Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T13:52:24.248Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Development, Citizenship, and the Bhakra–Nangal Dams in Postcolonial India, 1948–1952

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 October 2021

Daniel Haines Open the ORCID record for Daniel Haines [Opens in a new window]
Daniel Haines*
Affiliation:
Department of Historical Studies, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
*
Email: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Historians have done much to unpick the image of development in poor countries after the Second World War as a technocratic phenomenon driven by centralizing planners and advocates of modernization. Yet scholars have done less to ask how development interacted with other major aspects of decolonization, notably the transformation of colonial subjecthood to postcolonial citizenship. Using the case of the Bhakra–Nangal dam complex, constructed in northern India during the late 1940s to early 1950s, this article argues that a major development project impacted not just on economic growth and the extension of state power, but significantly influenced the integration of postcolonial India's diverse political territories. At the same time, ideas about development and citizenship both offered resources that technocrats and dam-displaced people alike could use to make arguments about the relationship between people, territory. and the state. Development was not a rarefied space that escaped politics while extending state power, but was entangled in the broader processes through which subjects of an empire became citizens of a postcolonial state.

Type
Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 65 , Issue 4 , September 2022 , pp. 1124 - 1144
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Cullather, Nick, The hungry world: America's Cold War battle against poverty in Asia (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Roy, Srirupa, Beyond belief: India and the politics of postcolonial nationalism (Durham, NC, and London, 2007)Google Scholar; Daechsel, Markus, Islamabad and the politics of international development in Pakistan (Cambridge, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Latham, Michael E., Modernization as ideology: American social science and ‘nation building’ in the Kennedy era (Chapel Hill, NC, and London, 2000)Google Scholar.

2 Engerman, David C., Price of aid: the economic Cold War in India (Cambridge, MA, 2019)Google Scholar.

3 Worster, Donald, Rivers of empire: water, aridity, and the growth of the American West (Oxford and New York, NY, 1992)Google Scholar; Swyngedouw, Erik, ‘Technonatural revolutions: the scalar politics of Franco's hydro-social dream for Spain, 1939–1975’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 32 (2007), pp. 9–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tvedt, Terje, The River Nile in the age of the British: political ecology and the quest for economic power (London, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wester, Philippus, ‘Capturing the waters: the hydraulic mission in the Lerma–Chapala Basin, Mexico (1876–1976)’, Water History, 1 (2009), pp. 9–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Shiva, Vandana, The violence of the green revolution: Third World agriculture, ecology and politics (London and Penang, 1991)Google Scholar; D'Souza, Rohan, ‘Supply-side hydrology in India: the last gasp’, Economic and Political Weekly, 38 (2003), pp. 3785–90Google Scholar; Baviskar, Amita, In the belly of the river: tribal conflicts over development in the Narmada Valley (Delhi, 2015)Google Scholar. On democracy: Guha, Ramachandra, India after Gandhi: the history of the world's largest democracy (London, 2008)Google Scholar.

5 Chhotray, Vasudha, The anti-politics machine in India: state, decentralization and participatory watershed development (London, 2011), p. xvCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 D'Souza, Rohan, ‘Water in British India: the making of a “colonial hydrology”’, History Compass, 4 (2006), pp. 621–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gilmartin, David, Blood and water: the Indus River Basin in modern history (Berkeley, CA, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Haines, Daniel, Building the empire, building the nation: development, legitimacy, and hydro-politics in Sind, 1919–1969 (Karachi, 2013)Google Scholar; Aijaz, Abdul and Akhter, Majed, ‘From building dams to fetching water: scales of politicization in the Indus Basin’, Water, 12 (2020), pp. 1351–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Sherman, Taylor C., Gould, William, and Ansari, Sarah, ‘Introduction’, in Sherman, Taylor C., Gould, William, and Ansari, Sarah, eds., From subjects to citizens: society and the everyday state in India and Pakistan, 1947–1970 (Cambridge, 2014), pp. 5–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Newbigin, Eleanor, The Hindu family and the emergence of modern India: law, citizenship and community (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 231–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 De, Rohit, A people's constitution: the everyday life of law in the Indian Republic (Princeton, NJ, 2018)Google Scholar; Ornit Shani, ‘Making universal franchise and democratic citizenship in the postcolonial moment’, in Michael Francis Laffan, Nikhil Menon, and Gyan Prakash, eds., The postcolonial moment in South and Southeast Asia (New York, NY, 2018); Nikhil Menon, ‘“Help the plan – help yourself”: making Indians plan-conscious’, in Laffan, Menon, and Prakash, eds., The postcolonial moment.

