My current book project explores the Kaveri River dispute through the long 20th century. The river flows from the Western Ghats, across four states in southern India, into the Bay of Bengal. There is less water in the river than its riparian states seek, and the sharing of its waters has been the subject of sustained and intense conflict for well over a century now. The conflict between the states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, which commenced in British India between what were then Madras Presidency and the princely state of Mysore, has been especially pronounced. I examine the colonial origins and postcolonial manifestations of the Kaveri dispute towards illuminating changing notions of political rights and belonging over the course of the twentieth century.
The Kaveri delta was long one of the richest parts of the Madras Presidency. Also one of the most unequal. In addition to exploring the differences between upstream Karnataka and downstream Tamil Nadu, the project also traces the unequal and contested rights to agrarian land and water between upper-caste landlords and lower-caste labourers within the delta from the early twentieth century onwards. These tensions increased through the 1950s and ‘60s, culminating in the Keezhvenmani massacre of 1968, when 44 striking Dalit labourers were set on fire inside a thatched hut.
A final thread is the contest over the access to the river for different purposes, including agriculture, electricity, urban consumption, fishing, and bathing. Increasing commercialization of agriculture, the building of large dams, and scarcity have gradually altered the shape of the river, so that we may witness it today as its components: water in a reservoir, and elsewhere dry riverbeds whose sand is being mined illegally to aid construction across peninsular India.