Commodified Land, Dangerous Water: Colonial Perceptions of Riverine Bengal

 
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Bengal’s essential character as a fluid landscape was changed during the colonial times through legal interventions that were aimed at creating permanent boundaries between land and water, with land given priority. Such a separation of land and water was made possible not just by physical constructions but first and foremost by engineering a legal framework that gradually entered the popular vocabulary.

DOI: doi.org/10.5282/rcc/6333