10 Sherman, Taylor C., Muslim belonging in secular India: negotiating citizenship in postcolonial Hyderabad (New York, NY, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Beverley, Eric Lewis, Hyderabad, British India, and the world: Muslim networks and minor sovereignty, c. 1850–1950 (Cambridge, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bangash, Yaqoob Khan, A princely affair: the accession and integration of the princely states of Pakistan, 1947–1955 (Karachi, 2015)Google Scholar.

11 Elizabeth Whitcombe, ‘Irrigation’, in Dharma Kumar, ed., The Cambridge economic history of India, II: c. 1757 – c. 1970 (Cambridge, 1983), p. 677.

12 Ramesh, Aditya, ‘Indian rivers, “productive works”, and the emergence of large dams in nineteenth-century Madras’, Historical Journal, 64 (2021), pp. 281–309CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Arnold, David, ‘Nehruvian science and postcolonial India’, Isis, 104 (2013), pp. 360–70CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

14 Note by Department of Labour, 26 Nov. 1938, Political Department, Internal ‘A’ branch, 24(10)-I.A., 1938(Secret) (A), pp. 8–13, National Archives of India, New Delhi (NAI).

15 J. Thompson to L. C. L. Griffin, 18 Sept. 1945, 21(22)-I, 1945, p. 91, Political Department, internal branch, NAI.

16 Klingensmith, Daniel, One valley and a thousand: dams, nationalism and development (New Delhi and New York, NY, 2007)Google Scholar.

17 Khilnani, Sunil, The idea of India (London, 1998), ch. 2Google Scholar.

18 Siegel, Benjamin Robert, Hungry nation: food, famine, and the making of modern India (Cambridge, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Amrith, Sunil S., Unruly waters: how mountain rivers and monsoons have shaped South Asia's history (London, 2018), pp. 193–210Google Scholar.

20 Iyer, Ramaswamy R., ‘Bhakra Nangal and the green revolution’, Economic and Political Weekly, 41 (2006), pp. 79–80Google Scholar.

21 John Adams, ‘India: much achieved, much to achieve’, in Selig S. Harrison, Paul H. Kreisberg, and Dennis Kux, eds., India and Pakistan: the first fifty years (Washington, DC, and Cambridge, 1999), p. 116.

22 Elisabeth Corell and Ashok Swain, ‘India: the domestic and international politics of water scarcity’, in Leif Ohlsson, ed., Hydropolitics: conflicts over water as a development constraint (Dhaka and London, 1995), p. 124.

23 Government of [East] Punjab, The five year plan (irrigation) (Jullundur, [1953?]), p. 3; DC Jullunder index list, Sr. 774, Punjab State Archives, Chandigarh (PSA).

24 Meeting on 3–4 Dec. 1948 between chief engineers of East Punjab, Patiala, East Punjab States Union, and Bikaner, and consulting engineer to the Government of India, 13[?] Dec. 1948, 6/5/50/PAK III, p. 13, external affairs, Pakistan – III branch, NAI.

25 ‘Bilaspur as affected by the Bhakra & Nangal Projects’, p. 6, enclosed with Anandchand to Ministry of States, 23 Mar. 1949, prog. no. 151-P, 1949, states, political branch, NAI.

26 36,000 people were displaced in total, including some outside Bilaspur. My figures are estimated using those in Rangachari, R., Bhakra–Nangal Project: socio-economic and environmental impacts (New Delhi, 2006)Google Scholar.

27 Ministry of States note, 9 Nov. 1951, prog. no. 26(8)-PA, 1951 (Secret), p. 5, states, political – A branch, NAI.

28 Ministry of Home and Revenue, East Punjab, to Home Minister Vallabhbhai Patel, 14 May 1948, digitized private papers of Sardar Patel, identifier PP_000000005524, NAI Digitized Public Records (DPR).

