THE SECOND NATURE:

When Cicero, the Stoic philosopher of Classical Rome wrote, '[W]e enjoy the fruits of the plains and the mountains, the rivers and the lakes are ours, we sow corn, we plant trees, we fertilize the soil by irrigation, we confine the rivers and straighten their courses…,'4 he was only adding another voice to the long tradition of celebrating the transformative potentials of Nature through the application of the human mind and the human hand. This Second Nature, the product of human creativity and ingenuity which thereby gives birth to Art (techne/) and Culture, has long been understood as the outcome of struggles against Nature. The ability to create this Second Nature is also perceived as the defining character of a human life, as distinct from that of an animal life. Yet, the moment of overcoming Nature is also the moment of creating Nature, in that even the thinking, or the cognition of Nature has been made possible by an alienation of man from its 'primitive' environment, from a life in the 'wilderness'. Thus, '[T]he state of nature was the state of mankind prior to social organization and prior to the state of grace. Nature spirits, nature deities, virgin nymphs, and elementals were thought to reside in or be associated with natural objects. (5)

Outside the time and space of the 'modern', however, the underlying metaphor that has bound the cosmos, society and the self had been of an organism, where man and his artifice was perceived as parts of the immensely intricate whole that connected the highest conceivable form of being: the Supreme Being, to the 'lowliest' of the creatures, with man in the middle of this 'great chain of being'.

This organic image characterised Nature as a living entity, 'sensitive, alive, and responsive to human action." This 'living character of the world organism' not only implied 'that the stars and planets were alive, but that the earth too was pervaded by a force, giving life and motion to the living beings on it.'6 This organic conception of the cosmos, of which man imagined himself to be a significant yet subservient part, gave way to a mechanistic one in a steadily industrializing West. The image of Nature as disorder and imperfection, and replete with malevolent forces was more strongly presented than ever, calling forth an important modern idea of power over Nature. 'Two new ideas, those of mechanism and of the domination and mastery of nature, became core concepts of the modern world…. As Western culture became increasingly mechanised in the 1600s, the female earth and virgin earth spirit were subdued by the machine.'7 Though the organic view of Nature did not disappear altogether, and was much celebrated in the Romantic literature, the machine was to become the dominant symbol of the age. 'The development of modern sciences, beginning with physics, led to [this] change in metaphors, but more profoundly to a change in explanation; from the belief in the Earth as an organism created by the Great Artist to the belief in the Earth as a magnificent machine invented by the Great Engineer .(8)

DISCOVERING THE PAST & MAKING OF NARRATIVES:

The need for highlighting the idea of 'past' in a tradition seems to be a post-colonial articulation. Since it was coined as a counterpoise to modernity it has ideationally accepted the 'arrival' of a phenomenon called modernity. Tradition is always seen from the prism of the present even if conceived as a process. Our past does not remain independent in isolation in pure form. If one argues for events in purity without a value or meaning, it will fall well in the Kantian category of noumena11 of which we do not know. All that we know or claim to know is about what we perceive. And what we perceive is through a prism already construed and formalised. Tradition is perceived through a prism, and is not divorced from the present and a desired future. And that prism could be the 'prism of modernity'.

Many of the protests that are taking place in Manipur in the name of preserving traditional values and heritage, such as 'script movement' and 'traditional dress code for girl students', have nothing traditional about them. The image of a tradition that these movements project has already incorporated the modern political ideas such as 'right to culture', 'civil disobedience and courting arrest', 'language and script as vehicle for inculcating nationalism', etc. Even the idea of a denial of Westernisation or Indianization has already incorporated the image of that which they wish to deny. Though images of a past heritage are projected, these images are not only very modern but the mode of agitation is equally so. For instance, take the writings of Atom Bapu Sharma, Wahengbam Yumjao Singh, Asangbam Miniketan Singh and many others who engaged in the process of discovering a past that was close to Vedic lineage. Migration of Kiratas was thrown up to make the Meiteis closer to Vedic Bharata. The other group, Meitei Marup, completely rejected such a narration of the Hinduised Meiteis seeing it as concocted myth. Kangjiya Gopal's book Adungeigi Manipur Kangleipak Natte (The Distant Manipur is not Kangleipak) rejected the myth of locating the present Manipur (then Kangleipak) in the Mahabharata. While the two hold opposing positions, both look for traces of the past through the discourse of modernism. Linearity in modern historiography guides their perceptions that both fall back on constructing a long past heritage, of 2000 years old history. More than the validity or invalidity of the narration what is important is the mode of narration -of construing a tradition from the modernist perspective.

