian Plate and the Eurasian Plate.

This floating movement between plates can range from anywhere between 50mm to 100mm per year. To naked eye this movement of up to 0.0002 mm per minute is impossible to notice, but over a long period, say in next 1000 years, Indian Plate will move by a meter from it’s current location. Instead of fast forward button, hit a rewind button and imagine where Indian subcontinent would have been 250 milion years ago. It was actually part of a supercontinent which we now call “Pangaea”. On this supercontinent, Africa, Antarctica and Australia were the immediate neighbors of Indian subcontinent; with ocean to it’s north-east. Yes, ocean to the north-east! There were no Himalayan mountain ranges…at least not yet. Himalayan mountain ranges started to form around 70 million years ago (making them one of the “youngest” ones), when Eurasia was pushed closer to the Indian Plate at ~15 cm per year rate, by the very action of separation between African and South American Plate. To this date, as a result of this drifting, Himalaya continues to grow taller at the rate of ~5 mm per year. It is quite amusing to think that since the days of Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary (who scaled it for the 1st time in May 29, 1953), Mt. Everest could have already grown taller by almost a foot.