"My desire to have handful of my ashes thrown into the Ganga at Allahabad has no religious significance so far as I am concerned. I have no religious sentiments in the matter. I have been attached to the Ganga and the Jumna rivers since my childhood. As I have grown older, this attachment has also grown. I have watched their varying moods as the seasons changed, and have been though of the history and myth and tradition and song and story that have become attached to them through long ages and become part of their flowing waters. The Ganga, especially, is the river of India, beloved of her people, round which are intertwined her memories, her hopes and fears, her songs of triumph, her victories and her defeats. She has been a symbol of India's age long culture and civilization, ever changing, ever flowing, and yet ever the same Ganga. She reminds of the snow-covered peaks and deep valleys of the Himalayas, which I have loved so much, and of the rich and vast plains below, where my life and work have been cast."