Anxiety of having a genuine tradition or a modernity of the indigenous kind is based on two criticisms: one, of encompassing and homogenising tendency of modern science, and two, of anxiety of being a part of the colonized self. Both are facticity faced by the self of the receiving communities. But the world has witnessed tremendous change in the last few decades. Enlightenment programme has undergone drastic changes. Positivism, for instance, is no more fashionable. But problem with the receiving communities, to my mind, seems to be arising from encountering and fairing the complex 'bundles of contradictions', which colonialism brought. The dilemma and the anguish are not confined to the academia alone but also visibly witnessed in the day-to-day life world of the receiving communities. Complexity and paradoxes do not stop the ongoing journey of life. We continue to live with these bundles of contradictions.

Discovery of tradition among these communities is more about manifestation of anxiety of a scattered self. The failure at the material domain led to resurgence at the spiritual.12 Defeat from the colonial rule gave birth to this new programme. The resurgence specifically tends to look towards a past. The nationalist movement in Bengal, for instance, in order to reject the colonial rule started looking at superior image of the natives in their pre-colonial time. Siraj-ud-daula, for instance, became the hero and Mir Zafar a villain in Bengali theatre and plays. Apart from the recovery, the attempt was also a search for an alternate space. What came quite natural was search for a political space in the cultural/spiritual domain. This was projected to counter the British onslaught that had already overtaken the receiving communities in the material domain.13 Discovery of Ramakrishna in the Bengali middle class14 enabling assertion of middle class hegemony in Bengal was a case in point. This trend got reflected in Manipur through educated Manipuri middle class, who, from their education in Bengal, brought the spirit of nationalism. Introduction of print technology, inception of Nikhil Manipuri Maha Sabha, etc. were manifestations of the trend.

Similar cases had been witnessed in Manipur during the post 1891 colonial rule. Manipuris, unable to reconcile with the defeat in the Anglo-Manipuri War (1891), looked for areas where the natives' supremacy could be recovered. Loss in the war meant loss of control over military, political administration, economy, and trade. The defeat in the political and economic sphere led the traditional Manipuri elites to look into the private domain. British were projected as impure and the 'dirty other'. There had been cases where houses entered by the British officials were destroyed and new houses built.15 These were collectively sanctioned and performed. It was a fight, more a protest, to a dominating power. It was not a direct fight as the domain of operation for the two were different. It was a judicious and selective move by the traditional elites not to directly confront the British yet register their protest differently.

Responses to modernity showed a complex phenomenon than a homogenous archetype. Differences in the responses of these communities were shaped not only by the varying administrative policies of the colonial rule but also by the dynamics of power struggle among the receiving groups. In fact, complexity is shown by the varied and multi layered character of these responses. Manipur, for instance, showed an interesting trend of elite formation. First was the traditional Brahmins and royal clan who still carried the legacy of a pre-colonial state authority. These were the priestly and feudal classes who were not very cordial, if not hostile, to the British. Slowly, this class was co-opted by the new state, took to English and Bengali education, leading to the formation of new elites. Some members of this class with the addition of a few other sections of the society formed a new group-the middle class. This second group was mostly educated at places like Sylhet, Dacca and (then) Calcutta. These emerging new elites were progressive, but used traditional idioms to register and propagate their political aims. They were the brands of middle class 'intelligentsia' as witnessed elsewhere in India. A case of Hijam Irabot could throw light into the trend and exceptions.16 The third group emerged out of an existential crisis of being left out, took contrary positions to the ones held by other elite groups. This traditionalist Meitei Marup (Pre-Hindu Sanamahi sect) took to indigenous pre-Vaisnava values and life style. Impressions of the trend still find traces in many of the organisations of the present.

