BHAREH, INDIA // For many centuries, it was a curse that saved the river.
It was a series of curses, actually – a centuries-long string of unrelenting bad news in this rugged, hidden corner of northern India’s industrial belt.
There was an actual curse at first, a long held belief that the Chambal River was unholy. There was the land itself, and the more earthly curse of its poor-quality soil.
Above all, there were the bandits, hiding in the badlands and causing countless eruptions of violence and fear.
But instead of destroying the river, these things protected it by keeping the outside world away. The isolation created a sanctuary.
Hundreds of species of birds – storks, geese, babblers, larks, falcons and so many more – nest along the river. Endangered birds lay small speckled eggs in tiny pits they dig in the sandbars. Gharials, rare crocodile-like creatures that look like they swaggered out of the Mesozoic Era, are commonplace here and nowhere else.
Today, tucked in a hidden corner of what is now a deeply polluted region, where the stench of industrial fumes fills the air in dozens of towns and tons of raw sewage is dumped every day into many rivers, the Chambal has remained essentially wild.
But if bad news saved the river, good news now threatens to destroy it.
The modern world may be the most dangerous curse of all.
The fears that shaped this region go back more than a thousand years, to when sages said the Chambal – a term that refers both to the river and the rugged land around it – had been cursed and villagers whispered that it was unholy. In a culture where rivers have long been worshipped, farmers avoided planting along the river’s banks.
“People always said things were different in this area,” says a labourer, Gopal, working along the Chambal River.
“People,” he says, “were afraid to come.”
A few centuries later the bandits arrived. They were the last true protectors of the Chambal, it turns out.
For hundreds of years, the outlaws ruled the labyrinth of scrub-filled ravines and tiny villages along the river.
Countless governments, from Moghul lords to British viceroys to Indian prime ministers, vowed to humble them. Countless governments failed.
As British rule gave way to independence, and the modern nation of India began to take shape, the Chambal remained a place apart, a feared region where politicians seemed more like criminals.
“We were so isolated for so long,” says Hemrudra Singh, a soft-spoken aristocrat from the village of Bhareh.
Until 10 years ago, Bhareh could only be reached by boat during the monsoon season.
Only in the late 1990s did life in the Chambal begin to change significantly. Ancient dirt paths became paved roads, prying open villages that had been isolated for centuries.
The bandits’ local political patrons were driven from power. Their foot soldiers were killed in shootouts with police, and their hideouts were forced deeper into the ravines by the spread of new roads. The last famed bandit, Nirbhay Gujjar, was killed by police in 2005.
Today, cellphone towers and motorcycle dealers and satellite TVs are everywhere. New businesses and new schools have opened. Farmers struggling with the poor soil now have fertilisers and tractors.
In so many ways, that has been good news.
With the good, though, came troubles that threaten the Chambal and its wildlife: polluting factories, illegal sand mining and fish poachers who hack at gharials with axes when the animals get tangled in their nets. As India’s population and economy grows, more people are moving closer to the river.
Suddenly, the Chambal was no longer synonymous with lawlessness. Instead, it meant cheap land and untapped resources.
Quickly, people began to come. And almost as quickly, the problems began.
The garbage multiplied, as did construction projects and industrial pollutants.
The most immediate worry is illegal sand mining, which can strip away thousands of tons of riverbank on a single day, causing immense amounts of silt to spill into the river, upsetting its delicate ecology.
Not far from the village of Bhopepura, dozens of tractors regularly snake down a dirt road to the river, pulling trailers filled with wiry, shovel-wielding men who hop down once they reach the riverbank. These are the sand mafia’s labour force, men who can earn US$15 (Dh55) for a long, exhausting day of work. The mining is illegal, but the labourers say their bosses have paid off local officials. While none of the miners will give their full names, they also make no effort to hide what they’re doing.
The labourers are concerned with making extra money, not with wildlife.
“What is a snctuary?” says Gopal, the river labourer, his voice dripping with disdain. “What is a mammal? What is a bird? I don’t have time to worry about these things.”
* Associated Press
