"Applied Science, Faculty of"@en . "Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA), School of"@en . "DSpace"@en . "UBCV"@en . "Karim, Shaheed Hassan"@en . "2020-05-14T13:45:59Z"@en . "2020-05"@en . "(Re)Imagining Water: A Postcolonial Response to Colonial Hydrology is a case study in reappropriating architectural representation to uncover and make visible the infrastructures of power and narrative which sustain socio-economic and political inequities. Adopting a postcolonial lens this project proceeds first with an investigation of the underlying factors which have contributed to the manifestation of the systemic and paradoxical water crisis of urban India \u00E2\u0080\u0093 arguing that the current water crisis affecting millions of people in Delhi, and many millions more in other large centres in India, derives from a colonial hydrology imposed upon India by the British during their colonial rule. Influenced by the role that representation played in the colonial process the final portion of the project takes the form of a hypothetical gallery exhibit containing drawings which use architectural representation to challenge what we typically draw and in some instances the way we draw - experimenting with depictions of water not just as bounding lines but as flows that respond to the social, physical and ideological infrastructures which shape India\u00E2\u0080\u0099s urban water reality."@en . "https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/74436?expand=metadata"@en . "(Re)Imagining Water A Postcolonial Response to Colonial HydrologyShaheed Hassan Karim2019 - 2020Supervisor: Kees LokmanCommittee Members: Sameer Shah, Peeroj ThakreSubmitted in partial fulfillment of the Master of Landcsape Architecture, School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, University of British ColumbiaRelease FormLandscape ArchitectureSchool of Architecture and Landscape Architecture University of British ColumbiaName: Shaheed Hassan KarimStudent Number: Graduate Project Title: (Re)Imagining Water: A Postcolonial Response to Colonial HydrologyIn presenting this report in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Landscape Architecture, University of British Columbia, I agree that UBC may make this work freely available for reference or study. I give permission for copying the report for educational purposes in accordance with copyright laws.__________________ _______________ _______________NameShaheed Hassan Karim May 11, 2020Signature Dateii ABSTRACTv LIST OF FIGURES01 INTRODUCTION02 Project Statement03 A PRIMER ON POST-COLONIAL(ISM/ THEORY)07 COLONIAL HYDROLOGY BEFORE EUROPEAN COLONIALISM11 COLONIAL HYDROLOGY: BRITISH COLONIALISM IN INDIA15 URBAN MANIFESTATIONS OF COLONIAL HYDROLOGY: DELHI21 THE POWER OF REPRESENTATION: PAINTING, DRAWING, MAPPING AND LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE23 TOWARDS A MODUS OF POSTCOLONIAL DESIGN: METHODOLOGY25 On Matters of Site27 (RE)IMAGINING WATER: A POSTCOLONIAL RESPONSE TO COLONIAL HYDROLOGY35 IN CONCLUSION37 REFERENCESiiiii(Re)Imagining Water: A Postcolonial Response to Colonial Hydrology is a case study in reappropriating architectural representation to uncover and make visible the infrastructures of power and narrative which sustain socio-economic and political inequities. Adopting a postcolonial lens this project proceeds first with an investigation of the underlying factors which have contributed to the manifestation of the systemic and paradoxical water crisis of urban India \u00E2\u0080\u0093 arguing that the current water crisis affecting millions of people in Delhi, and many millions more in other large centres in India, derives from a colonial hydrology imposed upon India by the British during their colonial rule. Influenced by the role that representation played in the colonial process the final portion of the project takes the form of a hypothetical gallery exhibit containing drawings which use architectural representation to challenge what we typically draw and in some instances the way we draw - experimenting with depictions of water not just as bounding lines but as flows that respond to the social, physical and ideological infrastructures which shape India\u00E2\u0080\u0099s urban water reality.ABSTRACTvivFigure 1. Author. (2019). Photo taken at the Ardh Kumbh Mela, [photograph].Figure 2. Author. West vs East, [diagram].Figure 3. Author. Knowledge, Power, Truth, [diagram].Figure 4. Author. Process of Manifesting an Imaginary Geography, [diagram].Figure 5. Author. Creating A River, [diagram].Figure 6. Author. Delhi Through Time, [diagram].Figure 7. Author. Holding Water, Digrammatic Section Through Delhi, [section, diagram].Figure 8. Author. Role of Representation, [diagram].Figure 9. Author. (2019). Photo taken at the ruins of Hauz Khas, Delhi, [photograph].Figure 10. Author. Whose Lines Are These?, [isometric].Figure 11. Author. Marigolds, [section].Figure 12. Author. Pools, Pipes, Participation, [section perspective].Figure 13. Author. Sanivation X Delhi, Panel 1, [isometric/perspective]. Figure 14. Author. Sanivation X Delhi, Panel 2, [section perspective/elevation].Figure 15. Author. Sanivation X Delhi, Panel 3, [section perspective/elevation].Figure 16. Author. A Goddess, [section perspective].LIST OF FIGURES01Every 12 years the Triveni Sangam becomes the site of \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe largest assemblage of humans on the planet\u00E2\u0080\u009D \u00E2\u0080\u0093 the Kumbh Mela (Alday & Gupta, 2018, p. 12). Tens of millions of Hindu pilgrims per day gather to take part in rituals and bathe at the confluence of the Ganga, the Yamuna, and the mythical Sarasvati, three of the holiest rivers in India. The event sees the raising of a temporary \u00E2\u0080\u0098mega-city\u00E2\u0080\u0099 to house over 100 million pilgrims over a period of 55 days (Baan, 2014). Its an event that, among other things, demonstrates the importance of water to India.Religious studies scholar Diane Eck argues that there is \u00E2\u0080\u009Cno place in the world that should have a higher standard of river quality than India, for there is no other culture in which rivers have such a central role in the daily ritual lives of countless millions\u00E2\u0080\u009D (2013, p. 187). Yet 600 km upstream, during the dry periods, the flow of the Yamuna river is composed entirely of sewage, industrial effluent, and urban runoff for the stretch of nearly 20 km that the river runs past the country\u00E2\u0080\u0099s capital state of Delhi (Alday & Gupta, 2018). The state of Delhi\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Yamuna is not unique in India, even the Ganges river, considered to be India\u00E2\u0080\u0099s INTRODUCTIONFig 1 - Photo taken at the Ardh Kumbh Mela 20190302holiest flow of water, is contaminated with untreated sewage, industrial pollutants, agricultural and urban runoff, and solid waste as it winds its way past some of India\u00E2\u0080\u0099s largest urban centres (Colopy, 2012). Unfortunately, in Delhi and other major Indian cities, contamination of rivers is only one component of a full-blown water crisis. In the face of rapid urbanization and climate change, the approach to water management and city planning developed during colonial rule, and continuing today, is failing nearly half of Delhi\u00E2\u0080\u0099s population who live in settlements of varying levels of informality. This translates to millions of people lacking sufficient water provision, a connection to the official sewer system, and agency over their access to clean water (Cities of Delhi, 2015; Jain, Chennuri, & Karamchandani, 2016). These communities are forced to rely on a growing water black market to purchase stolen municipal water and contaminated groundwater to supplement the little they acquire from spending hours each day procuring water from municipal water tankers and unreliable community taps - tasks which primarily fall to women and girls (Alday & Gupta, 2018; Mehta, Allouche, Nicol, & Walnycki, 2014; Palat Narayanan, 2019; Truelove, 2011). The situation is worsened by the conversion of lakes, waterways, and ephemeral streams into sewage drains resulting in the severe contamination of the city\u00E2\u0080\u0099s surface and groundwater which are quickly being depleted by overallocation and unsustainable withdrawals (Alday & Gupta, 2018; Colopy, 2012; Jacob, 2014). Somehow a water rich nation, blessed by the monsoon, is running out of water.Project StatementAdopting a postcolonial lens this project proceeds first with an investigation of the underlying factors which have contributed to the manifestation of the systemic and paradoxical water crisis of urban India \u00E2\u0080\u0093 here I argue that the current water crisis affecting millions of people in Delhi, and many millions more in other large centres in India, derives from a colonial hydrology imposed upon India by the British during their colonial rule, but whose ideology took root in the earliest of Western scientific thought. Secondly, this project examines the role of representation and the designer in contributing a postcolonial response to the