Contemporary Manipur experiences two most popular narratives: 'merger of Manipur in the Indian union' and 'unique history of the Nagas'. In the former, annexation of Manipur by the newly independent India on the 15th October 1949 is highlighted as the black day in the history of the state. To strengthen the narrative, pre-merger state of Manipur during 14th August 1947 to 15th October 1949 is often projected in the minds of the people as 'atemporal space' of free and independent Manipur. The real duration of the period was not considered important. State of freedom as an atemporal concept was shown in continuity by bracketing the consciousness of temporality. This was made possible because the immediate preceding event was the Anglo-Manipuri War of 1891 where Manipuris fought a loosing battle with pride and glory. Projection of Manipur as an independent kingdom before the British invasion, and an independent state after the British left, has been successfully made as continuity in the minds of the people. But the protagonists of the narrative fail to see the importance of colonial regime as a basis of nationalist historiography. They fail to see that Manipur not only lost many parts of its territory in the treaty of 1834, but also gained several parts. During the span of a century, the territory of Manipur fluctuated to a considerable degree. When territories are lost inhabitants too are lost, and when territories are gained new populations are added. The experience of Manipur falls within this trend. Perhaps, the India-Pakistan experience of partition was among the exceptional few. Further, the protagonists fail to see that nationalism is built not merely by projecting geographical space and past heritage of a few, but by accommodating the world views of all. In a similar tone of 'Merger' narrative, Nagas (particularly of Manipur) come out with an equally exclusive narrative. The projection is of a unique history: of village republic, an unconquered Naga territory even during the height of British imperialism. This narration though initiated by NNC, has been given a new direction in recent times by the protagonists of the Naga cause. The direction of freedom has changed, so much so has the concept. Just as the notion of 'sovereignty' is talked in terms of a 'special federal relation' with India, freedom from 'Indian imperialism' has shifted to freedom from 'Meitei imperialism'! There is nothing new about such a concept. 'Right to Self-determination' has varied layers of interpretation. The present case is about discarding one concept and appropriating another.

The crisis is of contradicting narratives that seem to have become a trend than exception. This can be witnessed not only between the Meiteis and the Nagas of Manipur, but also between the Bodos and chaste Assamese in Assam. Similar is the case found in Meghalaya where the Bengalis and the Assamese struggle to get a place in the historical narrative of the state, which tends to selectively erase certain past memories involving their origin in the state. While the Assamese, Bengalis and Manipuris (particularly Meiteis) are being charged of denying possible spaces to other communities in the region in their long drawn historical narratives, the new trend by the protesting communities to carve a space for themselves through a new historical narrative rather denies than supplements the existing narratives. At the end, it turns out to be a contest for the control of space among different communities.

THE NATION-STATE, SOCIAL CONTRACT, & THE EPOCH OF 'MAN':

The formal manifesto of the Revolution, The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizens, promulgated in 1789, announced its hostility towards the hierarchical society embedding noble and 'divine' privileges, and laid the foundation for a constitutional, secular state that would 'guarantee' civil liberties, private property, competitive enterprise, and a government by tax-payers and property-owners. In return it claimed for itself the paramount right over man and matter, the subjects and the objects existing within the confines of its frontiers. This entailed a 'contract among the citizens of the new political organism, the nation-state, where every 'individual'-'free' and equal before the law-would willingly and voluntarily participate in the formation and functioning of this new political society. Within this newly constituted political society, capitalism found the expression of its fundamental ideals, and the condition of its further development. The legal provisions and the institutions of this new state-form ensured the furtherance of the liberal-bourgeois aspirations.

