Narmada River is a sacred river in India, marked by significant tirthas that are annual pilgrimage sites for Hindus.
A river in central India that rises at the holy place
(tirtha) of Amarkantak in Madhya Pradesh and runs practically straight west
through Gujarat before reaching the Arabian Sea.
The Narmada is one of the few rivers in central India that
flows east to west; rivers farther south are funneled east by the upthrust of
the Western Ghats mountains.
Along with the Ganges, Yamuna, Godavari, Saraswati, Indus,
and Cauvery, it is regarded one of India's seven holy rivers.
Omkareshvar, one of the twelve jyotirlingas, a network of
Shiva-related sites, is a significant Narmada site.
During the 1990s, environmentalists used the Narmada as a
rallying point to protest the building of many major dams, claiming that these
dams had displaced too many people and damaged too much valuable farmland.
The construction of these dams has resumed, although at a
slower rate.
A moderate earthquake in the Narmada basin in 1997 spurred a
need for further research on the project's environmental risks.