current water system, one which reappropriates architectural representation in order to uncover and make visible the infrastructures of power and narrative which sustain socio-economic and political inequities in water access. Situating itself in the conceptual geography of Informal Delhi this project aims to use the creation and hypothetical deployment of representation in order to generate a new narrative surrounding water in Delhi, India. In its most basic definition \u00E2\u0080\u0098post-colonial\u00E2\u0080\u0099 refers to \u00E2\u0080\u009Ca time period after the end of formal colonial rule\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Jazeel, 2019, p. 4). It is signified by the physical retreat of colonial power, perhaps the return of its officials to their homeland. However, postcolonial theory argues that the formal withdrawal of a colonial power does not demarcate the end of colonial influence, as Jazeel writes \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe legacies of colonialism and imperialism are still with us \u00E2\u0080\u00A6 they have indelibly shaped the world as we know and experience it\u00E2\u0080\u009D (2019, p. 1). One strand of \u00E2\u0080\u009Cpostcolonial scholarship has aimed at recognizing the continued and troubling presence of colonialism within the period we designate as after-the-colonial\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Jazeel, 2019, p. 5), but this forms only one avenue of the broad pursuit. Thus, to define postcolonialism is difficult.Postcolonialism or postcolonial theory arose in the 1970\u00E2\u0080\u0099s out of the work of scholars like Edward Said (Jazeel, 2019). His book Orientalism (1978) documents the creation of the East \u00E2\u0080\u0093 West divide, a product of the colonial imagination propagated through representation of the Orient (the East) as an \u00E2\u0080\u0098other\u00E2\u0080\u0099 that existed in opposition to the Occident (the A PRIMER ON POST-COLONIAL(ISM/ THEORY)OTHERORIENTEASTCOLONIZEDNATUREOBSERVEROCCIDENTWESTCOLONIZERSCIENCEFig 2 - West vs East0504West). An important concept emerging from Said\u00E2\u0080\u0099s 1978 novel framed future explorations in postcolonial thought and serves to preface this project. This concept is the production of \u00E2\u0080\u0098imaginative geographies\u00E2\u0080\u0099 \u00E2\u0080\u0093 created by the \u00E2\u0080\u009Crepresentations of peoples and places that express the perceptions, desires, fantasies, fears, and projections of their authors, who are generally external observers\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Desbiens, 2016). \u00E2\u0080\u0098Orientalism\u00E2\u0080\u0099 is a case study of the production of an \u00E2\u0080\u0098imaginative geography\u00E2\u0080\u0099 \u00E2\u0080\u0093 the Orient. Said\u00E2\u0080\u0099s careful dissection of depictions of the Orient, created by Western scholars, officials, and artists, demonstrates how an accumulation of representation formed a discourse which possessed the power to naturalize its claims. Orientalism, Said argues, resulted in the idea of the East (the Orient) and the West (the Occident) as separate geographies - the former exotic, uncivilized, and tameable while the later cultured and destined to express control. His work was not simply a catalogue of Orientalist representations but a demonstration of the impacts of these representations and why they were desirable results for those who produced them. The naturalization of an imaginary Orient allowed for the colonization of real geographies - \u00E2\u0080\u009Corientalism responded more to the culture that produced it than to its putative object\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Said, 1978, p. 22), it \u00E2\u0080\u009Ccould prepare the way for what armies, administrations, and bureaucracies would later do on the ground\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Said, 1978, p. 123). Returning to an attempt to define postcolonialism, Jazeel states \u00E2\u0080\u009Cwhatever else postcolonialism is, it is a cluster of perspectives and interventions that interrogate what we think we know, urging us to explore more carefully the historical production of that knowledge\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Jazeel, 2019, pp. 1\u00E2\u0080\u00932). This attempt at a definition highlights the contributions of Foucault to the foundation of postcolonial theory. Foucault\u00E2\u0080\u0099s analyses of the relationships between knowledge and power, and of course his notion of discourse and discursive production, were essential to the work of Edward Said and continue to be important for those who follow in the postcolonial tradition (Jazeel, 2019). Foucault\u00E2\u0080\u0099s analysis of the relationship between knowledge and power demonstrates the importance of situating knowledge in the history of its production instead of trusting in the putative truth (Foucault, 1972). He offers that it is through history that some knowledge becomes truth while other knowledge is subjugated \u00E2\u0080\u0093 \u00E2\u0080\u009Cdisqualified as inadequate to their task or insufficiently elaborated \u00E2\u0080\u00A6 beneath the required level of cognition or scientificity\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Foucault, 1972). Foucauldian power relies on the existence of a discursive truth, a certain knowledge that is naturalized at the expense of other knowledges (Foucault, 1972). The production and reproduction of this \u00E2\u0080\u0098truth\u00E2\u0080\u0099 enables the expression of power and the maintenance of power relations \u00E2\u0080\u0093 and so the production of a discursive truth is fundamentally a pursuit of power. The mechanics of colonial systems (from representations of the other to imperial science, from infrastructure to ideologies of nature and urbanisation) all work to reproduce a discursive truth and through that truth maintain control and power. These systems remain in place today, naturalized into a post-colonial world and continue to churn as taken for granted truths. To unsettle the dominance of select truths Foucault advocates for:an ascending analysis of power . . . from its infinitesimal mechanisms, which each have their own history, their own trajectory, their own techniques and tactics, and [to] then see how these mechanisms of power, have been \u00E2\u0080\u0093 and continue to be \u00E2\u0080\u0093 invested, colonised, utilised, involuted, transformed, displaced, extended etc., by ever more general mechanisms. (Foucault, 1972, p.99)As such an investigation of not only what was imposed upon the colonized by the colonizer (the other by the author) but the reasons for why those impositions were desirable as modes of maintaining the exercise of power is essential to understanding how colonization continues to shape the agency of those living in postcolonial societies today. This has formed an important path for exploration in postcolonial thought. Much of the systems, ideologies, and infrastructures which exist today are taken for granted without questioning their fundamental underpinnings. With this in mind postcolonialism seeks to investigate and challenge \u00E2\u0080\u009Cepistemic certainties\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Jazeel, 2019, p. 2) brought to much of the world through imperial and colonial agendas. Colonial infrastructures, both physical and ideological, continue to live on in now independent nations like India. Their legacies range from language to legal systems, from massive irrigation projects like the Ganges Canal to educational institutions like the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, originally founded by the British in 1847 under a different name, where irrigation engineering was and continues to be taught in order to further the hydrological regime implemented by the British (Gilmartin, 1994). While over 70 years have passed since India\u00E2\u0080\u0099s independence in 1947 there can be no doubt that the impacts of the colonization of the Indian subcontinent continue to permeate the Representation Naturalization TranscriptionCOLONIALDESIREDISCOURSE IMAGINATIVE GEOGRAPHY LIVED GEOGRAPHYNaturalizationKNOWLEDGESKNOWLEDGETRUTH Reproduction through the exercise of powerSubjugationPOWERcities and societies of modern India. During nearly 200 years of formal British colonial rule India was reconstructed to mirror systems and ideologies that were not born from its local geographies, customs and aspirations, but instead to serve objectives, often self servient, set out by a far away nation. So today as we endeavor to solve systemic problems, like the water crisis in Delhi, its important to not simply look for the cracks in the system but instead to question the entirety of the system, the reason it was designed, and the purpose it was made to serve.Fig 3 - Knowledge, Power, TruthFig 4 - Process of manifesting an Imaginary Geography0706COLONIAL HYDROLOGY BEFORE EUROPEAN COLONIALISMD\u00E2\u0080\u0099Souza defines \u00E2\u0080\u0098colonial hydrology\u00E2\u0080\u0099 as \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe varied