Blood and Water is a history of the political and environmental transformation of the Indus basin as a result of the modern construction in the region of the world’s largest integrated irrigation system. The system was begununder British colonial rule in the nineteenth century, and the resulting transformation continued after the region was divided between two new states, India and Pakistan, in 1947. It was a process deeply shaped, from the beginning, by colonial statecraft-and by the fissures within colonial policies and ideologies. The book traces the critical intersection between competing ... More

Blood and Water is a history of the political and environmental transformation of the Indus basin as a result of the modern construction in the region of the world’s largest integrated irrigation system. The system was begununder British colonial rule in the nineteenth century, and the resulting transformation continued after the region was divided between two new states, India and Pakistan, in 1947. It was a process deeply shaped, from the beginning, by colonial statecraft-and by the fissures within colonial policies and ideologies. The book traces the critical intersection between competing visions of community that shaped the environmental transformation. On the one hand, forms of political mobilization and productive incentives were developed to facilitate the extension of coordinated, productive control of the region’s environment. At the same time, the state mobilized countervailing visions of community based on genealogy and blood to stabilize its political authority. The tensions between these competing visions were deeply embedded in the politics of irrigation development, and they have continued to frame the ways that irrigators have been mobilized within the system.