In man was now invented the 'individual', which signified the coming of a new epoch by the beginning of the nineteenth century. He is 'only a recent invention, a figure not yet two centuries old, a new wrinkle in our knowledge,'9 and born at the threshold of modernity, also of the Nation-state and industrial capital. This modern man would emerge as the engineer of Nature; ironically though, he would also bear a 'nature' that had been 'engineered' to the needs of this new epoch through the formation of a new subjecthood.10 This emergence of the subjectivated individual, and his subjugation to regimes of property, alienated labour, institutionalized family, regulated 'freedom', and a mechanistic and objectified worldview could later be read as an 'infringement of the impersonal norm of the group and the species, of an imprescriptible rule....' (11)

SCIENTIFIC TRUTHS & THE KNOWLEDGE OF NATURE:

The rapid industrial expansion of eighteenth and nineteenth centuries made enormous demands on science and technology. Newly established nation-states like France set the pace for the founding of scientific and technical institutions, to be followed by countries like Britain, Germany and the U.S.A.12 Swelling ranks of scientists and scholars found their patrons in the state or in the industry. 'The question of science' in such changed circumstances had become 'very frequently career questions,' Goethe observed. 'A single discovery may make a man famous and lay the foundation of his fortunes as a citizen…. Every newly observed phenomenon is a discovery, every discovery is property. Touch a man's property and his passions are immediately aroused.'13 For Science, Nature was but a machine with underlying laws and principles to be unravelled.

In this process, Science and 'Scientific temper' achieved a social milieu where a new subject-object relation was made possible. It replaced the organic image of the universe and of Nature where the 'subjects' and 'objects' were made visible and meaningful by a different light. 'To consider the world of Nature as "object" is already to have stood back from primary and pre-cognitive familiarity and imbrication with it; it is already to have adopted a theoretical mode of "knowing", which necessarily overlooks or distorts the more primordial level at which Nature is already simply "there" for us and we ourselves "thrown" into its midst.'14 And what made possible this transition from a pre-cognitive existence to a reflective distancing of the elements of Nature, now perceived, and acted upon as inanimate 'objects', is 'a theoretical and technological mode of thinking' which has permanently dislocated itself 'from a more unthinking pre-understanding of the world,' marking a significant break with a past 'archaeology'. (15)

Science as a practice of knowledge (a new positivity) production mapped out, tabulated, and systematized the objects, ordered them according to their relations of resemblance, proximity, difference, etc., and grids of specification. 'Concepts' such as 'genus', 'class', 'tribe', etc. were formed which compared, classified and framed every single object within them. Though unlike the inanimate matter, life-forms were difficult to be imagined and explained as mechanical systems, physiology, botany, or zoology sought to understand them and make them known. Scientist now would refer to a 'game of truth,' according to which the truth-claims of his statement would be 'scientifically' verified. These truths, once established, get circulated as the 'fact' or the 'reality', as opposed to 'beliefs' or to the 'fabulous'.16 The body of 'results' of scientific inquiries thus constituted a new regime of truths, which became dominant and institutionalised through the nation-state by the nineteenth century.

The idea of mechanical Nature brought with it the sanction for its mechanics and engineers. And domination of Nature through an 'instrumental reason' was hailed as the call of the modern epoch. 'In this age ruled by instrumentalism, nature ceases to have any value in itself…. A tree, a mountain, a river, and its edges are meaningless except where they can be turned to some human use by a farmer, a scientist, or a manufacturer.'17 This agenda for the total domination of nature, however, inevitably entailed a domination of people by the techniques of domination.

THE STATE, SCIENCE & THE 'STATE-SCIENCES':