hydraulic interventions of colonialism to simultaneously alter South Asia\u00E2\u0080\u0099s fluvial and social worlds\u00E2\u0080\u009D (2006, p. 625). He argues that British colonial rule, particularly during the 19th century, shaped India\u00E2\u0080\u0099s hydrologic reality through the implementation of irrigation infrastructure and its intended supersession of traditional water management (D\u00E2\u0080\u0099Souza, 2006). Indeed the British imposed upon India a hydrologic system and ideology that continues to impact water provisioning today (Sharan, 2011), but here it is argued that the seeds of colonial hydrology were sown long before the establishment of the British Raj in 1858, and even before Vasco da Gama\u00E2\u0080\u0099s arrival in India in 1498. It began, da Cunha argues, with the drawing of a line (2019).In his book The Invention of Rivers: Alexander\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Eye and Ganga\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Descent da Cunha recounts the story of the line that shaped the predominant hydrological paradigm, a Foucauldian truth, one which has had troubling consequences in India (2019). His argument stems from the separation of land from water as a human construct executed through the drawing of a line. Da Cunha traces the origin of this line back to the School of Miletus, founded by Thales (commonly known as being the first Western scientist), whose scholars are credited with the invention of the first world maps (2019). Two important consequences arose from the employment of the line that separates EUROPEAN COLONIALISM DID NOT JUST IMPOSE ANOTHER WAY OF SEEING AND KNOWING PLACE; IT IMPOSED ANOTHER PLACE Dilip da Cunha, 2019, p. xi0908land from water, both of which continue to shape India\u00E2\u0080\u0099s hydrologic regime today: first, the creation of distinct entities of water, the river chief among them; and second, the prioritization of overland flows over other moments in the hydrological cycle (da Cunha, 2019). Da Cunha builds the case for the river as a human construct through a discussion of its creation by the drawing of lines (da Cunha, 2019). In its most basic abstraction a river is created by the two lines which define its banks. They confine water as a flow in a channel and dictate where it should and should not be. These lines, as all other lines, are drawn between points and therefore define an origin and a destination \u00E2\u0080\u0093 insinuating that the river and the waters that flow within it begin in specific places and end in others (da Cunha, 2019; Mathur & da Cunha, 2014). Lines shape the totality of rivers, characterising them as unique entities that can be controlled and designed, the first step towards which was drawing them in the first place. Like an imaginative geography the river is the product of representation. It exists first as an imaginative element, an oversimplification of a natural flow of water that can be drawn. Then there is a process of naturalization and transcription. Over time and through the continuous depiction of rivers in this fashion, and by physical interventions that begin to transcribe rivers in maps onto real geographic surfaces (the building of embankments, channelization, etc.) the river, in a sense, becomes real. But as Mathur and da Cunha remind us the river is \u00E2\u0080\u009Ca product of visual literacy rather than a natural feature of the earth surface, an extraordinary work of art before it is a taken for granted object of science\u00E2\u0080\u009D (2014, p. 1). While the drawing of lines that separate water from land serve to create distinct entities of water in the imaginary, even with physical intervention water often cannot, or perhaps will not, be contained. Flood serves as another reminder that the river, and the separation of water from land are human constructs which have been represented, naturalized and transcribed into a lived experience. If the drawn line creates the bounds of water it also creates flood, which can be understood as the moments when water breaches the drawn line (da Cunha, 2019). Flood is generally conceived of as a natural event, and when it impacts human settlement it is labelled a natural disaster, however, following da Cunha\u00E2\u0080\u0099s logic flood is in fact a human disaster, one born of human imagination and intervention (2019). Only by defining where water should and should not be can one define the moment of flood \u00E2\u0080\u0093 without a line to cross water can never flood.The separation of water from land has had one other particularly profound consequence which da Cunha describes as the anchoring of reality in a singular moment of the hydrological cycle, specifically the moment of overland flow (2019). The typical hydrological cycle describes water as a never-ending flow moving between precipitation, formation of flows in/over land, evaporation, and cloud formation. By drawing maps in the bird\u00E2\u0080\u0099s eye view under \u00E2\u0080\u0098fair-weather\u00E2\u0080\u0099 conditions, and with lines that delineate water as static entities, we have chosen to anchor in the moment of overland flow and created a reality where rivers exist as discrete perennial entities (da Cunha, 2019; Mathur & da Cunha, 2014). The result of this \u00E2\u0080\u009Chas made water in other moments in the hydrologic cycle ephemeral, so that rain, mist, snow, humidity, and so on are seen a visitors where as rivers are granted the status of residents\u00E2\u0080\u009D (da Cunha, 2019, p. 9). The permanence of rivers in this paradigm is illustrated by rivers which run dry: What remains is a space between lines that continues to be seen and enforced as a river or a riverbed, suggesting it is the line more than water that is essential to rivers. It \u00E2\u0080\u0098flows\u00E2\u0080\u0099 even when waters do not. (da Cunha, 2019, p. 6)In areas that are heavily influenced by the monsoon, like South Asia, \u00E2\u0080\u0098rivers\u00E2\u0080\u0099 continually oscillate between conditions of \u00E2\u0080\u0098flood\u00E2\u0080\u0099 and \u00E2\u0080\u0098running dry,\u00E2\u0080\u0099 and as such representing these flows as consistent, and perennial was a misconception. This representational misconception was first imposed upon India\u00E2\u0080\u0099s geography at the hands of one Alexander the Great (da Cunha, 2019). Alexander found immense power in the map, and \u00E2\u0080\u009Ctogether with the surveyors who accompanied him, sought to confine water to channels on the earth\u00E2\u0080\u0099s surface, name these channels, and draw them into their world map\u00E2\u0080\u009D (da Cunha, 2019, p. 12) believing, perhaps rightly so, that mapping a place would lead to conquering it. Although his journey in India was cut short, he is credited with being the first to refer to Ganga as \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe Ganges, which he did not see but imagined as the greatest river on earth and the wealthiest\u00E2\u0080\u009D (emphasis added) (da Cunha, 2019, p. 12).The river, since its inception and subsequent inclusion on the earliest of world maps, has been maintained as an essential geographical feature. Its importance is reinforced by our employment of the river for generating wealth through water provision, power generation, industrial development, real-estate, and irrigation (da Cunha, 2019). This prioritization of rivers, da Cunha argues, has marginalized the rain, the relegation of which is especially concerning for India and other places whose natural hydrologic regimes are governed by the monsoon rains (2019). The underestimation of the importance of rain, which is perhaps the flipside of the prioritization of rivers, also draws its beginnings in early Western thought (Mathur & da Cunha, 2014). As early as the 1st century AD, and through to the 16th century, many scholars, including Leonardo da Vinci, would not buy into the idea that it was rain which fed rivers, and instead hypothesized of a vast network of water circulating through the core of the earth (Mathur & da Cunha, 2014). It wasn\u00E2\u0080\u0099t until the 1600\u00E2\u0080\u0099s that rain was acknowledge for its importance in the hydrologic cycle, when Pierre Perrault and later Edme Mariotte put forth sufficient proof that precipitation falling in the watershed of the River Seine was more than enough to compose the flow of the river (Mathur & da Cunha, 2014). Yet in the European mind the river still took precedence over the rain and the lines that defined them continued to be employed as Europe set its eyes on South Asia.Just as with human and cultural aspects of place, the ability to transform an existing physical geography into an imaginative geography that performs as one wishes it to, was essential to colonization. The inception of the line that can both separate an overland flow of water from the hydrologic processes that sustain it, as well as give form to the flow itself is, as I believe da Cunha would agree, the beginning of colonial hydrology. That line has enabled and encouraged the creation, engineering, and design of a paradigm of hydrology in which mankind attempts control over water, and therefore people. The line belongs to a discourse of truth that was maintained by European Colonists as they FloodRiverDrawn LinesVisible FlowFig 5. Creating a River1110As one would say of modern scholars, engineers, geographers, designers, etcetera, when the British arrived in India they were \u00E2\u0080\u009Calready disposed to seeing a terrain marked by lines of flow.