River Ethnographies

River Ethnographies

Image above: ‘Chandra taal’ (Moon lake) is a lake at an altitude of about 4300 mts/14,000 ft 
in the Lahul and Spiti district of Himachal Pradesh, India. It’s the origin of Chandra (moon) river, 
a source river for Chenab. It is identified as a ‘high-altitude wetland’  of international importance 
under the Ramsar Convention and is an important religious site for Buddhists and Hindus. 
Photo credit: Abhay Kanvinde.

Project Overview

In the international and national debates and scholarship on river treaties and conflicts, we often don’t hear much about the riverine ecologies and societies whose lives, livelihoods, and ways of being are intricately entwined with the rivers. Sharing and caring practices are centuries old in water cultures that has produced rivers as “socionatural entities” – an arena of contested co-production shaped by human and non-human interactions. River ethnographies offer novel ways of inquiring into the different ways that rivers are imagined, defined, built, produced, and lived as social, political, economic and cultural-symbolic systems. They foreground the everyday lived realities, indigenous knowledges, storytelling, songs, syncretic practices and much more of the riverine societies.

Map of Indus River Basin
Indus river basin. The map shows the river basin and its importance for basin states. Image credit: Qaraman Hasan, Sarkawt Ghazi Salar, Durgeshree Raman, Sam Campbell. Creative Commons License CC BY 4.0.

We present here essays, story maps, photos stories from our travels along the rivers - Chenab, Jhelum, Beas and Indus in India, based on people’s narratives, their everyday lives and relations with the rivers, their gods and spirits, and their concerns about rapid infrastructure development, changes in agriculture, fisheries, river pollution, floods and landslides, and melting glaciers. 

This project is part of Indus Basin Water Project, supported by Mershon Center Catalyst Grant and led by Ohio State Professors Bryan Mark (Geography), Fazlul Haq (Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center), Nicholas Breyfogle (History), Madhumita Dutta (Geography) and Alex Thompson (Political Science). River stories in India were collected by Parineeta Dandekar (South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People), Babur Hussain (independent researcher), Shrishtee Bajpai (Kalpavriksh Environmental Action Group), Tsewang Namgail (Snow Leopard Conservancy India Trust) and Abhay Kanvinde (independent photo-journalist).