Tropical cyclones and coastal communities: the dialectics of social and environmental change in the Sundarban delta

ABSTRACT

Disasters caused by cyclones are a cyclical event in the Bay of Bengal delta seaboard. Periodically, cyclone disasters result in damaged houses and the loss of crops and livelihoods. They affect every type of social and economic infrastructure in the delta, which is inhabited by ostracized backward caste groups – seafarers, forest goers and landless peasants. The 1970 Bhola cyclone, for example, was the most catastrophic, generating a 9.1-meter storm surge at the mouth of the Ganges where it meets the Bay killing approximately 300,000 people. Often, these disasters are declared as ‘natural’ and ‘acts of God.’ This paper tests this epistemic viewpoint. I argue that cyclone-related disasters, like other calamities, cannot be merely viewed as ‘natural’ phenomena. Instead their embeddedness in the social and political relations shaping human habitation on the coastal seaboard endangers human settlement and has made the inhabitants vulnerable since the colonial land reclamation program began in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century in Bengal. Through examination of competing discourses around ‘natural disasters’, I demonstrate how cyclones are portrayed as natural (rather than human-induced). The naturalization of disaster benefits powerful actors like politicians, civil engineers and contactors, among others. In analyzing the disaster narrative, I go beyond the textual and rhetorical components to include the socio-political and historical bases of the production of ideas of disaster in the Bengal delta. By focusing on the political and social causes of disaster, this paper does not in any way question the ontological reality of cyclones ‘as dangerous and potentially very destructive natural hazards’; instead, it tries to demonstrate how disaster is naturalized in the different strands of state and epistemic discourse.

KEYWORDS:

• Cyclone
• disaster
• delta
• Sundarbans

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their critical comments and constructive feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Debojyoti Das is an anthropologist from South Asia. His work focuses on the Bay of Bengal and Eastern India, looking at the lives of marginalised seafaring communities. He has contributed papers to several peer-reviewed journals and has and his upcoming book is under contract for publication entitled land's end. He is at present a visiting postdoctoral fellow at the MacMillan Centre for Area Studies, Yale University.

Notes

1. In the initial period, leases were granted by the Collector General, Claud Russell, to individuals during 1770–1773 on certain conditions. The lands were to be held free of rent for several years generally, after which they were to be subject to a yearly progressive assessment up to the full rate of 12, 8 or 6 annas per bigha according to their quality, which was to be determined by a survey conducted on the expiration of the fee period. Fresh measurement would take place once in every 10 years and necessary adjustments in the rent would be made. The land that came under this system of grants was known as patitabadi taluks – meaning the cultivation of wastelands.

2. Henckell’s administrative tenure in the region (1783–1789) had to accommodate various factors at work-Magh piratical incursions, hostility of the neighboring zamindars, activities of the salt manufacturers and the operation of the weavers. Also the boundary dispute between the neighboring zamindars and the grantees in this region was not easy to solve. The boundary line was in a state of flux as it was subjected to periodic redefinition under the supervision of the various Collector Generals in this area. Hanckell thus failed in the benevolent paternalism adopted in his land reclamation program in Hankelgunj or Hingelgunj.

3. According to the Census Report of Bengal, 1921, 1931, edited by Thompson and Porter, Pods comprised 84% of the population in 24 Parganas, Khulna and Jessore while the Namashudras composed of more than 50% of the population in Bakarganj, Faridpur, Khulna and Jessore.

4. Henry Piddington, President of the Marine Courts of Enquiry at Calcutta, developed ‘The Law of Storm.’ Between 1830 and 1858, Paddington published in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in the form of 20 articles under the title ‘Law of Storm.’ The law made its impact on navigation and safety for commercial freights in the Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal after his death when it was further developed by the imperial metrological department staff and geologist working in the colony (see Eliot, 1900; Ross, 1869).

5. The issue has been discussed in many colonial accounts including Tirthankar Roy, in his book titled Natural disasters and Indian history (2012). Also look at the unpublished PhD thesis on the littoral region of Bengal by Ben Kingsbury submitter at the University of Wellington, New Zealand (2015), titled An imperial disaster: The Bengal cyclone of 1876.

6. J.C. Jack presents a typical descent from estate holders down to 160 petty tenure holders who in turn collected rents from 360 cultivating peasants. (1) A zamindar with an estate of 2000 acres and paying revenue of Rs 200, (2) Four talukdars each with a subordinate taluk of 500 acres and paying a rent of Rs 100 to the zamindar, (3) Twenty osat talukdars each with a revenue of 25 acres and paying a rent of Rs 25 to one of the 20 takukdars, and (4) 160 nim hoaldars each with a tenure of 12.5 acres and paying a rent of Rs 20 to one of the 80 hoaldars and he has sublet in turn to two cultivators in an ordinary raiyati lease stipulating a payment of Rs 55 rent apiece (see Jack, 1915, p. 52).

Additional information

Funding

This research has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013)/ERC Grant Agreement [284053], for the project ‘Coastal frontiers: Water, power, and the boundaries of South Asia,’ with Dr Sunil Amrith as PI.