NDA (II) 2018 General Ability Test · Question 98 of 146

Correct — D, the Brahmaputra. Majuli lies in the Brahmaputra in Assam, and it is recognised by the Guinness World Records as the world's largest inland river island. The Brahmaputra is a braided river carrying an enormous sediment load through a wide, low-gradient valley, and Majuli is what that braiding produces on the grandest scale — a mass of alluvium enclosed by the main channel on one side and by the Subansiri and the Kherkutia Xuti on the other. It is also the heartland of Assam's neo-Vaishnavite culture, holding the satras founded in the tradition of Srimanta Sankardeva, and in 2016 it became the first island in India to be constituted a district.

• (a)Jamuna — This is a genuinely tempting wrong answer, because the Jamuna is the name the Brahmaputra takes after it enters Bangladesh and turns south. It is the same water, but Majuli lies far upstream of that stretch, inside Assam, where the river is still called the Brahmaputra.
• (b)Padma — Padma is the Bangladeshi name for the Ganga after it crosses the border, and it joins the Jamuna at Goalundo before the combined river runs on as the Meghna. It is a Bangladeshi river name, and Majuli is in Assam.
• (c)Ganga — The Ganga has large sandbanks and seasonal islands of its own, and Diara land along its course is farmed, but it holds nothing on Majuli's scale, and Majuli is nowhere near it. The two rivers meet only in Bangladesh, hundreds of kilometres downstream of the island.

The Brahmaputra rises in Tibet as the Tsangpo, cuts through the Himalaya at the Namcha Barwa bend, enters Arunachal Pradesh as the Siang or Dihang and becomes the Brahmaputra in Assam once the Dibang and the Lohit join it. Through the Assam valley it runs as a braided river — a wide, shallow, shifting channel that constantly deposits and re-cuts sandbars, because the gradient is gentle and the sediment supply from the young mountains is huge. Majuli is the largest of the resulting islands. That same restlessness is now destroying it: the island covered about 1,300 square kilometres in the 1790s and is down to roughly 880 today, with more than thirty-five villages lost to erosion since 1991.

The four options are built out of one trap — three of them are names for stretches of the same two great rivers, and a student who knows only that Majuli is 'on a big eastern river' can be pushed onto the wrong name. The discipline is to place the island first and the river second: Majuli is in Assam, and the river of Assam is the Brahmaputra. Jamuna and Padma are what the Brahmaputra and the Ganga are called in Bangladesh, so both are geographically out of range. Since this paper was set the erosion story has continued to make news, and Majuli is now routinely described as shrinking rather than as a fixed 880 square kilometres.

• Majuli lies in the Brahmaputra in Assam and is recognised by the Guinness World Records as the world's largest inland river island.
• Its area has fallen from about 1,300 square kilometres in the 1790s to roughly 880 square kilometres, with more than 35 villages lost to erosion since 1991.
• Majuli became the first island in India to be constituted a district, in 2016.
• The island is the centre of Assam's neo-Vaishnavite satra tradition associated with Srimanta Sankardeva.

• Choosing the Bangladeshi name of the right river. Jamuna is the Brahmaputra, but only after it leaves India.
• Confusing Padma with Yamuna. The Padma is the Ganga in Bangladesh; the Yamuna of north India is a different river altogether.
• Quoting Majuli's area as a fixed figure. It is shrinking, and any number should be given as approximate and dated.

NDA asks which river a named physical feature sits on, or which names a single river takes in different countries along its course.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Brahmaputra is known in Bangladesh as the

  • (a)Padma
  • (b)Jamuna
  • (c)Meghna
  • (d)Teesta

  Answer(b) Jamuna — it takes that name after entering Bangladesh, while the Ganga there is called the Padma.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Majuli, in the news for severe erosion, is located in which Indian State?

  • (a)West Bengal
  • (b)Bihar
  • (c)Assam
  • (d)Arunachal Pradesh

  Answer(c) Assam — the island lies in the Brahmaputra and was made India's first island district in 2016.