ABSTRACT
The waters of the Ganges River are teeming with microbial lifeforms. Water quality testing and bacteriological analysis indicate extremely high levels of faecal coliforms and the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the river. According to scientific data, the river’s waters are not fit for drinking, bathing and at parts not even agricultural use, all of which are central to the daily lives of the local population for subsistence and religious purposes. This chapter looks at the Ganges water as a substance filled with microbes and divinity, considering the river as a space to think about more-than-human approaches to water. More specifically, it explores the entanglement of bacteriophage research and the purifying powers of the Ganga goddess in water, which challenges the dichotomous categories of modernity and tradition. It contrasts antibiotic understandings of microbes based on the Pasteurian conception of public health that aims at erasing germs widely to encompass more contemporary possibilities of using life to manage life. This chapter argues that antibiotic approaches to microbes are intrinsically attached to capitalist forms of production, distribution and consumption resulting in the current configuration of scientific and public health concerns that impact biocultural diversity. Considering the plurality of human-microbe relationships, this chapter suggests there are other possibilities to nurture alternative futures, conducting science and medicine in ways that are attuned to more-than-human diversity.
