Suchergebnisse

The present article deals with the ecology and social aspects of famine of 1896–1897 in north Bengal. Ecological issues were no less important to convert the drought or scarcities into famines, even though the human agencies played a crucial role towards the intensification of the famines in colonial India. Famines had provided a major blow to the social ecology of dependency and survival, which were critically manifested through the transformation of existing social norms and cultural values, especially for the women. The responses of women towards the emerging social crises and to the government relief operations were mixed with hesitancy and desperateness, which was further influenced by changing norms of feminine 'modesty' and 'values'. Thus the gendering of famine is deeply rooted in the cultural response of women to the natural disasters, and north Bengal remained as a principal site of gendered response where the women attitude towards the 1896–1897 famine can be best understood.

This article seeks to investigate the mutual relationship between embankment and ecology and colonial policy in the changing dynamics of rivers and land in northern Bengal during the colonial period. Rainfall, floods and economy seem to be the most essential components in the history and politics of embankments in the area, a peripheral region intersected by numerous rivers originating in the Himalayas. The article sets colonial hydrology in North Bengal against the ecological vulnerabilities created by shifts in courses of rivers and by floods as well as embankments.

North Bengal is an area of heavy rainfall through which rivers flowing down from the Himalayas have been frequently overflowing and changing their beds in the soft alluvial soil. Floods have, therefore, been a recurring phenomenon, caused by snow-melting and heavy rainfall. The present article is an intensive study of the floods that ravaged north Bengal in a period of over 50 years (1871–1922) during which the ground surface changed with the building of embanked railway lines, other embankments and dams thereby blocking the natural drainage lines of the past. The article also chronicles how the local populations suffered from the constant recurrence and increasing virulence of floods. It thus aims to bring together the information we have on the environmental and the human history of the region for a period of about 50 years of colonial rule.