29 Minutes of meeting, 13 Dec. 1949, 6/5/50/PAK III: Bhakra project, external affairs, Pakistan – III branch, pp. 64–6, NAI.

30 Haines, Daniel, ‘Disputed rivers: sovereignty, territory and state-making in South Asia, 1948–1951’, Geopolitics, 19 (2014), pp. 632–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Note by Prem Krishen, Ministry of External Affairs, 13 Dec. 1949, 6/5/50/PAK III: Bhakra project, external affairs, Pakistan – III branch, p. 1, NAI.

32 Khanna, B. S., ‘The problem of part C states’, Indian Journal of Political Science, 14 (1953), pp. 356–60, at p. 357Google Scholar.

33 Hakumat Rai Phagwara of Kapurtala State to Home Minister Vallabhbhai Patel, 10 Feb. 1948, digitized private papers of Sardar Patel, identifier PP_000000005335, NAI DPR.

34 Anand Chand to V. P. Menon, secretary to Ministry of States, 13 Oct. 1950, digitized private papers of Sardar Patel, identifier PP_000000005547, p. 5, NAI DPR.

35 Anandchand to Menon, 23 Mar. 1949.

36 Shani, ‘Making universal franchise’.

37 Ansari, Sarah and Gould, William, Boundaries of belonging: localities, citizenship and rights in India and Pakistan (Cambridge, 2019), esp. ch. 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Furber, Holden, ‘The Unification of India, 1947–1951’, Pacific Affairs, 24 (1951), pp. 366–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Ministry of States note, 27 June 1950, prog. no. 24(24)-Econ, 1950(A), p. 15, states, economic branch, NAI.

40 Note by Hari Sharma, Ministry of States, 4 July 1950, prog. no. 24(24)-Econ, 1950(A), states, economic branch, NAI.

41 ‘Bhakra–Nangal project: inter-state control board proposed’, Times of India, 18 Sept. 1950.

42 Note by Hari Sharma, Ministry of States, 4 July 1950; US consul general, Madras, to State Department, 28 Nov. 1955, C.D.F. 891.211/11–2855, Record Group (RG) 59, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland (NARA).

43 Resolution in the Ministry of Works, Mines, and Power, 25 Sept. 1950, prog. no. 24(24)-Econ, 1950(A), p. 95, states, economic branch, NAI. An advisory board complemented the work of the control board, with a mix of representatives from the centre, Punjab, Rajasthan, PEPSU, and Bilaspur. See also Michel, Aloys Arthur, The Indus rivers: a study of the effects of Partition (New Haven, CT, and London, 1967), p. 343Google Scholar.

44 US embassy, New Delhi, to State Department, 1 May 1951, Central Decimal Files (CDF) 891.211/5–151, NARA.

45 Sardar Nawab Singh, chief secretary to East Punjab government, to Ministry of States, 26 June 1952, prog. no. 26(8)-PA, 1951 (Secret), p. 95, states, political – A branch, NAI.

46 Asha Sarangi, ‘Introduction’, in Asja Saramgo, ed., Language and politics in India (New Delhi and Oxford, 2009), pp. 6–7.

47 Joseph E. Schwartzberg, ‘Factors in the linguistic reorganization of Indian states’, in Paul Wallace, ed., Region and nation in India (New Delhi, 1985), pp. 155–62.

48 V. Isvaran, chief secretary to PEPSU government, to central Home Ministry, 5 Aug. 1952, prog. no. 26(8)-PA, 1951 (Secret), p. 87, states, political – A branch, NAI.

49 K. L. Mehta, chief secretary to Himachal Pradesh government, to Ministry of States, 28 July 1952, prog. no. 26(8)-PA, 1951 (Secret), p. 63, states, political – A branch, NAI.

50 Note by V. Shankar, 7 Mar. 1952, prog. no. 26(8)-PA, 1951 (Secret), p. 44, states, political – A branch, NAI.

51 Daniel Haines, Rivers divided: Indus basin waters in the making of India and Pakistan (London, 2017), ch. 3.

52 Rangachari, Bhakra–Nangal project, pp. 63, 193. A total of 7,209 families had their land acquired as part of the total project, with 3,333 coming from Kangra district in Punjab (which transferred to Himachal Pradesh in 1966). Bilaspuris therefore accounted for a little over half of the total affected people. Bilaspur did however account for the vast majority of land acquired for the project construction purposes, 123 km2 out of 180 km² total. That debate about rehabilitation focused on Bilaspuris, and not people from Kangra, was perhaps due to the fact that so much of the state was submerged, and that it was not at all clear where Bilaspuris should go. The figure of 20,000 people displaced from rural Bilaspur is based on Rangachari's figures equating 7,209 families with 36,000 people, which gives a mean of five individuals per family.