\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Mathur & da Cunha, 2014, p. 4). Not only were they already possessed by an ideology which prioritized rivers over rain, they were equipped with maps, and the science to continue to produce and \u00E2\u0080\u0098improve\u00E2\u0080\u0099 on them. Upon first arrival mapping and surveying allowed for the establishment of settlements along rivers, which could serve as important means of transportation for the goods the Europeans would export to a growing world market (da Cunha, 2019; McGinn, 2009). But drawing lines on maps soon became a tool for expansion and conquest as the British East India Company looked to claim India as their own in the 18th century. During the British conquest and subsequent rule of India, irrigation engineering became an indispensable tool. Veiled under the guise of development and famine prevention, hydrologic engineering was employed as a form \u00E2\u0080\u0098peaceful conquest\u00E2\u0080\u0099 that allowed the British Empire to \u00E2\u0080\u009Cmultiply its territorial holdings without having to fire a shot or invade COLONIAL HYDROLOGY: BRITISH COLONIALISM IN INDIAAn empire is something of a fiction to begin with, an imagined entity . . .Raymond B. Craib, 2019, p. 17conquered (most of ) the world. To continually reproduce that discourse and to draw power from it required the imposition of infrastructural and administrative systems, and the subjugation of other knowledges \u00E2\u0080\u0093 this formed the basis of British colonial hydrology in India.1312another state\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Acciavatti, 2015, p. 118). In his book Canal Irrigation in British India Stone, perhaps not intentionally, necessitates an investigation into British colonial hydrology through a postcolonial lens:As with any technology, canal irrigation was not \u00E2\u0080\u0098neutral\u00E2\u0080\u0099 in its effects. It was intended to serve the perceived interests of its masters, in much the same way as the earlier irrigation works were. In its design, modes of operation, and intended effects, canal irrigation was ultimately a cultural expression, representing the priorities and aspirations of its western architects, and was inextricably bound up with some of the most vital aspects of colonial rule. (Stone, 2002, pp. 7\u00E2\u0080\u00938)Specific colonial desires for a British India were transcribed into reality through the design and construction of embankments, canals, dams, barrages, and pipes. Exemplified by a vast network of irrigation and water provisioning projects across all of India, the British through its colonial hydrology sought to achieve three important things: to demonstrate its power through scientific prowess, to increase its revenue production, and to exercise control over the \u00E2\u0080\u0098native\u00E2\u0080\u0099 population (Acciavatti, 2015; D\u00E2\u0080\u0099Souza, 2006; Gilmartin, 1994, 2003; McGinn, 2009; Mollinga & Veldwisch, 2016). Hydrologic infrastructure in Colonial India came to exemplify the term \u00E2\u0080\u0098technology of rule\u00E2\u0080\u0099 (Mollinga & Veldwisch, 2016). The imposition of such infrastructures \u00E2\u0080\u009Cprovided the perfect alibi in order to incorporate a population into a colonial government and international market\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Acciavatti, 2015, p. 118) while \u00E2\u0080\u009Ctechnical innovation vindicated the social and political changes produced by colonial rule\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Acciavatti, 2015, p. 120).The description of colonial territories as conceived of as laboratories, by colonial powers, is common in literature tracing the impacts of \u00E2\u0080\u0098imperial science,\u00E2\u0080\u0099 a term which Gilmartin describes as suggesting \u00E2\u0080\u009Ca colonized world that became, in many respects, a great laboratory in which the natural world was not only catalogued, studied, and observed, but also technologically manipulated in the name of commercial transformations on a great scale\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Gilmartin, 1994, p. 1128). The extreme lengths to which the British Empire went in order to prove the superiority of their scientific and technological advances is illustrated no better than in Acciavatti\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Ganges Water Machine. His book documents the transformation of the Ganges River Basin into one of the worlds largest engineered spaces, crowned by the construction of the Ganges Canal (Acciavatti, 2015). He describes it as follows:Since the middle of the nineteenth century, this watercourse has functioned as a laboratory to test and build a new civilization around the culture of water management. Jointly authored by human actors and their shifting natural heritage, the Ganges River Basin today is a machine in which the entire basin functions as a highly engineered hydrological super-surface. (Acciavatti, 2015, p. 7)The British Empire demonstrated their self proclaimed superiority, maintaining their discursive truth, not only through the domination of people, but through the domination of nature \u00E2\u0080\u0093 water chief among it (Gilmartin, 2003). Lines originally used to suggest the course of overland flows became used first for its confinement and later for its redirection. Eventually, large areas of the Indian sub-continent had been transformed into machines that commanded nature, with varying success, to do the bidding of the colonizer. The rhetoric of imperial domination over nature was embedded into the scientific jargon (Gilmartin, 2003). Water was described as having the sole purpose of increasing production. The term \u00E2\u0080\u0098duty,\u00E2\u0080\u0099 in relation to water, was used as a measurement of the area of land that was irrigated by a unit of water, while the term waste became used to describe water that wasn\u00E2\u0080\u0099t performing productive work to serve the purposes of the state as directed by the engineer (Gilmartin, 2003). In an effort to propagate their ideology, of the superiority of their science over nature, and to produce a larger body of engineering professionals to carry out the will of the British Empire, various educational institutions were established in India beginning with the College of Civil Engineering at Roorkee in 1847 (Gilmartin, 2003). These schools pursued:the scientific control over nature . . . the aim of the education was not just skill in engineering, but also the \u00E2\u0080\u0098moral training\u00E2\u0080\u0099 and \u00E2\u0080\u0098discipline\u00E2\u0080\u0099 that would prepare them for \u00E2\u0080\u0098victorious success\u00E2\u0080\u0099 \u00E2\u0080\u0093 success, in this case, in \u00E2\u0080\u0098subduing nature,\u00E2\u0080\u0099 and turning its products into \u00E2\u0080\u0098resources\u00E2\u0080\u0099 that could be used for the purposes of production. (Gilmartin, 2003, p. 5058)Through these educational institutions the British were not only able to continue to colonize the land at an increasingly rapid pace, but also to colonize the mind \u00E2\u0080\u0093 \u00E2\u0080\u009Ccultivating the native to see the separation of land and water and to appreciate the economy, governance, ecology, aesthetics, hydraulics, and engineering that resulted from the river and landscape that followed\u00E2\u0080\u009D (da Cunha, 2019, p. 277). Educational institutions became a mechanism through which European truth could be reproduced and power relations between colonizer and colonized were maintained. British colleges were not the only institutions whose legacies were engineered to cultivate a new ideology within the peoples of India. The British, in many cases, also pursued an agenda of destroying traditional water management systems and eroding \u00E2\u0080\u0098local knowledge,\u00E2\u0080\u0099 which within a framework of \u00E2\u0080\u0098imperial science\u00E2\u0080\u0099 \u00E2\u0080\u009Chad no formal place\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Gilmartin, 1994, p. 1128). As a display of \u00E2\u0080\u0098technical dominance,\u00E2\u0080\u0099 colonial infrastructures were intended to surpass and supersede the technologies of previous empires (Acciavatti, 2015). The \u00E2\u0080\u009Ctraditional water management in India was a sophisticated, decentralized system\u00E2\u0080\u009D relying in large part on harvesting and managing monsoon rains (Colopy, 2012). This was at odds with British aims of centralization of water command through canal systems, which would grant them greater control (Acciavatti, 2015; Colopy, 2012). The British in order to maintain power and the dominance of their truth