Missing Connections (original) (raw)
Seizing the Flow: Lives of Water under the Early Western Gangas
Themes in Early Indian History ed. Prithwiraj Biswas, Santanu Dey et al. (ISBN: 978-81-966201-6-5) Department of History, Ramakrishna Mission Vidyamandira, Belur Math, Howrah , 2023
Verily he who has turned the bent (low) land into a reservoir to arrest the flow of the running water is the one who established a name in this world" (Puṟanāṉūṟu, 18). 1 This verse to Pandyan chief certainly instantiated that despite the dominant preferences to the material use value of the natural resources like water, on the question of control, their significance in the larger cultural economy have fashioned their modes of appropriation as well. 2 The identity of water as a substance and/or resource thus constantly remained relational, shaped by multimodal interactions with humans. The material and symbolic ontologies of water with its varied meanings and affordances remained enmeshed and interactive in the larger multifarious fluid assemblages of knowledge, practice, landscape and infrastructures. Whereas bonding of power and water has remained a conventional wisdom, it would be worth emphasizing the complex networks of mutual dependencies between communities and waters as the consequences of contingent historical processes that were simultaneously constituted by these entanglements as well.
International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences, 2019
Rivers are the back bone of human civilization. History says that various prominent civilizations like the Nile River valley, the Indus River valley, the Yellow River valley etc, formed around rivers. That is why every culture, civilization, folk and literature has a strong bonding to the rivers. In India, rivers are venerated as Goddesses. Indians worship River as a mother. Like a mother, each river has a pleasant (saumya) and an unpleasant (urga) forms. Considerably good amount of literature is available related to rivers explaining its beauty but only hand full of poets have seen the other side of the coin where it is devastating many lives. The objective of this paper is to focus on the two different versions of the river in literature.
Rivers as entanglements of nature and culture
The general proposition put forward in this introductory chapter is that rivers should be regarded as dynamic entanglements of nature and culture. If considered purely as natural systems, their cultural dimension gets excluded. If considered as cultural artefacts through and through, their wild aspect is neglected. It goes on to argue that those branches of archaeology which take ‘land’ as their subject (whether the ‘landscape’ or ‘wetland’ variety) should encompass dynamic liquid flows – including flows of solid material eroded, carried and deposited by water – within their remit.
River Cultures in World History—Rescuing a Neglected Resource
Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences, 2019
This paper argues that historians have all but ignored the study of rivers and their impact on the development of human society. Apart from a somewhat terse acknowledgment of the importance of rivers in the development of ancient civilizations, from the Huang He to the Ganges, the Nile, and the Amazon, historians have by and large limited themselves to studying individual rivers, while ignoring the potential of comparative analysis of rivers. I call for a broader engagement by historians of all aspects of rivers, including their role in transportation, fishing, agriculture, industry, recreation, and the environment, people’s cultural response to rivers, and the legal regimes that have grown up around them, with special reference to the role of rivers as political boundaries.
Routledge eBooks, 2017
Rivers and their watersheds constitute some of the most dynamic and complex landscapes. Rivers have sustained human communities, and human societies have utilized and altered river flows in a number of ways for millennia. However, the level of human impact on rivers, and on watershed environments, has become acute during the last hundred years or so. This book brings together empirical research and theoretical perspectives on the changing conditions of a range of river basin environments in the contemporary world, including the history and culture of local societies living in these river basins. It provides theoretical insights on the patterns and nature of the interaction between rivers and their use by human communities. The chapters are written from a variety of positions, including environmental science, hydrology, human ecology, urban studies, water management, historical geography, cultural anthropology and tourism studies. The case studies span different geographical regions, providing valuable insight on the multifaceted interactions between rivers and our societies, and on the changing riverscapes in different parts of the world. Specific detailed examples are included from Australia,
Environmental History in the Making, 2016
Looking at the changing nature of river economy this paper tries to examine the relation between economy and environmental history. Bihar province in mid-Ganga basin has the natural advantage of many rivers converging the Ganga. During the seventeenth and the eighteenth century the province went on to get linked with the maritime economy and trade, and the center of commercial activities shifted from Ganga-Yamuna doab to eastern part of the Ganga basin. Using Patna as the case study, the paper argues that region's orientation from west to east had grave implication on the river morphology. After 1765 when the British East India Company got the land revenue rights of the region it sought permanence in the administrative and revenue policies and to achieve this it encouraged construction of embankments and railways. It created obstruction to the natural fl ow of the fl ooding Ganga. 'Water system' has been the central theme over the recent years for the environmental historians interested in understanding the impact of natural phenomenon on a region, specially the river. 1 In many of these researches, river historians often see 1 Till very late the social scientists integrated nature, specially water, in analysis of historical and social development as a background only, because they believed that social science is a subject concerned with social facts, and a social fact could only be explained by another social fact. But now environmental historians have begun to deconstruct the non-social facts such as water to explain the society. See Terja Tvedt and Richard Coopey (eds.), A History of Water , Series II , Volume 2 , Rivers and Society : From Early Civilizations to Modern Times , (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2010), pp. 3-26. Donald Worster is also very critical of the creation of some sort of wall around history as he says 'Somewhere, it seems, a great lawgiver has inscribed on a tablet of stone that water cycles, deforestation, animal populations, soil nutrient gains and losses are reserved for Science, while History must confi ne itself to tariffs, diplomatic negotiation, unionmanagement confl ict, race and gender. Science is supposed to deal with Nature; the scientists even
Rivers have just lost a great voice of theirs: My times and trysts with India's Water Wisdom
It's an article in memory of, and as a tribute to, India's veteran water expert Prof. Ramaswamy R. Iyer who took his heavenly abode on September 9 this year (2015). The article narrates, in a memoir style, Iyer Sir's strong stands on Rivers as to how he always considered them as ecological entities and warned against any plans to treat them as pipelines in the name of development.
