Conservation Strategies for Bhedaghat : A Sacred Landscape of Narmada

Abstract

The Narmada valley is a peculiar region. Enclosed on its entire length by mountain ranges, the river valley forms a separate geographical and cultural unit. The valley itself shows a continuation of human settlement from the beginning of the stoneage up to present times. People have given birth to the sacred character of the Valley through the ages. The divine character of the Narmada has been narrated in the Epics, the Puranas and the later literary works. The concept of Narmada as a mother deity spawns mythology, oral history, art, music, architecture, history, spirituality, rituals, and traditions in the Narmada valley. Each of them has a clear identity, style and spirit. Pilgrimage is an ancient practice, common to many religions. Narmada is considered one of the seven sacred rivers in India where traditional act of pilgrimage exists and the only river in India to merit a parikrama (circumambulation). The devotees perform parikrama of the entire length (around 2624 Kilometers) of the river. Parikramavasis believe traversing the two banks of Narmada; they will pass through innumerable tirthas, each granting families and the absence of discrimination towards every caste and creed towards Parikramavasis is unique to the Narmada valley. The river banks of the Narmada have been hallowed by several saints; great institutions of spiritual research and teaching were built. The historic facts and information tells us about the locations of major tirthas. Innumerable ghats built on the two banks of the river perform unlimited rituals. Fairs and festivals concentrated on the divine character of the river conducted all the year round are countless. Today the sustainable development like dam constructions represented by the relics representing them has been lost by submersion in the dams. It has altered the traditional route because of which parikramavasis have to walk more than 300 kilometers, as by the rule they cannot cross the Narmada during parikrama. The thesis will focus on Tripuri (Bhedaghat) which is one of the tirtha of major importance with unique natural setting in the Narmada valley. Detailed description of all the tirthas is beyond the scope of present work. The thesis will also focuses at the understanding of the Narmada Parikrama. Further it intends to establish Bhedaghat as a sacred landscape within the landscape of the Narmada Parikrama and to establish the significance of Bhedaghat. Developments have caused degradation of natural and cultural resources. Due to urbanization secular have taken over, protection and management of sacred landscape of Bhedaghat have become a challenge. Thesis is more inclined towards being an anthropological and social one. It involved less quantitative data while stressing more on qualitative data. The ethnographic and phenomenological approach is taken for this research. The ethnographic landscape of pilgrimage route. The phenomenological approach tries to understand how the other person views the world. (In my topic, how the person views the river) Written Data This mainly includes the references drawn about the content from already existing documents. It is the secondary data collected on our study and used as reference for our post research work. Direct Observation Going to the place of observation and staying there in a different culture and context, helped in getting the general feel of the environment. All the non-verbal cues were observed and taken note of.