In the fourth episode of Lekh, I speak to Sunil Amrith, Renu and Anand Dhawan Professor of History at Yale University, on his recent book Unruly Waters: How Rains, Rivers, Coasts and Seas have shaped Asia’s history published in 2018 by Basic Books. Amrith's book reimagines Asia's and India's history through its unruly waters - rains, rivers, coasts and seas and how individuals - leaders, bureaucrats, administrators, scientists, engineers and farmers attempted to control water. This history seen through India's experiences shows how conceptions, dreams, ideas and fears of water influenced and shaped strategies to control and manage it and larger discourses related to political independence, economic self-sufficiency and development. This history is particularly relevant today as large populous Asian powers like China and India construct hundreds of dams in the Himalayas with potentially profound domestic and international effects. The conversation begins by placing the book into Amrith's oeuvre, understanding what perspectives of water add to India's historiography before moving on to unpacking how the book shows why water is fundamentally politics. The conversation continues by probing the effects of the pandemic on archival research and how scholars can think through challenges posed by the inability to travel across borders to research and write regional and global histories. In an era of climate change and water conflicts, the conversation concludes by asking whether the politics of environment in India can be nationalised to limit the detrimental effects of water projects underway.