The Gangā (Ganges in anglicised form) river perceived as the liquid energy of Shiva and eulogised in mythologies as the river of immortality has always been symbolised as river of grace and Hindu integrity. According to the common saying the Gangā river is the identity of the cultural history of India’s civilisation since at least ca. BCE 2000, recording the history of Aryanisation. Metaphorically and metaphysically, the ancient mythologies refer to water as the container of life, strength, and eternity, but most commonly she is perceived as the purifier. Running water in general and the waters of the Gangā in particular are described as bestowing sanctity and miracles. The unique characteristics of the Gangā refer to its serene landscape in the Himalaya; its healing and medicinal qualities and source of livelihood for millions of people settled along its course. This personality of the Gangā attracted pilgrims since the ancient past and still continued in the religious festivities, especially at the sacred places along confluence points at its tributaries. Today the river faces threats of pollution and needs awakened values to maintain its holiness. Keywords: Gangāisation, intrinsic value, mythology, Hindu belief systems, festivities, sacred places.
The culture of India is so closely related to the Ganga through the mental constructs im¬agined in the past that she cannot be separated from the intimate and experienced feelings of the Hindus. Literary images, cultural symbols and intimate sensing are so closely related to one an other that they together make the spirit of a place which preserves the emotions of the people who make it, their experiences and finally their expositions through the imaginative literature. Following Peter Kroptkin (1885), Relph has rightly expressed that ‘geography is a means to create other feelings more worthy of humanity. In fact, “more specifically, this imaginative attitude requires attempting to see the world as though through the eyes and fives of others” (1990: 9). The description of the Ganga as presented in the different literary and puranic sources furnish intimate glimpses of some experiences and emotions, which vary in space and time. It can be stated that the Ganga symbolises the continuity of Indian tradition and its attachment to the people in dualistic manner ― existence and downfall, the purity and pollution, physical and human adjustment, and so on .... One can only understand it through faith, experienced feelings and emotions, altogether that make the faithscape.
Review of River Life and the Upspring of Nature, by Naveeda Khan.
WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly, 2024
Bangladesh is a nation of land and water. Home to one of the largest river deltas on the planet, the country must contend with an ever-shifting landscape beneath its many and all-too-human problems such as poverty and overpopulation, economic precarity, and political violence. Within this difficult environmental and social situation, there lives a group of ethnic Bangladeshi known as the chauras, who make their home on the chars, or giant sandbars that appear and disappear within the country's major river systems. The chauras see themselves as living in "the remote," as they call it, not because of their literal distance from urban centers, for their fragile living quarters do form within close proximity to towns and cities, but because their lives lack the basics of governmental support in the form of electricity, schools, and other infrastructure. As unbearable beings in the double sense described in this WSQ special issue, they are seen from the outside as unbearable problems or nuisances while also existing in conditions most people would consider unbearable. In River Life and the Upspring of Nature, anthropologist Naveeda Khan presents a fascinating ethnography of these people as they bear the seemingly unbearable, and in doing so, Khan demonstrates how the environmental humanities might contend with this deep question of unbearability. The Jamuna River northwest of the capital city of Dhaka, where Khan conducted her fieldwork between 2011 and 2017, is less of a river than a river system, an expansive waterway consisting of many twists and turns and braids, creating and destroying land through accretion and erosion, and making land appear or disappear depending on water levels. Quasi-nomadic in nature, the chauras live in this liminal state between ground and groundlessness, building and unbuilding and rebuilding their villages in WSQ_Unbearable_Beings_interior_v2.indd 263 WSQ_Unbearable_Beings_interior_v2.
