The Narmada originates from Amarkantak in the Mekal hills, an extension of the Satpuras on the MP-Chhattisgarh border, from a small source known as the ‘Narmada-Kund. At the ‘Narmada-Kund’ there are several small temples, prominent among them being those of Narmada Devi and Amarkanteshwar Mahadev. The Mekal hills actually form a link between the Vindhyas and the Satpuras.
From the same hills, at a nearby place called Sonmudha, originates the river Son that flows through north-eastern MP and eventually merges with the Ganga. Not too many people know that Son is the second longest tributary of Ganga, a little behind the Yamuna. In UP the district of Sonbhadra is named after Son and it is the only district in the country bordering four different states. Son, in its later career becomes very wide, and has one of the longest railway bridges in the country near ‘Dehri on Son’ in Bihar. There is a legend that Narmada and Son (who is considered a ‘Nad’ – a male river) got estranged and Narmada summarily parted ways with the latter and flowed in the opposite direction agreeably ensconced in her eternal maidenhood.
Though Amarkantak is located in MP, most people approach it through Chhattisgarh, from Bilaspur (a distance of 120 km) or the railway station of Pendra Road, 30 km away. Amarkantak is referred to as Amrakoot by Kalidas in his ‘Meghdoot.’ it is an area of deep forests and is located at a height of about 3500 feet above sea level. There are a number of Ashramas in the area – the most prominent among them being ‘Kalyan Seva Ashrama’ started by Shri Kalyandasji Maharaj who has lived and practised Tapasya in Amarkantak area for around six decades. It serves a large number of Sadhus, Parikramavasis, and general pilgrims. Other major ashramas include the Turiya Ashrama, Barfani Ashrama, Mritunjay Ashrama, and Sri Ramakrishna Kutir. There is also a very old Gurudwara in the area and a thousand year old temple complex just behind the main complex of temples at the Narmada-Kund built during various times – majorly during the Kalchuri era by their ruler Karnadev, and also by Baghel rulers and Gond rulers. Their is a water body called ‘Suraj Kund’ said to have been asked by Adi Sankaracharya.
As Narmada exits the temple complex there is a sizeable water body known as Kabir Sarovar. Amarkantak preserves the old charm and its deep forests and hills steeply sloping on other sides offer a very pleasant view. There is another place called ‘Mai ka Bagicha’ and some say that this spot is the origin of Narmada. There is also a place called ‘Bhrigu Kamandal’ at Chhatisgarh border. A complex of Jain temples is also coming up in the area.
A few hotels, dharmashalas too are there, including a resort run by the MP State Tourism Corporation.
Of late, there have been serious environmental concerns about the Amarkantak region. Its underground water table has been on continuous depletion and forest cover endangered. Much more at risk is the source of Narmada itself as it is chiefly the underground water that surfaces and slowly flows down in form of a very narrow stream. However, the authorities have now taken a sterner watch and no new construction is being permitted in the area.
The initial stream is so thin that looking at it at that spot, one would hardly fancy that this stream will surmount all obstacles and reach the sea crossing almost half of the width of the Indian sub-continent. But that is the marvel that Narmada always is. The infant-river channel flows and falls after about 6 kilometres, and this first waterfall is known as Kapildhara. It is said that Rishi Kapil, the great philosopher of the Sankhya system of philosophy lived here. This is the first fall – the river falling about 100 feet – among the numerous ones which would follow in its course. Very soon one comes across another fall known as the ‘Doodhdhara.’ This is a very difficult terrain and a steep descent full of dense forests and an area of great deprivation with some of the poorest Indian communities living here.
Amarkantak is in Pushprajgarph tehsil of Anuppur district In Madhya Pradesh. The district headquarter of Pushprajgarh tehsil is called Rajendragram and it us said to have been named in honour of Dr Rajendra Prasad who had visited Amarkantak and took a bullock-cart ride from here. Pushprajgarh itself was named after a scion of the Rewa Royal family in which Amarkantak came.
During the bifurcation of Madhya Pradesh in the year 2000, the people and leadership of the separately carved out Chhattisgarh forcefully lay their claims on Amarkantak and resented that being given to the other side of the divide – the curtailed Madhya Pradesh. To lay any such claims to rest the Survey of India had to intervene and old maps produced that indicated that Amarkantak and whole of Shahdol district was historically part of the Rewa State even before independence and since Shahdol and entire Rewa State districts were to remain in the curtailed MP and could not be given to Chhattisgarh.
