Urban Development and Environmental History in Modern South Asia

Ian Talbot is Emeritus Professor in History of Modern South Asia at the University of Southampton, UK. He has published ten monographs and three jointly written volumes. His most recent publications include The History of British Diplomacy in Pakistan (Routledge 2021), Punjab and the Raj (2020), A History of Modern South Asia (2016), and Colonial Lahore: a History of the City and Beyond (co-written with Tahir Kamran, 2016). He has jointly edited numerous volumes and produced an extensive number of periodical articles.Amit Ranjan is Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. His latest book is Contested Waters: India’s Transboundary River Water Disputes in South Asia (Routledge 2020). He is the author of India-Bangladesh Border Disputes: History and Post-LBA Dynamics (2018) and has edited India in South Asia Challenges and Management (2019), Water Issues in Himalayan South Asia: Internal Challenges, Disputes and Transboundary Tensions (2020), and Partition of India: Postcolonial Legacies (Routledge, 2019). In addition to academic articles, he has also written short pieces for the Wire, the Friday Times, the Citizen, and Prabhat Khabar.

• List of Figures List of Tables List of Contributors Preface Acknowledgements Introduction IAN TALBOT AND AMIT RANJANPART 1Urban Pasts, Contemporary Legacies 1 Partition, the Environment, and the Early Post-Independence Development of Lahore IAN TALBOT2 Written in Stone: Political Geologies of Small-Town India THOMAS CROWLEY3 A Shift From the “Devotional” to the “Natural” in Nineteenth-Century Lahore’s Art Education TAHIR KAMRAN4 Building With a Conscience? Heritage, Design and Urban Space in Bombay MANJIRI KAMATPART 2The City and River Management 5 The Hooghly River and the Incomplete Mastery of the Natural World in British Colonial India ROBERT IVERMEE6 Political Economy of Dams in Colonial and Early Postcolonial India AMIT RANJAN7 Locating the Riparian Commons in Eastern South Asia: A Translocal Perspective IFTEKHAR IQBALPART 3Urban Growth in a Fragile Environment 8 Evolving Islandscapes in a Changing Climate: Male’ City, Maldives MIZNA MOHAMED AND MOHAMED INAZ9 Analysing Human–Environment Coexistence: Urban Development and the Colombo Wetland Complex DENNIS MOMBAUER AND VOSITHA WIJENAYAKE10 Vanishing Rains: Deforestation, Declining Rainfall, and Desiccation in North East India With Special Reference to Cherrapunji, the “Rainiest Spot on the Globe” SAJAL NAG11 Reconstructing Thimphu: Balancing Tradition and Transition in Bhutan SUSAN M. WALCOTTIndex