Water is indeed land

 

A few weeks ago I wrote about land. The title was ‘The land that time should not make us forget.’ That article was concluded as follows:

‘Land is not just square-somethings. Land is made also of heart and mind, of knowledge and knowing, of the conscious and a conscience. That land, torn and yet beautiful, has seen the ravages of time. It carries signs that yell, ‘forget, forget, forget!’ We should not.

Several of my friends responded to the piece, pointing to important factors that I had failed to mention. Kumi Nesiah offered the following:

‘The economic driver of land (resource) theft is almost entirely by animal consumers (land, ocean, etc). Human habitats including all the biggest cities like New York occupy less than 1% of utilized land. Eighty three percent of farmland (stolen land) is occupied by livestock producers. We were all “indigenous” once. Now, we are all living in stolen and commoditized property, often in slums. Indigenous populations and biodiversity are disappearing daily due, almost entirely, to the intrinsic cruelty and “unsustainability” of nonvegan consumerism.’

I posited land as a metaphor, arguing that ‘all things owned or are associated with entitlements of one kind or another.’ For example culture, history, heritage and lifestyle. Geethanjana Kudaligama, added ‘language’ to this list:

‘The other storage of cultural memory that is passed from generation to generation is the language of any given community. Language is not only a tool of communication. It is also the storage of knowledge, ethos and mythos, folklore, and anything and everything that shapes a given community and distinguishes it from another. As a store, language keeps accumulating this community’s cultural knowledge for future use. Once the language is removed from a person, that person's true identity will be removed permanently.’

Both commends call out for elaboration and one hopes that Kumi and Geethanjana will do the honours. Otherwise I would have to, I suppose, and that would be a poorer intervention. Today, however, I write about a simple and yet vast element that I missed. Water.

Tharindu Amunugama said, ‘water is vital too; the one who controls water will rule the land.’

How true! We didn’t need the sabre-rattling from our ‘friends’ across the Palk Straits to know this. ‘We will starve you of water!’ That was the threat. It is a threat that needs to be taken as a rude reminder to those who are naive and easily swayed by sweet nothings uttered so easily that they become blind to the Trojan element of the horses (to be) gifted. Dependencies of any kind are like narcotics. Deny it and the body contorts in excruciating pain. Minds get blown to pieces. Happens to people. Happens to countries.

Water. Let’s get back to it. Our ancestors knew its value. They knew ‘rain water harvesting’ long before it became a term in development handbooks. They knew the lay of the land. They knew it was not just about contours and soil composition, but the complex whole of a specific area or system. This is why there were forbidden forests up in the hills. They knew of catchment and runoff. They knew about the natural cycles. They knew water.

Water is a life-giver and life-protector. Water, like land, is a metaphor. Thirst quenchers are divine. Thirst-givers are devils. There are thirsts that can be ignored simply because they are non-essentials in the serious matter of survival. Basic needs, material and otherwise. Those who control ‘water,’ rule, yes. And if those who have such control deny access, they are tyrants. Terrorists, in fact. We didn’t need ‘Mavil Aru’ to know this. We didn’t need to know about the Indus Water Treaty (signed in Karachi on September 19, 1960, by Jawaharlal Nehru and Pakistani president Ayub Khan, the respective Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan at the time) to know this.

When a tank breaches, villages are abandoned. That says it all, doesn’t it? The question is, what are these tanks that we must protect from breaching of all kinds? Again, like ‘land’ we return to metaphoric application: culture, history, heritage and lifestyle, language and the structures and hegemonic homo-centric cultures Kumi alludes to.

If those who control water rule the land, then there’s a case for rules that draw from and affirm commonality. Common property. Common property that is not homo-centric. The water conservation efforts of our ancestors recognised all creatures and their needs. They didn’t send rent invoices to the fish, the birds and other creatures, domesticated and otherwise, who slaked their thirst at such places.

Water. It is another name for land. Indeed. In word and deed.

[This article was published in the Daily News under the weekly column title 'The Recurrent Thursday']