Through Dindori and Mandla
On the southern banks is the Dindori district. There are places of significance like the Bheemkundi, Seoni Sangam, and Chandanghat before the river reaches Dindori town, some 85 kilometres downstream. This forest area is called the Mahamundaranya and is a part of the larger forest belt across districts of Anuppur, Dindori, Mandla, Balaghat, Seoni, Shahdol and Umariya. This entire area has been a tiger country for ages. MP has the largest tiger population in the entire country, having almost 30 percent of these big cats, and it is around this area that the three famous national parks having a significant tiger population – Kanha, Bandhavgarh, and Pench are located. The species is the Royal Bengal Tiger, (it is a common mistake to think that the species Royal Bengal Tigers is specific to tigers only in Sundarbans) and even rare white tigers were once found in the Bandhavgharh region. The area was known for the big game and only in the last century some thought of conservation sunk in.
The hamlets one comes across as one walks down the Mekal hills are small in size and scattered and have extreme poverty. The levels of penurious condition continue to more or less the same degree in the districts of Anuppur, Dindori, and the next district on the trajectory – Mandla. The Narmada Parikramavasis, who live on offerings by local people, often face a severe testing time in this area. The Pushprajgarh tehsil in which Amarkantak is located as well as the Dindori district, has predominantly the Baiga and Gond communities who are among the most impoverished in the entire state.
The Gonds are involved in cultivation whereas Baigas generally do not engage in agriculture. They traditionally were dependent on forest produce and had been practitioners of traditional medicine including Ayurveda, herbal medicine, and occult practices. Their bodies are heavily marked by tatoos. Gonds are usually known as ‘Kisan’ in the region and they are economically better off than the Baigas. The Baigas of clusters of villages in Bajag tehsil in Dindori district are particularly deprived and that area is known as ‘Baigachak.’ They are also very shy by nature and a few decades back used to run away to the jungles at the sight of the outsiders.
It is the area where that tremendously variegated personality – an Oxford alumnus and Professor, a lapsed Christian missionary and sometime Gandhian, and later an anthropologist of considerable renown, Verrier Elwin, passed a significant part of his life. He was the first foreigner to have been granted Indian citizenship. On account of his scholarship finding acceptance across the mainstream academia, and also the close intellectual kinship he enjoyed with Jawaharlal Nehru, Elwin came to have much sway in formulation of the framework of national policies towards the tribal communities in independent India. His studies of Gonds and Baigas attracted a lot of attention and has had its severe detractors too who feel that while studying the scenario Elwin missed looking at the common strands that form the tapestry of Indian civilizational nationhood through many a millennia. However, even while not agreeing with Elwin’s thoughts, one has to certainly concede that he wrote elegant English prose marked with charming wit. He even won the Sahitya Akademi Award, the high literary honour of the country. Elwin led a dual life, marrying a young Gond girl in her early teens, following their customs and living in the jungle, while continuing to savour his P.G. Wodehouse and reading about the upper-class English society of idle rich with their valets and country castles.
The Dindori district has about two-thirds of tribal population and Mandla nearly 60 percent. Such poverty as in this initial 300 km of the river’s trajectory (till it enters Jabalpur district after Mandla) is only seen later in pockets of Dhar, Alirajpur and Barwani districts close to the MP-Maharashtra-Gujarat, nearly a thousand kilometres from the river’s source.
Narmada, unlike the Himalayan rivers, does not have a permanent source of water in form of any glaciers. It is completely nourished through the rainwater accumulated in the rainy season and the combined corpus of water flowing in through its tributaries falling in its basin. While it has tributaries joining from both north as well as south, greater water quantity is contributed through its basin area on the south. It is only natural as on its south are the Satpuras, much greater in average height than the Vindhaychal and having denser forests too, ensuring higher water tables, preventing soil erosion and thus also helping in preventing unnecessary silting and muddying of the clear Narmada waters. Narmada water is generally so clean that most people living on her banks drink it directly, even today, without any filtering. Since there are hardly any industries immediately near Narmada, the river has been spared the misery of many other rivers that suffer from industrial effluents rendering their water almost unfit for direct consumption.