needed to subjugate local knowledge. As such the orientation and implementation of colonial infrastructure and administrative systems was \u00E2\u0080\u009Csharply aimed at eliminating\u00E2\u0080\u009D pre-existing systems (D\u00E2\u0080\u0099Souza, 2006, p. 624). Land settlement enacted by the British created private property which undermined traditional land management as well as the communal systems that were in place. Changes to the agricultural rent structure coupled with the introduction of perennial irrigation encouraged traditional rain fed water systems to fall into disuse and disrepair (D\u00E2\u0080\u0099Souza, 2006; Mollinga & Veldwisch, 2016). At the same time \u00E2\u0080\u009Ccolonial canal lines were deliberately situated in ways that supplanted other prevailing irrigation structures\u00E2\u0080\u009D (D\u00E2\u0080\u0099Souza, 2006, p. 624). In short:instituting private property, commodifying land, commercialisation, pursuing highly extractive revenue agendas and dismantling community control over natural resources caused the impoverishment of the rural populace at large and led to the decay and destruction of indigenous water harvesting systems. (D\u00E2\u0080\u0099Souza, 2006, p. 623)Colonizers saw control of rivers and water systems as a way of controlling local communities, instituting state power, and, perhaps most importantly, increasing the revenue that could be extracted from the land and people of India (D\u00E2\u0080\u0099Souza, 2006; Gilmartin, 1994, 2003; McGinn, 2009). McGinn details the devious and convoluted methods surrounding canal irrigation implemented by the British in order to capture revenue. He states firmly that \u00E2\u0080\u009Ccanals and railways were not built to modernise India\u00E2\u0080\u0099s economy. Development was merely rhetoric to legitimise actions taken purely in the interests of capital\u00E2\u0080\u009D (McGinn, 2009, p. 6). The British Raj, the name given to the rule of India after the crown officially took over control from the East India Company in 1858, was highly invested in maintaining India as an agricultural state and an exporter of raw goods (McGinn, 2009). To this end canal and irrigation projects were deemed vital, as a perennial water supply was assumed to result in higher yields and thus higher revenues from heavy taxation (McGinn, 2009). The imposed system did not, however, endeavour to irrigate lands evenly:Dry zones in need of irrigation were left untouched whilst productive land already irrigated by wells became the target of canal development . . . areas not in need of additional irrigation were developed for the production of water-demanding crops like sugarcane, indigo and rice. (McGinn, 2009, pp. 13\u00E2\u0080\u009314)Simultaneously public works like canals became opportunities for British 1514investment. The British Raj became \u00E2\u0080\u009Can institution that functioned almost exclusively to generate markets for British capital and deliver the necessary security for these investments\u00E2\u0080\u009D (McGinn, 2009, p. 8). Canals were being built on capital invested by the rich in Britain, and returns were being generated by taxation and export revenue in India (McGinn, 2009). While the British no longer profit directly from the colonial hydrology they pursued between the 18th and 20th centuries, the ideologies and infrastructural pursuits continue to shape India today. The continuation of colonial hydrology is epitomized by the sustained pursuit of the interlinking of India\u00E2\u0080\u0099s rivers. This would see the linking of almost 60 of the nation\u00E2\u0080\u0099s rivers in an attempt to further wean Indian farmers off of the Monsoon rains (Reuters, 2017). The contemporary name for the project is the Interlinking of Rivers Programme and is being instituted by the current Indian government, but the origin of this scheme dates back to Colonial India when the prominent British irrigation engineer Arthur Cotton was a great proponent of the idea (Acciavatti, 2015). Investigating the intent behind the reshaping of India\u00E2\u0080\u0099s hydrologic reality, the desire that inspired the lines drawn in maps and engineering plans, provides a unique understanding as to why continuing to work within the system created by the British is not likely to serve India and its people. The colonial system was not designed to work within the natural paradigm but instead to control it and impose upon it a new reality. Neither was the colonial agenda a pursuit of development for the Indian people, but instead a plan to generate revenue. Holistically the system was created to continuously affirm the discursive truth that has maintained relations of power that marginalize not only certain knowledges but also certain people, primarily the poor. People who whether by choice but most often by circumstance cannot live within the framework created by colonialism that has manifested itself in legal and economic systems, urban development plans, service provisioning infrastructures, and conceptions of modernisation. This is undeniably obvious in Indian cities and perhaps in Delhi more than anywhere else.URBAN MANIFESTATIONS OF COLONIAL HYDROLOGY: DELHIDelhi is commonly known as a city of cities. This pays homage to the numerous historical cities that were built through successive empires, each still visible in part within the city\u00E2\u0080\u0099s urban fabric. But the phrase has also come to connote the immense divisions amongst the city, divisions which have been accentuated since the British arrived in 1803.Early urban settlements in what is now Delhi, from Qila Rai Pithora in the 12th century to Shahjahanabad in the 17th century, shared a deep connection to the Yamuna. Buildings were never erected in the floodplains, instead they borrowed the rivers view incorporating its majesty into gardens and palaces built on high ground along the river\u00E2\u0080\u0099s banks (Alday & Gupta, 2018). During the Mughal Empire the city was built \u00E2\u0080\u009Cto look sensuously out on the river, and the waterfront was a pleasure zone of palaces and gardens\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Dasgupta, 2018). For these settlements the main source of their water was not the Yamuna but the rain, which was collected as it ran off the Aravalli hills (Dasgupta, 2018). Built in harmony with the seasonal rains \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe Mughal city was thick with wells, and also with their necessary corollary: man-made lakes and tanks which replenished what was drawn out by capturing rain and letting it seep down into the earth\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Dasgupta, 2018, p. 158). Fig 6 - Delhi through timeLal Kot1060Qila Rai Pithora1180Siri1297Tughlaqabad1321Jahanpanah1326Firuzabad1354Shahjahanabad1638New Delhi1911Surface FlowsAravali HillsYamuna1716Living within and facilitating the natural cycle of water between its different flows and states maintained a high groundwater level enabling shallow wells and storage tanks to sustain the peoples\u00E2\u0080\u0099 thirst even during the dry period (Colopy, 2012; Sharan, 2011). The system employed complemented the characteristics of the place, a \u00E2\u0080\u009Crelatively arid but paradoxically water \u00E2\u0080\u0093 and monsoon \u00E2\u0080\u0093 rich land\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Colopy, 2012, p. 63). Very little of the water harvesting infrastructure constructed prior to British Colonialism still exists today and what does is generally in a state of major disrepair (Jacob, 2014). In Delhi a few examples remain \u00E2\u0080\u0093 the man-made lakes Hauz Khas, and Hauz-i-Shamsi and the Agrasen ki Baoli (stepwell) are prime examples but they no longer serve the same purpose. Once frequented as places of rest and rejuvenation where clean water could be harvested, the lakes are now pools of filth choked by sewage and garbage while the stepwell\u00E2\u0080\u0099s connection to the aquifer has been cut so that its only water is derived from urban runoff (Colopy, 2012; Jacob, 2014). The same can be said of the Yamuna at Delhi. Once majestic and revered as a goddess, marvelous in its capricious tendencies, it served as a space of daily and spiritual ritual \u00E2\u0080\u0093 but today it is a mostly forgotten space and to many an embarrassment (Alday & Gupta, 2018; Baviskar, 2017; Dasgupta, 2018; Jacob, 2014). Almost the entire flow of the Yamuna is diverted north of Delhi at the Wazirabad Barrage (Alday & Gupta, 2018). Less than half a kilometer downstream the Najafgarh Drain empties into the dry riverbed, its flow made up entirely of sewage, industrial effluents, and urban runoff (Alday & Gupta, 2018, Baviskar, 2017). During the dry season the flow of the Yamuna is composed completely of the sewage and waste water the city dumps into it, the repercussions of which are felt all the way to the Bay of Bengal (Alday & Gupta, 2018). The loss of traditional water systems and the desecration of the Yamuna have forced a reliance on an inefficient water provisioning system which continues to reproduce spatial injustices imposed during colonialism. An examination of the history which produced Delhi\u00E2\u0080\u0099s current water system also alludes to the beginnings of the current water crisis, one which seems to have been inevitable since the early 1900\u00E2\u0080\u0099s.The British declared Delhi the capital of British India in 1911 and shortly after began the implementation of Luytens\u00E2\u0080\u0099 designs for New Delhi, which drew heavily on major Western centres like \u00E2\u0080\u009CParis, Rome, and Washington D.C.