53 See Nilsen, Alf Gunvald, Dispossession and resistance in India: the river and the rage (London and New York, NY, 2012)Google Scholar.

54 Note by Shrichand Chhabra, 15 Sept. 1950, prog. no. 24(24)-Econ, 1950(A), p. 80, states, economic branch, NAI.

55 Extract from note by Nehru, 14 Apr. 1952, prog. no. 26(8)-PA, 1951 (Secret), p. 29, states, political – A branch, NAI.

56 Note by C. Ganesan, 19 Aug. 1952, prog. no. 26(8)-PA, 1951 (Secret), p. 63, states, political – A branch, NAI.

57 V. Isvaran, chief secretary to PEPSU government, to central Home Ministry, 5 Aug. 1952, prog. no. 26(8)-PA, 1951 (Secret), p. 87, states, political – A branch, NAI.

58 Y. S. Parmar to Ministry of States, 21 Apr. 1952, prog. no. 24(9)-E, 1952, p. 76, states, economic branch, NAI.

59 J. Thompson to L. C. L. Griffin, 18 Sept. 1945, 21(22)-I, 1945, p. 91, Political Department, internal branch, NAI.

60 Mridula Sarabhai to Nehru and Gopalaswami Ayyangar, 12 Apr. 1952, prog. no. 24(9)-E, 1952, p. 72, states, economic branch, NAI.

61 Extract from Nehru's note, 14 Apr. 1952, prog. no. 26(8)-PA, 1951 (Secret), p. 29, states, political – A branch, NAI.

62 Note by Nehru, 26 May 1952, prog. no. 26(8)-PA, 1951 (Secret), p. 38, states, political – A branch, NAI.

63 Srichand Chhabra to National Planning Commission, 25 Feb. 1951, Ministry of Education, G-1 branch, identifier MINISTRY of EDUCATION_G-1_1951_NA_F-62–2_51, pp. 13–19, NAI DPR.

64 Note by S. K. Joglekar, Government of India Public Works Department, enclosed with under secretary to Ministry of States letter to Chhabra, 2 Aug. 1952, prog. no. 24(9)-E, 1952, p. 102, states, economic branch, NAI.

65 Central Home Ministry to Ministry of States, 28 Apr. 1952, prog. no. 26(8)-PA, 1951 (Secret), p. 29, states, political – A branch, NAI.

66 Reluram Madanlal convenors to Ministry of States, 30 May[?] 1952, prog. no. 8(2)-PA, 1952, p. 6, states, political – A branch, NAI.

67 Ramesh, Aditya, ‘Custom as natural: land, water and law in colonial Madras’, Studies in History, 34 (2018), pp. 1–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

68 Bilaspur Small Town Committee members to V. Shankar, 29 Mar. 1952, prog. no. 26(8)-PA, 1951 (secret), p. 28, states, political – A branch, NAI.

69 ‘Citizens of Bilaspur’ to Dr K. N. Katju, states minister, 1 July 1952, prog. no. 8(2)-PA, 1952, p. 7, states, political – A branch, NAI. The petition claimed to represent 41,806 signatories out of the c. 64,000 voters in Bilaspur.

70 Menon, ‘“Help the plan – help yourself”’, p. 222.

71 Y. S. Parmar to Ministry of States, 21 Apr. 1952, prog. no. 24(9)-E, 1952, p. 76, states, economic branch, NAI. Daulat Ram Sankhyayan, member of Bilaspur District Congress Committee, to Rajendra Prasad, Jawaharlal Nehru, and K. N. Katju, Sept.[?] 1952, prog. no. 8(2)-PA, 1952, states, political – A branch, NAI.

72 Ministry of Commerce to Ministry of States, 9 Mar. 1948, prog. no. 63-P(S), 1948, p. 8, identifier PR_000001623130, NAI DPR.