The Dindori town was formerly called Ramgarh and one of the last rulers of this area was Rani Avantibai who fought against the British in the rebellion of 1857 and died a martyr’s death at the age of 27. A project of the Bargi dam between Mandla and Jabalpur is named Avanti Sagar in her honour.
Immediately after Dindori town, one arrives at Jogi Tikariya on the northern banks where there is a road bridge. Between Dindori and Mandla, the river makes several turns, sometimes it becomes north-bound, at other times south-bound, on occasions even east-bound – during which patches she is called ‘Suryamukhi’ or ‘Poorvamukhi’ meaning east-facing. So the terms Uttar-tat (northern banks) and the Dakshin-tat (southern banks) can be very misleading at times. But it is a convention to use the term Dakshin-Tat to allude to the banks on which one walks with the river on the right, while proceeding towards the sea; and the Uttar-tat when one walks from the sea to the origin, again keeping the river on the right.
The terrain through which Narmada flows in this region is hilly and rocky. At many places it creates a ravine. It is very challenging for the Parikramavasis to walk along the banks in this area, much like how it would be in the Shoolpani area at the other end of Madhya Pradesh. The arrangements for Parikramavasis in this poor and difficult terrain are naturally greatly austere as compared to other parts. Quite a few of the Parikramavasis, therefore, while waljing on the southern banks take the road between Dindori and Mandla, and those walking on the other side also usually walk through the road through Niwas, Shahpura and Jogi Tikariya. The ghats are small and the quantum of water in the river is quite. For most part of the year one would have to squat in order to take bath. There are small ghats like Takin ghat, Malpur, Kanhai Sangam, Dupta Sangam annd Singarpur before the river reaches Devgaon Sangam. The tehsil town of Mehadwani of Dindori district is near the river banks. It has a small market. An interesting site in this area is the cave of Devnala which is about 10 km from the river and a mile away from the town of Sakka on the Dinori-Mandla road. Here there is a a very wide cave, much like a semi-circular auditorium, over which a stream called Devnala flows and falls on a Shivalinga in front of the cave. So spacious is the cave that more than a thousand persons can sit comfortably here. In rainy season the cave gets filled with water.
A few miles away from the village of Singarpur that follows Dupta Sangam is Paudi-Linga, also known as Linga Ghat, where villagers set up small shops of wares on the road between Mandla and Dindori. The road between Mandla and Dindori crosses Narmada at a vilLge called Manot. Just a mile away from this place is the Devgaon Sangam where Budhner meets Narmada on the southern banks. Budhner originates from the Baigachak region in Dindori district and is Narmada’s first major tributary. Devgaon Sangam is an important place with old Pauranik associations. It has a few temples, ashrams and Anna-kshetras. It is supposed to be one of the places where Rishi Jamdagni, father of Sri Parashuram, lived.
Between Devgaon Sangam and Mandla is the seventeenth century palace at Ramnagar, built by Hriday Shah of the Garha Mandla clan who belonged to the lineage of the Rani Durgawati. There are inscriptions in the fort glorifying the great queen’s valour.
Durgawati was born in the Chandel clan of Mahoba in the Bundelkhand region of present-day Uttar Pradesh and got married to Dalpat Shah, the adopted son of Sangram Shah of the Gond clan that ruled large parts of central India in the middle of the second millennium. Widowed at a young age, when her young son Veer Narayan had not yet come of age, she was a great heroic figure and deserves to be known and celebrated in a much better way by present-day Indians. She ruled, at various times, from the forts of Singaurgarh in Sagar district and Chauragarh in Narsingpur district. She had put up a great front against Akbar in 1564 when the latter was at the peak of his expansionist phase but her limited troops did not stand a chance against the mighty Mughal forces. She chose to have an honourable death rather than falling in hands of the enemies, and staring at the certain defeat she took a dagger from her Mahawat (elephant-rider) ending her life. In a way she anticipated the arrival of Rani Lakshmibai and also Avantibai by a good three centuries.
The place where her end came is Narrai in Jabalpur district and nor far from that city. A well-maintained memorial and a small garden has been devekiped at this place.
Rani Durgawati’s memory has also been honoured in form of a long-distance train between Jabalpur and Jammu-Tawi, a vessel named after her by the Indian Coastguards and the Jabalpur University which is named after her. For administrative convenience the Mughals made the descendants of Durgawati feudatories of their vast empire.