River Sociology By RC Baral , Sayapatri Journal vol 3,pp 78-87,DEC 2022 (1)
sayapatri Jounnal, 2022
River sociology, a new area of public sociology. kali Gandaki river, the holy river is known as the link among five different civilizations like Bon, Bouddha, Sanatan, Jain, and Jal sanskriti( water Culture).
Rivers : our heritage our future
2003
The growth, development, evolution and su tenance of our civilization arc dependent on river. The river basin system pro idc the ba ic resources for economic growth and development. This includes land for agriculture and urbanization, water for residential and commercial use. water for irrigation and generation of hydropower energy, .co-tourism activities in upstream basins, and the mining of ri er alluvium such as riv •r sand for the construction industry. However, limited understanding and the disruptions of ri .r busin processresponse systems arc also usso .iutcd v ith th• cmer cue, of 11 ., proc •sst•s and int 'nsifying existing pn • .sses thut posed serious chullcuu •s to 1101 only the continued sustenance of th• 'C momi • acti itics hut an: h th nnscl cs environmental hazards that threatens the ' cllurc and .om fort of the basin dwell er, Mismanag nn •nt of ri er r .sou: •cs have led to in •1 •asin' fr .qu-uci •s and magnitudes (intensities) of environment 11 hazards su .h ns Iloods, rapid slope failures, river bank erosion and slumping, ace ilcratcd soil .rosiou. and problems associated with. cdimcnturion. It an also be argued that even urban pollution is also as, ociated v ith mismanagement of the ri er basins st •111. This lecture is :111 attempt to dcscrib the importan e and contribution nf]711l'iril g1•cn11m1ihologirnl studies in understanding ri er basin pro .css-r .spons • s 1st •111s and its contribution to a su tained development of riv 'r basin 1 isourccs. The discussion of thi lecture would be based on th• r .search, pres ntntions. consultancy work and publication, that 1 ha e carried out sin 'C th• la 't 15 years.
Quaternary Science Reviews, 2015
The hydromorphic regimes that underpinned Old World river-based civilizations are reviewed in light of recent research. Notable Holocene climatic changes varied from region to region, whilst the dynamics of floodplain environments were equally diverse, with river channel changes significantly affecting human settlement. There were longer-term trends in Holocene hydroclimate and multi-centennial length 'floodrich' and 'flood-poor' episodes. These impacted on five identified flooding and settlement scenarios: (i) alluvial fans and aprons; (ii) laterally mobile rivers; (iii) rivers with well-developed levees and flood basins; (iv) river systems characterised by avulsions and floodouts; and (v) large river-fed wetlands. This gave a range of changes that were either more or less regular or incremental from year-to-year (and thus potentially manageable) or catastrophic. The latter might be sudden during a flood event or a few seasons (acute), or over longer periods extending over many decades or even centuries (chronic). The geomorphic and environmental impacts of these events on riparian societies were very often irreversible. Contrasts are made between allogenic and autogenic mechanism for imposing environmental stress on riverine communities and a distinction is made between channel avulsion and contraction responses. Floods, droughts and river channel changes can precondition as well as trigger environmental crises and societal collapse. The Nile system currently offers the best set of independently dated Holocene fluvial and archaeological records, and the contrasted effects of changing hydromorphological regimes on floodwater farming are examined. The persistence of civilizations depended essentially on the societies that maintained them, but they were also understandably resilient in some environments (Pharaonic Egypt in the Egyptian Nile), appear to have had more limited windows of opportunity in others (the Kerma Kingdom in the Nubian Nile), or required settlement mobility or exceptional engineering response (Huang He, Mesopotamia) to accommodate problems such as river avulsion, desiccation or local salinization.
Political Ecology of a sacred river: Hydrosocial cycle and govemance of the Ganges, India
2019
How do river representations and meanings shape the governance of a river? How does the materiality of a river interfere with socio-political processes? How to account for river-society multiple-layer relations? This doctoral work aims to address these questions in the context of the Ganges River in India. It investigates the meanings of the river at multiple spatial and temporal time scales. It explores some recent ecological and political redefinitions of the Ganges River performed by Indian environmental policies. The analysis mobilizes a political ecology approach with support from case studies within the Ganges’ delta and at the source of the river, in the Himalayas. This qualitative research particularly draws from the political ecology of water literature on the ‘hydrosocial cycle’, which refers to the internal and dialectical relation between water and society. The thesis argues for an advancement of the hydrosocial cycle framework for use in river studies. The core of the t...