Paper short abstract:

By exploring the trajectories of two rivers in the Indian Sundarbans, this paper explains the ways the relationship between rivers, the mangroves/fishes and the human lives have been changing and affecting each other only to turning all the human and nonhuman beings vulnerable to extinction.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the changing relationships between the rivers, mangroves/fishes and the human lives along the watercourses in the Indian Sundarbans. Tracking the history from the colonial period, it looks into the way the British colonial power embarked on its accumulation by ignoring the impending loss of species, environment and biodiversity, and thereby altered the river flows, inter-species relationship and the environment as a whole. Rivers might be an effective lens through which the colonial history of biodiversity in Sundarbans could be explored. This paper tries to understand the ways in which the rivers and rivulets in Indian Sundarbans have been losing their streams and thereby changing the river ecosystem i.e. the relationship between rivers, mangrove/fishes and the human lives since the colonial period. The first part of this research would focus on why the rivers in Sundarbans have been losing their streams, while the second part focuses more on the impact of loss of river streams on biodiversity, inter-species relationship and human lives. The paper will use the ethnographic as well as the archival evidences that have been collected during the period of 2018 -2019. By exploring the trajectories of two rivers, Piyali and Nobipukuria in South 24 Parganas district of Indian Sundarbans, this research explains the way in which the rivers, the mangroves/fishes and the human lives have been changing and affecting each other only to turning all the human and nonhuman beings vulnerable to extinction.