The Unquiet River: A Biography of the Brahmaputra
The Unquiet River: A Biography of the Brahmaputra
Summary of the book:
'The Unquiet River' reimagines the layered history of Assam with the unquiet river at the centre. It combines a range of disciplinary scholarship to unravel the geological forces as well as a human endeavour which have shaped the river into what it is today. Wonderfully illuminated with archival detail and interwoven with narratives and striking connections, the book will be interesting for anyone trying to understand the past and the present of a river confronted by the twenty-first century’s ambitious infrastructural designs to further re-engineer the river and its landscape.
Review blurbs from the book:
"Arupjyoti Saikia is already known to be the leading historian of Assam. With this magnificent biography of the Brahmaputra, he has also established himself as India's pre-eminent environmental historian. This book beautifully and seamlessly transcends conventional binaries of hill and plain, land and water, economy and culture, social science and natural science. Using a dazzling array of primary sources, Saikia constructs a compelling narrative of the river's journey from geological time to the present, evoking the Brahmaputra's many moods, the forms of human livelihood it enables and constrains, the forms of non-human life it sustains and enhances. This is a total history in the best, and fullest, sense of the term." (-Ramachandra Guha)
'Lucky Brahmaputra, lucky Assam! If a river could get to choose, for its biographer, the most learned, comprehensive, scrupulous and yet sensitive scholar available, the Brahmaputra could not possibly have done better. Saikia's superb study is a model of interdisciplinary learning, hydrological knowledge and historical depth. The Yangzi and Indus must be green with envy.' (-James C. Scott)
Profile:
Arupjyoti Saikia teaches history in the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati. He is also the author of Forests and Ecological History of Assam, 1826-2000 (Oxford University Press, 2011) and and A Century of Protests: Peasant Politics in Assam since 1900 (Routledge, 2014). https://www.iitg.ac.