This book studies a historical interaction between the city and the natural environment from the colonial to the contemporary era in South Asia. It will be of interest to researchers in the field of South Asian Studies, world history and environmental history.

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 RANJAN

PART 1

Urban Pasts, Contemporary Legacies

1 Partition, the Environment, and the Early Post-Independence Development of Lahore

IAN TALBOT

2 Written in Stone: Political Geologies of Small-Town India

THOMAS CROWLEY

3 A Shift From the "Devotional" to the "Natural" in Nineteenth-Century Lahore's Art Education

TAHIR KAMRAN

4 Building With a Conscience? Heritage, Design and Urban Space in Bombay

MANJIRI KAMAT

PART 2

The City and River Management

5 The Hooghly River and the Incomplete Mastery of the Natural World in British Colonial India

ROBERT IVERMEE

6 Political Economy of Dams in Colonial and Early Postcolonial India

AMIT RANJAN

7 Locating the Riparian Commons in Eastern South Asia: A Translocal Perspective

IFTEKHAR IQBAL

PART 3

Urban Growth in a Fragile Environment

8 Evolving Islandscapes in a Changing Climate: Male' City, Maldives

MIZNA MOHAMED AND MOHAMED INAZ

9 Analysing Human-Environment Coexistence: Urban Development and the Colombo Wetland Complex

DENNIS MOMBAUER AND VOSITHA WIJENAYAKE

10 Vanishing Rains: Deforestation, Declining Rainfall, and Desiccation in North East India With Special Reference to Cherrapunji, the "Rainiest Spot on the Globe"

SAJAL NAG

11 Reconstructing Thimphu: Balancing Tradition and Transition in Bhutan

SUSAN M. WALCOTT

Index