Environment

Rivers and Gender Identity

By Aditya Anurag Nanda

Posted on March 21, 2026

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In the month of March, when the world is celebrating International Women’s Day with so much fanfare, I amreminded of my granny’s story of the river,its nourishing energy, and its gender classification!
“Granny! Granny! Do you know, even the rivers too have a gender category?”, in a shrieking, screaming voice, I uttered those words in a squeaky way, as I entered our apartment from the school, holding the bag at my back.

At that point in time, Granny was busy with her balcony-bound gardening task.
Responding to my statement, without raising her eyes, she nodded with a mm-hmm sound.

It created a repulsive effect in me. “How can anyone not feel excited to explore new things?Probably she had nodded casually, without listening to me,” was the background thought, creating an urge to make her properly listen to my newly explored Sanskrit grammatical facts about rivers.

I neared her, still having school bags on my back. Shoved her, holding her arms, actuating her to look at me and listen to my new insights.

“Hey! You are still in your uniforms! Go and change first, then we will discover together what you have learned today in your school.”

“Noooo…, Grannyyy…!”, in a grumbling voice, while oozing out my lips forward with those elongated words to express my unhappiness about the proposed delay in the conversation, I shared my desire to talk about it right now.

“Okay! After that, you will go straight to your room and change your clothes, right?”
“Mother promise!”, a spontaneous reaction to ensure fulfilment of her commandments from my side after the condition was laid down by her.

She just abandoned the thing that she was doing, looked straight into my eyes, a motivational gesture from her side to speak my mind.

With a sparkle in my eyes, I shared,
“You know, Granny! In our language class today, the teacher said that in classical Indian languages, like Sanskrit, rivers too have gender! Most of the rivers, like the Ganga, Yamuna, Mahanadi, etc., are female, while the Brahmaputra, Budha Balang, etc.,are male rivers! Can you believe this! How can a river have a gender? It is an inanimate entity, right, Granny?”
She took a pause, reshaped her thoughts, rearrangedwords, and prepared herself to present the age-old wisdom of Indian philosophy to a kid in his own language!
“Yes, honey! What you are trying to say is true, but that varies from context to context. In modern languages like English, rivers belong to abiotic elements and are considered inanimate objects.

But in classical Indian languages, rivers are full of life, as they hold within themselves varieties of species like fish, mammals, reptiles, and invertebrates, and their water, an instrument of sustenance of life on earth. These nurturing abilities of the rivers made the ancient sages and scholars ascribe these rivers’unique names and genders.”

“Yeah, understood!It is true that rivers provide a lifeline on the earth, so they deserve our respect, and naming the rivers also seems okay, but not attributing gender identity, right?”
Granny with a thinker look, and scholarly tonality said, “You know, dear, in ancient Indian philosophy, each object has a life, an identity, and a name.

Any narration of the particular object used to get personified to communicate to the listeners about the attributes of that being. In this manner, the scholars observed the pattern of flow of the rivers, the turns and twists these rivers take during the overflowing monsoon, the kind of energy unfolded in the region during the spate, the behaviour of the river near its mouth, etc., were a few parameters used by them to decide the gender of the river. If the river’s flow is smooth over its course and expanded over a large network near its mouth, then it receives a female attribute. On the other hand, if the river is violent, troublesome, unpredictable, and associated with a destructive force, then it picks up a male gender.”

“So, you say, male rivers are more energetic, active, and spirited, like we boys behave during our playtime?”
With an affectionate, fond smile, she reached out to my chin and said, “Partially, you are right, but the female rivers equally possess that vital energy and their expanses are larger, nurturing wider areas, providing water to an extensive network of channels, near the river mouth, benefitting a large number of people.”

“Like our girls in our school, these female rivers have a vast network of friends with whom they share their waters, but the male rivers, like us boys, have fewer friends that last forever, is it okay!”
With a gentle and caring smile, she nodded. The immediate query was, “Do you know any male river names?”

“Yes, there are many male rivers in India, like the Brahmaputra, Son River, Damodar River, Ajay River, Lohit River, Budha Balang River, and Sindhu River of undivided India, now belonging to Pakistan, are treated as male rivers, because of their ferocity, valour, and grandeur.”

The answer from Granny provided another clue for the next question, which she could infer from my facial gesture.

“Now, no more conversation! You go inside, change your clothes, and freshen up first; then I will tell you many legends about rivers. You see, one interesting story I know is about the cancelled marriage between two rivers, and they have been separated for the rest of their lives. Do you want to listen to those stories? Clean up yourself first!”

The rivers, despite their gender attributes, foster, nourish, and endorse civilisations, a feminine tendency in itself. And the soul of these rivers lies in the hills and mountains covered with dense vegetation.

At this juncture, as climate change is accelerating, we need to act now to protect these rivers and their souls. Otherwise, in future, the children would not have the privilege of debating the “gender identity” of a particular river, but would only be debating whether it an active river or dead river.