Hridayshah who built Ramnagar Palace was also not a sovereign ruler but a vassal under the larger Mughal empire. During the high noon of the Maratha period this area came under them. The British finally won the region from the Marathas and organised it into the administrative zone of ‘Nurbudda and Saugor’ with the capital at Jubbalpore, as the city was called then. This was later merged into the Central Provinces.
Two sizeably long rivers meet Narmada before Mandla, contributing to its water quantum during this early stage and help it grow. Both join from the southern banks. The first is, as mentioned earlier, Budhner which is 177 km long meeting Narmada at the Devgaon Sangam, about 40 km before Mandla. The second is Banjar, 188 km long, which flowing through the Kanha National Park, meets Narmada at Maharajpur, Mandla’s suburban extension on the southern banks.
Dindori and Jabalpur are almost at the same latitude but the river makes a U-shaped loop in the region between the two towns with Mandla near the southernmost tip. This is described famously by Kalidas in his ‘Meghdoot’ where he exhorts the cloud-messenger not to miss the beauty where Narmada becomes a ‘Mekhala,’ a traditional form of waist-belt worn by womenfolk, referring to this loop. Mandla town has several ghats and temples.
Unfortunately, after the construction of the Bargi dam in the region between Jabalpur and Mandla, most Parikramavasis when walking on the northern banks now skip Mandla altogether and walk straight from ghats near Jabalpur to Niwas, a tehsil town of Mandla onto Jogi Tikariya in Dindori district. While walking on the southern banks, however, they pass through Maharajpur, the suburban extension of Mandla on the southern banks, and therefore, can have a view of the ghats and temples on the opposite banks and thus, make up to some extent, the misfortune of not having visited the town during their northern banks travel. The conventions of the Parikrama forbid them to visit Mandla when they are on the southern banks too. It is rather unfortunate as Mandla for this reason has fallen out of the Parkrama circuit in last few decades.
Immediately downstream of Mandla is Sahsradhara where Narmada breaks into innumerable streams, thus giving the place its name. A little further downstream is a place called Garam Pani kund on the northern banks. While walking on the southern banks, due to the backwaters of the Bargi dam, one has to walk through the Seoni district passing places like Kedarpur or the tehsil town of Ghansor and from there one directly enters the Jabalpur district passing the township of Bargi. The Bargi dam is the oldest major dam on Narmada built in early eighties.
Jabalpur – The Preeminent City in Narmadakhand.
The next town on the trajectory, Jabalpur, is the largest urban settlement near Narmada, though the main areas of the city are slightly away from the banks. Perhaps, the most centrally located city in India – this claim only rivalled by the city of Nagpur – Jabalpur has a huge military cantonment, and in colonial times had a significant British presence with an important railway station on the original Bombay-Howrah line that passed through Mughalsarai, completed in 1870. The protagonist of Jules Vernes’s 1873 classic ‘Around the World in 80 days’ travels through this path in order to defend his bet. A lesser known fact is that when deciding to shift the capital from Calcutta in the early twentieth century, a possible choice deliberated upon in the highest corridors of power in London, was that of Jabalpur, chiefly because of its location and reasonably equable climate. Also, a scarcely known fact is that the game snooker originated in the army cantonment of Jabalpur when a young officer Neville Chamberlain combined two different board games to create this new game. Known as Jubbalpore during the British era, it also had a marked cosmopolitan ambience with Bengalis, Punjabis, Tamilians, and Indians from various other parts of the country living there. In fact even the present day Bengalis, and often the Bengali media, continue to call it Jubbalpore. Its localities like Wright Town and Napier Town still bespeak of the bygone colonial era. The High Court of MP is based in Jabalpur.
An astute observer of MP would certainly get a feeling that in the last few decades Jabalpur has lagged in development as compared to Bhopal and Indore, even though it was the premier city of central India before independence. Jabalpur has given many luminaries to the country. The scholar-politician and the much regarded Chief Minister of the state, Dwarka Prasad Mishra, lived in Jabalpur, and so did the famous poetess Subhadra Kumari Chauhan whose poem on Rani Lakshmibai is known to anyone who reads Hindi in school. She unfortunately passed away in a road accident at the age of 43 in the nearby town of Seoni. It is also believed that Jabalpur was the birthplace of Maharshi Mahesh Yogi (born Mahesh Chandra Varma) who founded the world famous TM (Transcendental Meditation) movement that had followers throughout the world including global celebrities like the Beatles, though there is a varying opinion that he was born in Rajim near Raipur, now in newly formed Gariyaband district of Chhatisgarh.
