Water in British India: The Making of a ‘Colonial Hydrology’

The environmental history of India has moved on and considerably broadened since the first studies of Indian forestry w ere pub lished. This essay sur veys studies on water in British India, which it has clustered into three themes. While providing a rough description of some of the most important debates and discussions on the issue of colonial rule and its hydraulic interventions, the essay argues that interest on the subject must now attempt to pursue grand questions as well. Towards to this end, it is argued that much insight and theoretical traction may be gained from pursuing the conceptual notion of a ‘colonial hydrology’: the attempt to characterise the British experience as comprising an altogether distinct paradigm for hydraulic interventions. Water in Br itish India can be discussed in thr ee o verlapping but discr ete clusters of concerns. The first and most substantially engaged debates have situated colonial irrigation strategies in terms of their environmental, political and economic contexts. The second cluster, closely shadowing the first, has explored aspects of ‘decline’, elimination and sometimes appropriation of a slew of ‘traditional’ water harvesting technologies. The third cluster of concerns, that is yet to achieve visibility, has aimed at identifying definitive patterns in colonial strategies towards hydraulic endowments. Put differently, the attempt is to characterise the British experience as compr ising an altogether distinct paradigm for hydraulic interventions in South Asia; explanations that can perhaps be encapsulated under the broad rubric of ‘colonial hydrology’. Part of this as y et incipient exercise involves, in my opinion, a depar ture fr om the emphasis on ir rigation. In turn, this third cluster will explore colonial experiences with floods, drainage, wetlands, lakes, in-land river navigation, traditional fisheries, urban water supply, water legislation, cultures of water use, ideologies on ‘river-improvement’ and Multi-purpose River Valley de velopment. In several ways, these themes listed above (indicati ve and not exhaustive), could then, presumably, help fill in many existing empirical gaps and thereby craft a rigorous theoretical approach to explore the relationship between colonialism and water. By a theoretical approach, I suggest that the subject of w ater in Br itish India should, similar to works on forests or land policies, be able to shed light on