The secular nation-state adopted science as its official ideology. If the degree of scientific achievements reflected the nation's place of pride in the scale of progress and civilization, then technological accomplishments presented the visible proofs of such progress.18 Moreover, technology could augment the riches of the nation-state by harnessing Natural 'resources,'. Ecole Polytechnique in France, for example, established itself as the leading national institute for technical education and scientific expertise soon after its founding in Paris in 1794. For its 'gentleman' engineers, the scientific study of rivers was driven by two basic assumptions: '[F]irst was the scientific belief that rivers, properly understood, would reveal the natural laws that governed all life on Earth. Second, in a more immediate way, the control of water was a political experiment that proved the state could prosper through [their] strict regulation.'19 Engineers, earlier trained and employed mostly by the army for the construction of war-machines during the ancien regime, now were provided by the nation-state with a wider role of implementing 'public works.' In North America, much like in France, national institutions such as the U.S. Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, and the Tennessee Valley Authority got the mandate and resources from the Congress and the federal funds to overhaul the natural hydraulic regime of its streams and rivers by building huge concrete structures that made possible their regulation and control at specific locations. Science and technology thus came together to subdue Nature for the 'benefit' of the industrial man.

THE 'PROBLEM' RIVER, TECHNO-POLITICS & THE NATION-STATE:

British colonialism initiated a fervent practice of building dams and dykes outside Europe and North America during the crossroads of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It expected that a regulated regime of year-round supply of water would enable a steady growth of high-value crops such as cotton and sugarcane, etc. to be sold profitably in the international market. The Aswan dams over the Nile in Egypt, and the 'Canal Colonies' of Punjab in India are two glaring monuments of commercial enterprise of late colonialism. In Egypt and India, as also in the American West, the state encouraged consolidated large farms over fragmented small-peasant holdings, and land regulations and policies of taxation were geared to facilitate the formation and successful functioning of such large-scale commercial estates. This 'great transformation' involved not only the forced resettlement of the Egyptian fellah [small peasant] or the American 'Indian' from his land, but also a fundamental transfer of power of decision-making from marginal communities, in favour of the nation-state and big agricultural/industrial farm interests.20 These modern structures demonstrated that they could also act as means of exercising centralised rule, i.e. the rule of a few over many. They therefore represent the modern sites of contestation: of different players with conflicting worldviews, interpretations, and life-ways. (21)

In such a context the presenting of the river as a 'problem',22 as is done in the case of the Brahmaputra, seeks to legitimise the interventions which are aimed to make it a 'planned' river; a river which can then be conveniently 'turned on or off' according to the 'needs of the nation'.23 But river basin planning, as Patrick McCully points out, 'has long been a euphemism for the establishment of powerful and largely autonomous agencies filled with dam and irrigation engineers who have strewn watersheds with dams and then hoped that the associated energy-industries and irrigation schemes would successfully follow in their wake.'24 Not surprisingly, the only 'benefits' that the technocratic state-scientists see plausible to be 'secured' are 'in the shape of hydropower, navigation and irrigation,' the motors of modern industry. This is thus reflective of not a mere 'will to power' over Nature by the nation-state, but also of the vision of a society which would be willing to exploit and control Nature in its 'progress' towards a heavily industrialised and mechanised future.

It is here that it seems that the logic of the nation-state and of capital merges to form a common agenda of 'modernisation' of the 'developing' nation; they share, and are part of the same plane. It is hardly surprising therefore that in his report, B.P. Bell, the Chief Engineer of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation recommended in 1965 that reconnaissance studies be carried out to determine not only the hydraulic but also the economic features of the 'Brahmaputra Basin'. Only a 'planned' and 'stabilised' river could be forced to yield to such demands, he argued, and that was what H.E. Weller of the U.S. Corps of Engineers too thought, should be done with the Brahmaputra. In 1966, Weller made a 'detailed study of the erosion problem on the Brahmaputra,' and suggested that 'the most desirable plan for controlling of Brahmaputra River is complete stabilisation.' To accomplish this he further suggested that 'sufficient' number of reservoirs should be constructed. 'The river could then be confined into a single channel trained in a series of easy bends, preferably along the main channel by all methods of channel stabilisation.'25 The implementation of a scheme of such magnitude, of course, required 'a vast outlay of money, tremendous amount of manpower, equipment and materials,' not to speak of advanced technical expertise, which the international dam industry and its funding agencies were only too eager to supply, but as it were in the name of 'the people' and for the cause of the 'development' of the nation. (26)

