Shrinking Majuli
Majuli is in danger. The island has now been reduced to half its original size and prone to extensive flood and erosion.

NOT only Guwahati, the world famous Majuli island is also under threat from this year’s unprecedented floods.

For the past few weeks, peopleof Majuli have been spending sleepless nights. While children go off to sleep, parents keep a close watch on the mighty Brahmaputra river with a flaming torch in hand. “The Brahmaputra is eating away a large chunk of the island and every day we find the river coming closer to our home,” Pegu, a farmer by profession said. The Brahmaputra is barely 50 meters away from their hut at Majuli, the world’s largest riverine island.

“The river might change its course and sweep us away while we sleep, and so the night vigil is necessary,” he explained. The Majuli island, 350 km east of Guwahati, and having an area of 1,500 square km area was once dotted with Hindu monasteries. But today Majuli is in danger — the island has now been reduced to half its original size and prone to extensive flood and erosion. Water level of the Brahmaputra started rising with the onset of the monsoons and the people were worried about the impact of the floods. During the high floods caused by the surging grey waters of the Brahmaputra, some five million people were rendered homeless in Assam last year, besides leaving a treacherous trail of destruction. “Majuli is soon going to lose its place from the record books. In fact the island is on the verge of extinction, with its landmass decreasing by the day because of heavy erosion caused by the Brahmaputra,” said Ananda Hazarika, a geographer.

For the 150,000 islanders, the fear of Majuli disappearing from the map has been a subject of much discussion. “We are almost certain that very soon we would have to shift permanently from Majuli,” said the head of a Hindu monastery in the island. “We had about 60-odd Satras (monasteries) in Majuli about 50 years back. But today there are only 21 Satras. The rest have been wiped out following erosion and floods.” The threat to Majuli’s existence began in 1950 after a severe earthquake shifted the river bed and caused massive silting that in turn led to heavy river erosion, especially during rains. Scores of villages in the island simply disappear without a trace each year during the floods, with the Brahmaputra swallowing the land and people forced to live like nomads on higher grounds. For most islanders, the river is their sole source of income, but when the flood arrives, the provider all too often turns destroyer. A majority of the villagers in Majuli eke out a living from fishing and ferrying people to and from the island.

“It is an irony indeed to find that the Brahmaputra which feed us for the better part of the year, washes all our earnings in one big push,” another islander said. During the floods, the river is far too dangerous to navigate, forcing the villagers to simply sit and wait it out, and hope that the floodwaters keep away from their homes. It is an irony that though it is on the brink of an ecological disaster,  Majuli is all set to be included in the World Heritage Site list by the United Nations Education and Scientific Cooperation (UNESCO) by 2005.

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