There are three major ghats near Jabalpur – the Gwarighat (Gauri ghat), Tilwada ghat where the Tilbhhandeshwar temple is located, and the Lamheta ghat. Very near to the city is the village of Tripuri, which was once the capital of the Kalchuris, and has now fallen into oblivion. Tripuri had been a very old settleme t and excavations have shown that it was in existence even around the times of the Buddha. It has a major temple dedicated to Devi Tripurasundari which receives a large number of visitors from Jabalpur and neighbouring areas.
Tripuri is also often recalled in the context of the famous Congress session where Subhaschandra Bose presided for the second time in succession after defeating Mahhatma Gandhi’s candidate Pattabhi Sitaramaiyya. An ailing Subhas, having high fever, had boarded the train from Howrah to reach Jabalpur for the session. The session also marked the beginning of his disassociation with the National Congress, finally leading to a total severance of ties, with Subhas recharting a new path, and arguably entering his last and most heroic phase between 1941 and 1945 as the ‘Netaji.’
Jabalpur has had an even closer connection with Netaji as he was imprisoned here in the Central Jail for 214 days in two stints in early 1930s. The Central Jail of Jabalpur is now named ‘Netaji Subhaschandra Bose Jail’ and has a museum dedicated to his memory. The local medical college of the city is also named after him. Netaji was also imprisoned for 5 months in neighbouring district headquarter of Seoni, the district where the Pench National Park is located and where a young Rudyard Kipling wrote his ‘Jungle Book’ in 1894, creating timeless characters of Mowgli, Sherkhan, Baloo, and Bagheera, and capturing the imagination of children throughout the world for more than a century. The memory of Kipling is also honoured by the Kipling cottages (holiday homes and resort) maintained by MP Tourism in the Pench area.
Bhedaghat – Narmada’s Artistry
Slightly downstream of Jabalpur, the river cuts through the hilly terrain, creating in the process a marvel of natural beauty, the marble rocks at Bhedaghat and the Dhuandhar waterfall. Bhedaghat probably derives its name from Bhairavghat. Bhedaghat attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists every year, not just from different parts of the country but also abroad. In Dhuandhar, just before the marble rocks, Narmada falls from about a height of about 100 feet and its water droplets create a misty effect, which gives this waterfall the name ‘Dhuandhar’ – smoky stream.
Boating is permissible in the Bhedaghat marble rocks area only with authorised guides and personnel. The boatmen narrate both events and myths regarding this place in a highly entertaining style they have developed. On full moon nights there is boating even at night which is said to be an ethereal sight. Narmada seems to have sculpted a lane with walls of marble on both sides. While cutting through the marble rocks Narmada again becomes ‘Poorvamukhi’ or east-facing. At one place the river makes its way through a ravine-like narrow passage called ‘Bandar-Kudni’ – the name derived from the idea that even monkeys could leap from one side to another. The ‘Bandar-Kudni’ also finds mention in the works of the famous colonial era historian and founder of the Archaeological Survey of India, Alexander Cunningham.
Bhedaghat also has the famous temple complex – the Chausath (64) Yogini Mandir, which was built in the early eleventh century by the Tripuri-based Kalchuri king Yuvraj II. This area is also famous for its marble sculptures and scores of shops in Bhedaghat display a variety of marble statues. These are done mostly in a nearby village called Bagrai.
Interestingly, the path cut through the marble rocks was not the original trajectory of Narmada. She made a deviation from her former path and began to cut through this terrain and the present form must have taken millions of years. Had it continued to flow on its former trajectory, a sight of remarkable beauty would have never been conceived. Sometimes great artists are not satisfied with what they are creating; they are prepared to take a step back, undo and redo, rising to much greater challenges to create bewitching works of beauty that can cast a spell on any onlooker. At Bhedaghat, Narmada yields to none in her claim to be a supreme artist.
▶Next Chapter: Between Bhedaghat to Narmadapuram