Mapping the Seepsah: A Caste History of River Management in Sunderbans

The Sundarbans delta extends from the southern coast of West Bengal in India to southeastern Bangladesh, covering four thousand square miles. It is shaped by sediments from the Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Meghna rivers. A unique feature of the delta are the tides, which dramatically alter its scenery: sandy banks emerge like fleeting islands during low tide, only to vanish beneath surging waters at high tide. Tidal waters do more than envelop the delta—when they flow into the region, they transform large areas into aquatic habitats teeming with marine life. As the tide recedes, expansive mudflats appear, becoming accessible to terrestrial animals like Bengal tigers and deer. The tides are thus more than simple exchanges of land and water—they mark the switch between terrestrial and aquatic habitats. The pneumatic roots of mangrove trees, which cover most of the delta, regulate this exchange. These remarkable aerial roots act as natural sponges, absorbing tidal waters and releasing them back into the atmosphere in uneven rhythms. By holding and releasing water in erratic cycles, the mangrove trees shape a unique delta ecosystem—terrains that are both land and water, and impossible to separate.

Using nineteenth-century maps and pages from the registrar's logbook, this poster illustrates two critical aspects of colonial land and water management and their far-reaching implications. First, the maps reveal colonial surveyors undertaking the daunting task of separating land from water in a terrain known for its fluidity and unpredictability. The delta’s landscape was not static; it embodied constant change, with water levels fluctuating dramatically due to tides and seasonal variations. This complexity made attempts at delineating boundaries not only arbitrary but also fundamentally flawed. As the poster will show, colonial surveyors mapped the Seepsah River separately from the adjacent land in an attempt to separate land from water. In reality, the terrain marked as the Seepsah River could be both land and water, depending on tides and how the mangroves retained water. Second, pages from the registrar’s logbook reveal how the imposed separation affected social structures within the delta, worsening existing caste hierarchies. The Namashudra caste, traditionally boatmen who navigated the waterways for their livelihoods, became criminalized as the surveyors etched out boundaries and imposed their control over it. As colonial powers demanded strict territorial demarcation, they marginalized those whose existence was tied to the delta’s fluid spaces.