73 Ministry of States note, 9 Nov. 1951, prog. no. 26(8)-PA, 1951 (Secret), p. 5, states, political – A branch, NAI.

74 Y. S. Parmar to Nehru, 11 Sept. 1951, enclosed with Nehru to Gopalaswami Ayyangar, 21 Sept. 1951, prog. no. 26(8)-PA, 1951 (Secret), p. 2, political – A branch, NAI.

75 Nehru to Ayyangar, 21 Sept. 1951, prog. no. 26(8)-PA, 1951 (Secret), p. 2, states, political – A branch, NAI. Ministry of States note, 24 Sept. 1951, prog. no. 26(8)-PA, 1951 (Secret), p. 1, political – A branch, NAI.

76 ‘Bilaspur raja elected’, Times of India, 1 Nov. 1951.

77 Raja Anandchand to Ayyangar, 20 Feb. 1952, prog. no. 26(8)-PA, 1951 (Secret), p. 24, states, political – A branch, NAI.

78 Bhagirathprasad Dixit, All-India Congress Committee, to Nehru and Katju, 20 May 1952, prog. no. 8(2)-PA, 1952, p.3, states, political – A branch, NAI.

79 Note by V. Shankar, 22 Mar. 1952, prog. no. 26(8)-PA, 1951 (Secret), p. 26, states, political – A branch, NAI.

80 Sant Ram Kanga, member of All-India Congress Committee and Small Town Committee, Bilaspur, to Anandchand, 19 June 1952, prog. no. 26(8)-PA, 1951 (Secret), pp. 59–60, states, political – A branch, NAI.

81 Daulat Ram Sankhyayan, member of Bilaspur District Congress Committee, to Rajendra Prasad, Jawaharlal Nehru and K. N. Katju, [Sept. 1952?], prog. no. 8(2)-PA, 1952, p. 21, states, political – A branch, NAI.

82 Nathu Ram, president, Scheduled Castes Welfare Association, Bilaspur, to Nehru, 12 Sept. 1952, prog. no. 8(2)-PA, 1952, p. 22, states, political – A branch, NAI.

83 Note, secretariat of the National Planning Commission, 1954, States Reorganization Commission file 36/11/54-SRC, PR_000005002056, pp. 24–5, NAI DPR.

84 Shrichand Chhabra to Ministry of States, 16 June 1953, prog. no. 24(49)-Econ, 1953, p. 3, states, economic branch, NAI.

85 Note by C. Ganesan, 19 Aug. 1952, prog. no. 26(8)-PA, 1951 (Secret), p. 63, states, political – A branch, NAI.

86 Gurdit Singh and Swarn Singh, ‘Effects of Bhakra Dam irrigation on the economy of the barani villages in the Hissar district 1954–55’, publication no. 65 (Chandigarh: Board of Economic Enquiry, Punjab (India), 1961), pp. 2–83, DC Jullunder index list, Sr. 184, PSA.

87 Rangachari, Bhakra–Nangal project, p. 64.

88 US embassy, Karachi, to State Department, 7 July 1954, folder 64, Karachi Top Secret General Records, 1947–55, RG 84, NARA.

89 Copy of Gazette of India, extraordinary, part II, section I, 31 May 1954, Delimitation Commission of India file 58/19/53, identifier PR_000005014568, p. 53, NAI DPR.

90 Government of India Press Information Bureau, ‘Opening of the Bhakra main canal: prime minister's speech’ (in English and Hindi), 13 July 1954, P III/54/2821/2 vol. III, external affairs, Pakistan – III branch, NAI.

91 ‘Foundation of Bhakra Dam laid’, Times of India, 18 Nov. 1955.

92 Birender Singh, Haryana chief minister, to central Home Ministry, 6/8 May 1967, annexure 1, 17/07/1967, p. 66, home affairs, SR branch, NAI. Central Home Ministry note, undated [1967?], 17/07/1967, p. 151, home affairs, SR branch, NAI.

93 Martinez-Alier, Joan, ‘The environmentalism of the poor: its origins and spread’, in McNeill, John Robert and Mauldin, Erin Stewart, eds., A companion to global environmental history (Oxford, 2012)Google Scholar.