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Paper short abstract

Santhal communities read the Shilabati River through ant migrations, bird movements, and shifts in water colour that are not acknowledged. This paper argues that indigenous flood knowledge is not just about practical survival. It is a claim to govern their own rivers and define their own risks.

Paper long abstract

Indigenous communities do not simply adapt to floods. They contest who gets to say what a river is and how people should live with it. The Santhal people have a systematic knowledge system about water behaviour, risk, and survival. This system was built over generations, embedded in myth, song, and practice. But state flood management has treated this knowledge as folklore rather than governance. This paper argues that Santhal flood knowledge represents a claim to sovereignty. It offers an alternative vision of living with rivers that does not require the massive infrastructure that states love to build.

I have worked with and lived alongside Santhal communities for the last 20 years or so. I have documented their flood indicators: how they read nature before official warnings arrive. I have recorded their practices: elevated homes, banana rafts, flood songs that teach children survival drills. I have watched them manage major floods. The state embankments failed repeatedly. Santhal knowledge-holders adapted. This is not a story of picturesque tradition. It is a story of knowledge systems that work because they were built on relationship with place. State infrastructure failed because it ignored local conditions and community voice.

Anthropology must examine how indigenous communities govern their own waters. Rather than viewing Santhal knowledge as heritage to preserve, we should ask what their river practices reveal about living differently with water. This paper draws on decades of fieldwork to show how indigenous knowledge challenges state approaches to flood governance and water management.