\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Alday & Gupta, 2018). The design, in opposition to the earlier Mughal settlements in Old Delhi, turned its back to the Yamuna (Alday & Gupta, 2018; Dasgupta, 2018). Unlike European rivers, the Yamuna did not maintain a continuous and constant flow, it could not \u00E2\u0080\u009Cbe walled in and enjoyed from riverside caf\u00C3\u00A9s and walkways\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Dasgupta, 2018, p. 159). Put simply \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe British did not find the Yamuna beautiful\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Dasgupta, 2018, p. 159) and so they did away with it. The colonial desire to impose their \u00E2\u0080\u0098European-style water system\u00E2\u0080\u0099 resulted in the abandonment of rain and groundwater fed systems, which were replaced with diversions, dams, canals, and pipes that drew from the river upstream of Delhi and directed wastewater back into the Yamuna further downstream (Dasgupta, 2018). Viewing \u00E2\u0080\u009Cpiped water and drainage as an integral component of urban modernisation\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Sharan, 2011, p. 426) the British began the construction of a piped water provisioning system in the late 1800s. The system primarily fed the areas where the majority of residents were European, and thus began the spatial inequity of water provisioning that continues today. Alongside the unjust provisioning of water, the use of water ways to carry away waste is a legacy of colonization that continues to plague Delhi today. During the 19th and early 20th centuries the colonists were determined that rivers (more so those in India than in England) had the capacity to \u00E2\u0080\u009Cabsorb, dilute and disperse wastes\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Sharan, 2011, p. 447) which formally led to the use of waterways as entities to receive waste water and carry it away. Today the city of Delhi, like numerous other cities in India, is in the midst of a water crisis, the burden of which is inequitably borne by the poor (Mehta et al., 2014; Truelove, 2011). As summarized by Roy \u00E2\u0080\u0093 \u00E2\u0080\u009Cwater is produced and commodified, struggled over, contested and transformed into an indictor for power, urbanisation and modernity, which renders water access as dependent on economic, social and cultural processes\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Roy, 2013, p. 98). The equally unsuitable Aravali HillsYamuna1. Hauz (tanks) 2. Baoli (stepwells) 3. Lakes and Ponds 4. Streams and Rivers11 4432 24Fig 7 - Holding water, diagramatic section through Delhi1918their centralized irrigation and water provisioning systems (Acciavatti, 2015), has resulted in the overdraft of groundwater (Alday & Gupta, 2018; Mehta et al., 2014). This, coupled with the development and encroachment on critical areas of groundwater recharge (not to mention the repression of traditional water management practices pursued by the British), is causing the groundwater table to drop quickly (Alday & Gupta, 2018; Baviskar, 2017; Jacob, 2014). Out of the nine districts of Delhi only two are extracting water at sustainable rates, in the other seven the rate of groundwater withdrawal is outpacing that of recharge by 1.7 times (Alday & Gupta, 2018). With contamination, groundwater depletion, and an infrastructural system rife with inequities and inefficiencies there is great need to look outside of the current system for an answer to Delhi\u00E2\u0080\u0099s water crisis. While the paradigm of urbanisation and modernity touted by European colonists may have mandated piped water and the conversion of water courses into controlled infrastructure, it may be time for the \u00E2\u0080\u009Cre-emergence of [what the colonists deemed to be] . . . low-ranking knowledges, these unqualified, even directly disqualified knowledges\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Foucault, 1972) and the production of a new discourse which brings power to those subjugated by the colonial truth. connections to guarantee a 24/7 supply of water, for the poor the cost of accessing a sufficient supply of water for daily needs is significantly higher (Mehta et al., 2014). The insufficient and inequitable water provisioning has resulted in the growth of a large water black market where the poor purchase water at high costs from purveyors who obtain the water from illegal connections to the official system or private and unregistered tubewells that draw up contaminated groundwater (Alday & Gupta, 2018; Mehta et al., 2014; Truelove, 2011). In addition to the monetary and health costs of relying on illegal water provision there is also the cost of time. For the poor the task of \u00E2\u0080\u0098fetching water\u00E2\u0080\u0099, whether through official or illegal means, also requires a significant investment of time, an investment most often made by women and girls, who \u00E2\u0080\u009Care often kept out of school to stay home and help with either procuring tanker water or watching the youngest children while older women leave on water outings\u00E2\u0080\u009D(Truelove, 2011, p. 148). While \u00E2\u0080\u009Cnational and local authorities are reluctant to extend water and sanitation services to people living in slums, claiming that connecting these communities will \u00E2\u0080\u0098legitimise\u00E2\u0080\u0099 their presence\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Roy, 2013, p. 97), the crisis continues to worsen. The lack of sewerage is leading to severe contamination of both overland and ground-water in the region (Colopy, 2012; Jacob, 2014). An estimated 45% of the population of Delhi is not connected to the official sewer and as a result direct their waste into ephemeral streams and small rivers, once used to capture rain water, now officially labeled drains (Colopy, 2012; Jacob, 2014). The drains lead to the contamination of the Yamuna, into which the majority eventually flow; the official piped water system, which since its founding by the British has suffered from the interaction of sewage and drinking water; and groundwater into which the contaminated water percolates (Alday & Gupta, 2018; Colopy, 2012; Jacob, 2014; Sharan, 2011). Still groundwater remains an important source of water for Delhi (Alday & Gupta, 2018). The proliferation of unregulated tubewells, a technology introduced by the British in the early 1900s after recognizing the insufficiency of approaches to water management and city planning developed during colonial rule has continued today and remains unable to cope with rapid urbanization and a natural hydrologic system which does not resemble that of Western Europe. An estimate of \u00E2\u0080\u009C77% of Delhi\u00E2\u0080\u0099s urban fabric has been constructed in the last 40 years\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Alday & Gupta, 2018, p. 67), making it \u00E2\u0080\u009Cone of the fastest growing metropolises in the world\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Mehta et al., 2014, p. 163). The city\u00E2\u0080\u0099s most current municipal Master Plan \u00E2\u0080\u0098Delhi 2021\u00E2\u0080\u0099 depicts zoning that has long been surpassed through the growth of informal settlement and a continued lack of planning and affordable housing provision for the rapidly growing population (Alday & Gupta, 2018; Jain et al., 2016). As a result, \u00E2\u0080\u009Cless than one quarter of Delhi\u00E2\u0080\u0099s population lives in \u00E2\u0080\u0098planned colonies\u00E2\u0080\u0099 \u00E2\u0080\u009D (Alday & Gupta, 2018, p. 69) \u00E2\u0080\u0093 areas zoned for residential development, and which comply with the necessary norms and bylaws (Cities of Delhi, 2015). These planned colonies include those set out in the original plans for New Delhi, and following the colonial legacy are the only colonies which are fully serviced with water, sewerage, paved roads and other basic infrastructure (Cities of Delhi, 2015). The remainder of the population lives in settlements expressing some degree of informality. Depending on their socio-economic and political status the majority suffer insufficient and indirect water provision, a lack of connection to the official sewer system, and little agency over their access to clean water (Mehta et al., 2014; Truelove, 2011, 2018). The official piped water system continues its colonial legacy of inefficiency with a reported 40-60% of water lost to leaks and illegal water tapping resulting in even those who are fortunate enough to be hooked up to the