The case against such structures which impede the natural flow of rivers and streams have been comprehensively built up by recent research, so much so that 'one wonders how the building of a large dam can ever be regarded as rational from now on.'27 What was here intended to outline was a history of a fundamental transformation of the relation to Nature, the latter being made possible only through its objectification. It is not to argue that the modern epoch, and its concomitant ideologies of nationalism, scientificism and the machine metaphor etc. is simply a 'derivative discourse.' Colonial modernity is distinct and mediated; the result of different transmutations. But if anything that gives the concept of modernity a unity, it is this 'archaeology' which explains the shared 'reality' that is experienced by the modern men in spite of their location in different times and spaces. It is this plane of modernity, for instance, that connects two temporally disparate figures as James Rennell, 'the father of British geography' of the eighteenth century, and the engineer in the Brahmaputra Board of the twentieth century, both of whom pronounce that the Brahmaputra is one of the largest rivers of the world, an irrefutable 'truth'. Both of them produced a table of the 'biggest rivers of the world', in comparison to which this claim on behalf of the Brahmaputra could be verified and 'proved'.28 The 'truth' thus established become a part of the commonsensical, the obvious. But this truth is distinctly modern, an epoch when knowledge of all the rivers of the 'world' could be 'scientifically' mapped, tabulated, classified, and then acted upon. This is also the truth shared by the modern state, and its modern subjects. It is only in the modern epoch that the river is possible to be seen in this light; as an object and a commodity. It is only the plane of modernity that makes possible such domination of man over Nature, and it is only this plane that makes possible such domination of man over man, and of the Self.

1. Brahmaputra Board, Master Plan of Brahmaputra Basin, Part I: Main Stem, Ministry of Water Resources, Government of India, 1986.

2. Karl Marx, Introduction to A Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, tr. Joseph O'Malley, (Oxford: Oxford University Press), (first published in 1843) 1970.

3. Brahmaputra Board, Preface, op. cit. In a recent development, 'T]he last hurdle in implementation of the Subansiri (Lower) Hydro Power Project in Arunachal Pradesh has been cleared with the Supreme Court's go ahead. The 2000 MW power project is expected to be completed by March 2010….' See 'Subansiri Hydel Project gets Supreme Court Clearance', The Assam Tribune, June 1, 2005. The Subansiri is a major north bank tributary of the Brahmaputra, and is a part of the above 'Master Plan'.

4. Marcus Tullius Cicero, De natura decorum. Academica, tr. from Latin by H Rackham, (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press), 1948; cited in Clarence J. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century, (Berkley: University of California Press), 1967, pp. 116-49.

5. Carolyn Mechant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution, (New York: Harper Collins), 1989, p. xxiii. Foucault indicates that there have been processes of objectivation during the modern epoch. Objectivation itself is not new, but the novelty was in that the modern epoch produced a different order of objectivation. Michel Foucault, 'Foucault', in James D. Faubion (ed.), Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology, tr. Robert Hurley et al, (London: Allen Lane), 1998, pp. 459-63.

6. Mechant, op. cit., pp. 22-3.

7. Ibid., pp. 164-90.

8. Daniel Botkin, Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty-first Century, (New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press), 1990, pp. 100-10.

9. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of Human Sciences, tr. from French by Allen Sheri-dan-Smith, (Random House Inc.), 1970, p. xxiii.

10. As Deleuze notes, 'the subjectivation of the free man is transformed into subjection: on the one hand it involves being "subject to someone else by control and dependence" … through all the techniques of moral and human sciences that go to make a knowledge of the subject.' See Giles Deleuze, Foucault, tr. Sean Hand, (London: Athlone Press), 1988, p. 103; emphasis added.

11. Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories IV, 1995-2000, (London: Verso), 2003, p. 17.

12. Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789-1848, (London: Viking), pp. 276-96.

13. Goethe, Conversations with Eckermann, December 21, 1823; cited in E. Hobsbawm, op. cit., p. 277.

14. Soper, What is Nature? p. 48.

15. Foucault defines 'archaeology' not exactly as a 'discipline but a domain of research, which would be the following: in a society, different bodies of learning, philosophical ideas, everyday opinions, but also institutions, commercial practices and police activities, mores.… See Foucault, Aesthetics, p. 261-62.

