11th April 2017 marked the launch of the InterAsia photo exhibition in the Yale Anthropology Department. The event was attended by Yale scholars, students and faculty and is open to public till 30th May.
Sundarban etymologically means “beautiful forest” and has historically drawn attention of colonials, Portuguese sea pirates, Mog bandits of the Arakan highlands, and of late, environmentalist, conservationist, and nature lovers for its resplendent mangrove forest, wilderness and the threatened Royal Bengal Tiger. It is a ‘hybrid landscape’, where the waters of two mighty rivers, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra meet to form a bird-footed delta. In the pre-colonial Bengali vernacular literature, the delta seaboard has been referred to as the land of eighteen tides—atharo bhatir desh. In this water-based artisan economy, the riverine communities are socially connected through dispersed village settlements and weekly markets (locally known as haat bazaar). The rivers are not just channels of water; they carry a thriving trade, transporting people, goods, and ideas from one part of the delta to another. A lot has been written on the flora and fauna of the delta, but there is hardly any significant visual work that captures the lives of communities who struggle routinely to live with the fear of man-eating tigers, alligators, venomous reptiles, and natural calamities such as cyclones and tropical storms.
In recent decades the lives of communities living in the coastal belt has been radically endangered by projects such as the Rampal thermal power plant proposed jointly by India and Bangladesh. Also the powerful ship breaking industry in Chittagong is creating a massive livelihood crisis in Bangladesh’s Sitakund coastal seaboard, among the traditional fishing community, as toxic litter pollutes the coastal water, and depleting fish catch. Conversely, in West Bengal, India people living in the Sundarbans have opened up their community spaces for the influx of tourist. This has allowed unregulated entry of engine boats that cause oil spills, polluting the pristine backwaters. Equally, the tourist flow has created a demand for guesthouses and hotels in the delta milieu that have added to the vulnerability of the fragile delta ecology. Besides this, shrimp aquaculture, once a thriving business in the coast has significantly damaged the mangrove forest. Both in India and Bangladesh, human intervention and changing state policies in favour of neo-liberalization and globalization have adversely affected coastal environment.
These photographs display the littoral community’s everyday struggles with their environment, their aspirations for improvement, local beliefs, customs, festivals, folk tradition, and syncretic religious practices of Hindus and Muslims. Besides this, the exhibits display the inter-connected history of the region- Islamic religiosity that has developed with the expansion of rice cultivation in the delta encouraged by Sufi prophets who came to spread the message of Islam during the 16th century. These mystics are portrayed in the Bengal and folk art of the region and are preserved in the local museum depositaries and in family held archives. While the national and international audiences have been introduced to a great amount of literature, illustrating the delta’s flora and fauna, these visuals deliberating human societies will be a unique experiment.
The exhibition is part of the series of activities proposed by the InterAsia programme supported by the Social Science Research Council, Yale InterAsia Initiative, and the Yale MacMillan Center South Asian Studies Council, in collaboration with the Department of Anthropology. The exhibition features twenty photographs taken by Debojyoti Das.
Please address any questions or comments to Debojyoti Das regarding the exhibition at inter.asia@yale.edu and leave your thoughts in the visitor’s notebook.