system to search for supplementary water sources on either a continuous or intermittent basis (Mongabay-India, 2019; Sharan, 2011; Truelove, 2018). The Delhi Jal Board, the government agency in charge of water provisioning, has moved to supplement the system with a fleet of water tankers to service poor areas where the pipeline network does not reach or where the pipes run dry, but the service is limited and sporadic (Roy, 2013; Truelove, 2011). While middle and upper-class residents can leverage their financial power and political 2120THE POWER OF REPRESENTATION: PAINTING, DRAWING, MAPPING AND LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURERepresentation has played a fundamental role in colonisation. Colonial representation, of both textual and visual mediums, created imaginative geographies and narratives that became realities of conquest and domination (see Edward Said\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Orientalism, 2019). The analysis of these representations and their effects gave rise to postcolonial theory (Jazeel, 2019).Landscape Architecture too was born from representation, mostly that of landscape drawing and painting, but later also of mapping. All three of these mediums have played their own parts in colonialism. Colonial maps, paintings and drawings all contributed to the discursive formation of imaginative geographies and were used by colonists as templates to be transcribed onto real geographies. The planimetric and sectional drawings created by engineers of canals and embankments depicted the systems of control that would be constructed to dominate nature and people (Acciavatti, 2015). Maps too have long been instruments of control (Craib, 2000; Kalpagam, Fig 8 - Role of representation23221995). For many European nations \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe recording of a place on a map became a critical sign of possession\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Craib, 2000, p. 16) and as such mapping most often prefaced colonisation. Barrow notes that \u00E2\u0080\u009Cduring the British colonial period in India, maps were among the most effective resources the British could turn to when they looked for their legitimacy as a colonial power\u00E2\u0080\u009D (2003, p. 2). The nature of the modern map reinforced the European notion of land as a space to be owned and controlled \u00E2\u0080\u009Cby assuming an ontological separation between subject and object and by ordering space in a uniform, infinitely repeatable fashion\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Craib, 2000, p. 20). It was not simply the type of representation but the method of constructing it that was critical to its colonial nature. The use of a grid for example can serve to blanket terrain in uniformity \u00E2\u0080\u0093 \u00E2\u0080\u009Cwhen overlaid with an abstract grid, land became a socially and historically flat surface for possession and control, a surface that was static and ahistorical\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Craib, 2000, p. 20). While the addition of various cartographic elements, symbols, illustrations, and dedications to maps served to convince the viewer that the lands depicted in the map were a natural part of the colonial empire (Barrow, 2003). Mitchell\u00E2\u0080\u0099s seminal book in the field of Landscape Studies draws deep connections between the act of creating and representing landscape and the pursuits of imperialism. Mirroring the scientific conquest of nature attempted by imperial powers, landscape painting and drawing have always been about two things: control over nature and the superiority of the modern European man (Mitchell, 2002). This takes root in the claims that modern European landscape painting was born from the idea that landscape was first seen for what it truly is when the modern man gazed upon it solely for his own purpose, and that therefore modern landscape painting was the first natural representation of nature (Mitchell, 2002). Mitchell finds that \u00E2\u0080\u009Con the one hand, the goal [of landscape painting] is nonrepresentational painting, freed of reference, language, and subject matter; on the other hand, pure hyperrepresentational painting, a superlikeness that produces \u00E2\u0080\u0098natural representations of nature\u00E2\u0080\u0099 \u00E2\u0080\u009D (Mitchell, 2002, p. 13). It is a conscious method then, of deciding what nature is and then convincing the TOWARDS A MODUS OF POSTCOLONIAL DESIGN: METHODOLOGYaudience that a decision was never made. There is an attempt \u00E2\u0080\u009Cto erase the signs of our own constructive activity in the formation of landscape as meaning or value, to produce an art that conceals its own artifice, to imagine a representation that \u00E2\u0080\u0098 breaks through\u00E2\u0080\u0099 representation into the realm of the nonhuman\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Mitchell, 2002, p. 16-17). In this way there occurs the construction of a reality and the construction of an illusion convincing the viewer that the reality is true \u00E2\u0080\u0093 a process that draws parallels to the formation of imaginative geographies. The power of representation is an important piece of the architectural disciplines. Some might argue that architecture is embodied more in its representation than its physical manifestations. Representation is both an imaginative and practical tool \u00E2\u0080\u0093 its used to convince public and private stakeholders of the efficacy of a design and at the same time to communicate information from designers to craftsman, to translate design into construction. It is also employed as a creative endeavour to explore possibilities and tell stories of what may or not be.Through the earlier discussion of colonial hydrology, both during and prior to European colonisation, what is most striking, at a fundamental level, is the ability that colonial interventions had to recharacterize the relationship between the Indian people and water. From drawing lines to separate water from land and the imposition of massive canal projects, to the destruction of traditional water management practices and the reorienting of the city of Delhi, colonial hydrology has shaped the very way that Indian people view, live within, and interact with water. Traditionally Indian societies have been stewards of water, aware of the cyclical nature of its flows. Water infrastructure was deployed not to reconfigure water systems and short circuit natural cycles but to mimic its patterns in moments of holding, overflowing, and seeping (da Cunha, 2019; Jacob, 2014; Mathur & da Cunha, 2009). da Cunha recounts how prior to colonization, and before the marginalization of rain in preference of the river, settlements in India were less fixated on the specific position of overland flows in horizontal space and instead focused on the rise and fall of water (2019). Rain that fell from the sky, Fig 9 - Photo taken of the ruins at Hauz Khas, Delhi2524\u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe celestial Ganga\u00E2\u0080\u009D, soaked the earth creating an \u00E2\u0080\u009Cocean of rain\u00E2\u0080\u009D and encouraging movement to higher ground (da Cunha, 2019, p. 232). Care was also taken to refrain from soiling water. Hymns within \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe most ancient Hindu texts, the Vedas . . . forbid any pollution of water bodies, noting places where defecation and urination are permitted\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Colopy, 2012, p. 32). In Muslim thought water \u00E2\u0080\u009Cis considered a blessing from God that gives and sustains life\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Faruqui, Biswas, & Bino, 2001, p. 1) and as such the Mughal Empire sought to ensure equitable and sustainable water provision (Dasgupta, 2018; Jacob, 2014). Both Hindu and Muslim people hold water as an agent of purification (R. P. B. Singh, 1994), a belief demonstrated by the Hindu performance of puja on the banks of rivers (including splashing water on the head and immersing ones body) (Colopy, 2012); and Muslim practices of wudu and ghusl (washing before prayer and ritual bathing respectively) (Faruqui et al., 2001). While religious beliefs and practices continue to hold, the people of India\u00E2\u0080\u0099s relationship to water has changed. This is illustrated with the relationship between Delhi and the Yamuna. As referenced earlier, Dasgupta describes the Mughal city in what is now Old Delhi as one that was built \u00E2\u0080\u009Cto look sensuously out on the river . . . the waterfront was a pleasure zone of palaces and gardens\u00E2\u0080\u009D (2018, p. 158), while today \u00E2\u0080\u009Cmany people spend years in Delhi without ever laying eyes on the Yamuna\u00E2\u0080\u009D (2018, p. 159). \u00E2\u0080\u009CFor the citizens of Delhi, the Yamuna is a non-place. If history, identity, and social relations are the hallmarks of an \u00E2\u0080\u0098anthropological place\u00E2\u0080\u0099, the Yamuna is perceived as being devoid of all these . . . the river is a watery