16. Interestingly, Hume puts belief at the basis and origin of knowledge, whether scientific or non-scientific, 'factual' or 'fabulous'. See Giles Deleuze, 'Hume', in Pure Immanence: Essays on a Life, tr. Anne Boyman, (New York: Zone Books), 2001, pp. 35-52.

17. Donald Worster, Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the Modern West, (New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press), 1985, p. 59.

18. As Patrick McCully notes, 'Massive dams are much more than simply machines to generate electricity and store water. They are concrete, rock and earth expressions of the dominant ideology of the technological age: icons of economic development and scientific progress to match nuclear bombs and motor cars…. Hoover Dam [in the U.S.] was supposed to signify greatness, power and domination. It was planned that way.' See Patrick McCully (ed.), Silenced Rivers: The Ecology and Politics of Large Dams, (London & New Jersey: Zed Books), 1998, p. 3.

19. Todd Shallat, Structures in the Stream: Water, Science, and the Rise of the US Army Corps of Engineers, (Austin: Texas University Press), 1994, p. 23.

20. For an absorbing study of the politics of the Aswan Dams, refer to Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity, (Berkley: University of California Press), 2002.

21. As Anderson & Huber, in their study of the conflict over the Bastar forests in Madhya Pradesh, shows, 'The problems facing each of the groups had a variety of interpretations, as did the terms they used. For example, to the corporation, a "tree" was a resource to be mined for cash flow and replaced; to the forest department, it was capital to be reserved and protected from tribals…. To the tribal people, it was their "place", their home.' See Robert S. Anderson & Walter Huber, The Hour of the Fox: Tropical Forests, the World Bank, and the Indigenous People in Central India, (Seattle: University of Washington Press), 1988, p. 6

22. There have even been demands that the 'problem' of the Brahmaputra be recognized as a 'national problem'. Brahmaputra Board, op. cit., p. 5.

23. Ibid., p. 1.

24. McCully, op. cit., p. 19.

25. Brahmaputra Board, op. cit., pp. 54-5. These 'foreign experts' were part of a 'Study Group on the Erosion Problem of the Brahmaputra' set up in 1964 by the Govt. of India.

26. The dam industry in the West was going through a 'geographical reorientation' in the second half of the twentieth century as the demand for new dams in the U.S. and Europe was reducing, and was increasing in the 'newly liberated' countries of the 'third world'. A consultant associated with the World Bank wrote in 1987 that 'most scenarios of future developments in water resources agree that ultimately, say by the mid-21st century' all of the runoff waters in all of the world's rivers 'must be stored by reservoirs [dams] or other methods.' Cited in McCully, op.cit., p. 26.

27. Gautam Appa, in McCully (ed.), op.cit., p. 24. It has been argued, 'A growing number of academic and activist researchers, however, have been building up an impressive data showing the extensive damage which dams and their associated irrigation schemes cause to watersheds, cultures and national economies…. Dams assist the powerful and wealthy to enclose the common land, water and forests of the politically weak. By misleading people into thinking that they can control huge floods, dams encourage settlement on floodplains, turning damaging floods into devastating ones.'

28. James Rennell, Memoir of a Map of Hindoostan,or the Mughal Empire, with Geography and Present Division of that Country, (London: W. Bulmer & Co.), (first published in 1785) 1792, p. 337. It is worth noting here that while in the Master Plan the table of rivers has 'length', 'Basin Area', 'Discharge' and 'Average Annual Yield' as the criteria for comparing the 'bigness' of the rivers of the world, Rennell's table takes the River Thames as the primary unit of comparing the proportional length of the other rivers. Thus, while the length of the Thames is shown as 1, that of the Rhine is 5.5, the 'Wolga' 9.5, the Nile 12.5, the Mississippi 8, the Amazon 15.7, and the 'Burrampooter' 9.5, etc.