| Popis: |
Chars are the deltaic sandbars formed by river depositions in the Ganga-Brahmaputra basin. They are prone to erosion, submergence and, often, complete disappearance into the water. The fluidity of its existence gives the char an amphibian character—an existential ambiguity between land and water–becoming perfect examples of transitional ecological spaces, or ecotones. Consequently, the char-settlers, too, attain a transitional existence–between that of the certainty of a home and the uncertainty of displacement. The constant flux between hope and despair brings the char-dwellers together into a community with shared aspirations and crises. Since possession and use of land and its resources are vitally important in securing identities and rights of a community, settling on chars, claiming possession over its resources and asserting oneself as a rights-possessing citizen of a state are integral to the narratives of char-dwellers together with the persistent threat of loss and displacement. The crisis heightens when the chars belong to borderland areas, on riverine borders between two States–becoming integral to, yet unique within, the larger borderland milieu. This paper looks at chars as ecotonal spaces in general, and border chars in particular, across the Ganga-Brahmaputra basin in South Asia (including India and Bangladesh)–where claims over land and resources couples with insider-outsider discourses of being Indians and Bangladeshis. |