nothingness\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Baviskar, 2017, p. 4). In comparing to earlier descriptions India today is very different place \u00E2\u0080\u0093 \u00E2\u0080\u009CEuropean colonialism did not just impose another way of seeing and knowing place; it imposed another place\u00E2\u0080\u009D (da Cunha, 2019, p. xi). Colonial hydrology, first through modes of representation and later through infrastructural and administrative acts on the ground has changed the narrative of India\u00E2\u0080\u0099s relationship to water. There are many who still rely on the Yamuna and on natural and man-made water spaces for social and productive use, including the procurment of water. This is the realm of subalternity. Its people are the subaltern, a term used within the discourse of Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory to describe those people or voices which are dominated by the ruling class (Jazeel, 2019). They are those who have been forced to live in a system which was not designed to serve them, whose voices and lives are marginalized in pursuit of continued colonial hydrology \u00E2\u0080\u0093 people who today are persecuted by \u00E2\u0080\u0098bourgeoisie environmentalism\u00E2\u0080\u0099, perpetuated by governmental agencies along with the middle and upper-class, as the cause of a deteriorating natural environment hindering the pursuit of Delhi\u00E2\u0080\u0099s dream of becoming a world class city (Baviskar, 2018; Palat Narayanan, 2019). How does a designer proceed?In his book, appropriately titled Postcolonialism, Jazeel argues that \u00E2\u0080\u009Cpostcolonialism is best conceived not as a theory per se, but instead as methodology\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Jazeel, 2019, p. 3). While his book speaks primarily to the pursuit of postcolonial geography, I find his sentiments applicable to postcolonialism in any field, including the field(s) of design in which little seems to have been published on the topic. After all, the end goal is the same \u00E2\u0080\u0093 not simply to document the impacts of colonialism but to \u00E2\u0080\u009Cconceptually transcend the primacy of colonization\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Jazeel, 2019, p. 5). In this way Jazeel states that \u00E2\u0080\u009Cpostcolonial texts and interventions may consciously seek to push past and beyond the condition of coloniality in its widest sense\u00E2\u0080\u009D (2019, p. 5). The author\u00E2\u0080\u0099s use of the term \u00E2\u0080\u0098interventions\u00E2\u0080\u0099 here is comforting, as it is a term we \u00E2\u0080\u0098designers\u00E2\u0080\u0099 often use to describe our work, this places the pursuit of postcolonial design within our sights.This project, as I believe no project operating under the lens of postcolonialism should, does not intend to put forth one specific, overarching methodology for postcolonial landscape architecture or design at large \u00E2\u0080\u0093 put concisely \u00E2\u0080\u009Cthe very idiosyncratic context of each of our own research endeavors should promulgate a just as unique call\u00E2\u0080\u009D (Jazeel, 2019, p. 200). Following that logic my own methodology is less the employment of an existing methodology and more a creative pursuit in itself, in which I borrow and attempt to expand upon ideas, frameworks, ambitions, and modes of narration and representation in order to contribute a design response conceived of through a postcolonial lens.As for a modus of working this project turns to Edward Said and Michel Foucault who have stressed the importance of representation as a form of discursive production that has the power to preference certain knowledges, craft truths and imagine narratives (Foucault, 1972; Said, 1978). Representation and narrative are of course two tools commonly employed in Landscape Architecture. In the case of colonialism and imperialism, representation was used in the production of discourse that justified the dominance of the colonial entity, the superiority of their way of life, and the power of imperial science. It did so by silencing the voices of the other, the colonized. The work of the Subaltern Studies Collective aimed to retell Indian history through the voices of the dominated (subaltern) and attempted to counter issues of the hegemony over historical narrative with representation (Jazeel, 2019). Similarly this project attempts to reimagine the water system through architectural representation in a way that presents more clearly the often invisible infrastructures that maintain socio-economic and political inequities in access to water and water related services in urban India. This project will exist solely as representations and persuasions, not with any claims to directly produce changes in the real world but to reorient the viewers perception of the current water reality. Representation is employed to challenge what we typically draw and in some instances the way we draw - experimenting with depictions of water not just as bounding lines but as flows which respond to the social, physical and ideological infrastructures which shape India\u00E2\u0080\u0099s urban water reality.On Matters of SiteWhile many of the ideas introduced here are applicable to a number of urban centres in India, this project will focus geographically on Delhi, formally known as the National Capital Territory of Delhi which includes India\u00E2\u0080\u0099s capital city New Delhi. Specifically, this project will site itself in Informal Delhi, a conceptual rather than a physical geography. It is composed of the spaces, places, and interactions of those who are considered to inhabit unauthorized space and engage in unauthorized activity. This does not imply criminality but instead a condition of marginalization. In Delhi the formal and informal live side by side, intertwined and superimposed. Thus using Informal Delhi as a site allows for the investigation of and intervention within a network of spaces constituted of a myriad of actors. 2726(RE)IMAGINING WATER: A POSTCOLONIAL RESPONSE TO COLONIAL HYDROLOGYIn its final form (Re)Imagining Water: A Postcolonial Response to Colonial Hydrology is commuicated as a virtual gallery containing a series of drawings and descriptions. The exhibit exists hypothetically in the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi where it may be frequented by the upper and middle class and designers alike. To follow is the contents which would have comprised the gallery exhibit and were once (perhaps still are) hosted on the website reimaginingwater.com .2928Fig 10 - Whose Lines Are These?3130Fig 11 - Marigolds Fig 12 - Pools, Pipes, Participation3332Fig 13, 14, 15 - Sanivation X Delhi Panels 1, 2, 33534IN CONCLUSIONWhile this project did not conclude with the design of a physical space, it became an important process in examining how representation has been previously used to further colonial intent and how it can be used to reflect on the systemic inequities that representation has helped to create. During the colonization of India, and many other geographies, the seemingly impartial drawings made by cartographers, engineers, planners, and designers were in fact tools in shaping preexisting places into the geophgraphies of the colonial imaginary and simultaneously expressing colonial power over nature and the other. As we continue to design physical spaces in the professional and academic pursuits of Landscape Architecture and other design fields this project advocates for the use of drawing to showcase invisible power relations and to reframe the narratives that are so often written by those in power. Doing so can be an important initial step in any kind of design intervention where there are socio-economic imbalances, and it is likely that those exist everywhere. In hindsight, this has been an exploration and development of a new layer of site analysis which will hopefully find a place in future projects and practices.Fig 16 - A Goddess3736.REFERENCESAcciavatti, A. (2015). Ganges Water Machine: Designing New India\u00E2\u0080\u0099s Ancient River. Applied Research + Design Publishing.Alday, I., & Gupta, P. V. (2018). Yamuna River Project: New Delhi Urban Ecology. Actar.Baan, I. (2014). Kumbh Mela. Harvard Design Magazine, (37), 7.Barrow, I. J. (2003). 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Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 36(5), 949\u00E2\u0080\u0093967. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775818759967"@en . "Graduating Project"@en . "Delhi (India)"@en . "10.14288/1.0390489"@en . "eng"@en . "Unreviewed"@en . "Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library"@en . "Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International"@* . "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/"@* . "Graduate"@en . "University of British Columbia. LARC 598"@en . "Landscape Architecture"@en . "Postcolonial Design"@en . "Foucault"@en . "Colonial Hydrology"@en . "Imaginary Geographies"@en . "(Re)Imagining Water : A Postcolonial Response to Colonial Hydrology"@en . "Text"@en . "http://hdl.handle.net/2429/74436"@en .