There are few subjects on which all of India’s communities, Hindus or non-Hindus, speak in one voice. One of these is Ganga mata, mother Ganga. There was a furore recently when a member of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha in Uttar Pradesh filed an FIR against 14 young Muslim men alleging that they were holding an iftar party on a boat on the Ganges in Kashi, and polluting it by eating chicken biryani. They were also allegedly seen by the (usually unreliable) bystanders throwing bones into the river. The police moved quickly and hauled in the men, all in their 20s.

One of the most beautiful verses on the Ganga, still sung during the Ganga Aarti at Har Ki Pauri each day, was written by the great poet Pandit Jagannath Shastri Telang, a poet in the court of Emperor Shah Jahan and a tutor of his favourite son Dara Shikoh. The poet was thrown out after he dared ask for the hand of the Badshah’s 14th daughter, Lavangi, in marriage. Yet, as the emperor had already........

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