Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt
The Australian National University
Feminine Waterscapes: Rivers and the Everyday Life in Rural Bengal
This paper looks critically at the social production of rivers in rural Bengal, India, where communities are defined by the way they use the waters in the rivers, where water characterises humans as much as humans characterise land, transforming the physicality of land, livelihoods and patterns of life cycles into a cultural text through which one can reflect upon identity and society. Rivers are not only symbols but also physical manifestations of concepts that hold a central position within the cultural corpus of religious, social and everyday lives. In that, rivers are always present in the collective consciousness of Bengal as communities there have woven their lives around these streams of life.
Deltaic Bengal is a land built by rivers where the boundaries of water and land penetrate each other and merge with the feminine identities of the rivers. The river in the Delta is commonly seen as a potent symbol of feminine powers that are inherent in an unpredictable nature and carry the fecundating waters of life, perpetually changing and replenishing life, yet holding the ability of not only nurturing and sustaining but also destroying. These representations are fleshed out in images in specific contexts whose particulars vary in details and traits. However, their common attribute is the feminine nature evoked in the images.
In this paper I problematise the imagined femininity of rivers in rural Bengal and, in an effort to contest the gender-neutral scholarship on the subject, look at the water-based lives through the lens of gender to critique the masculinist nature of the knowledge and cultural understandings of water.
In closely examining the metaphors of flowing rivers I point out to the daily realities of life for women in the riverine communities in Bengal delta. In this paper, I intend to show how these constructions reinforce masculine dominance within the communities. I argue that rivers, as part of the cultural landscapes created from the natural world and shaped by human societies are constituted by feminine symbolism and imageries in communities marked by inequalities where the real women are commonly acknowledged for deserving these attributes in the day to day lives.
Email:kuntala.lahiri-dutt@anu.edu.au