Major river of India and Bangladesh; length
2,510 km/1,560 mi. It is the most sacred
river for Hindus. Its chief tributary is the
Jumna (Yamuna length 1,385 km/860 mi), which
joins the Ganges near Allahabad, where there
is a sacred bathing place. The Ganges is
joined in its delta in Bangladesh by the
river Brahmaputra, and its most commercially
important and westernmost channel to the Bay
of Bengal is the Hooghly. The political
leaders M K Gandhi, Nehru, and Indira Gandhi
were all cremated on the banks of the Jumna
at Delhi. The area regularly flooded in the
wet season has almost doubled, and the annual
cost of flood damage has risen to $1 billion
as a consequence of deforestation of the
Ganges watershed, which has also decreased
the river's flow in the dry season by 20%.