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Questioning Modernity’s Tradition: Designs of Tank Irrigation Technology of South India in a Historical Perspective

Researcher: Esha Shah 

The pro-traditionalist arguments in India have acquired an important anti-hegemonic discursive space challenging and critiquing modernity. This space, however, is defined by a certain notion of tradition that necessarily remains an interpretation. Often this interpretation is not based on an empirically rigorous inquiry of history of traditional societies and their environmental context and knowledge systems. This study questions the interpretation of tradition - in fact, modernity's tradition. Applying the insights generated in science and technology studies and based on empirical evidences collected from the folk literature and secondary historical sources, it evaluates the social scripting of traditional tank irrigation technology in the pre-colonial historical context, challenges a romantic interpretation of traditional knowledge systems, and shows that the tank irrigation technology has survived for a thousand years because its designs were "scripted", several centuries ago, with the help of forced and coerced labor that was ideologically controlled by the elites.

The study also presents evidence to suggest that traditional irrigation technology was not environmentally suitable in pre-colonial times as is projected by the popular belief among the pro-traditionalists. From the same modernist concern about social justice and ecological adaptability, it paints a picture of tradition that is contradictory to the image that is popular among the pro-traditionalists.

 

Contact: cised@isec.ac.in 

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