#TBT Red River Delta

Originally published on 2017-03-25

Cross-border riverine issues have long been of interest to me. In 1995, my husband and I visited Assam and even took a rafting trip on one of the Brahmputra's tributaries. In 1998, I had the privilege of going to Tibet, where I traveled along the Yarlung Tsangpo River, as the river is known in its upper reaches.

Last month, the East-West Center in Washington, DC hosted a seminar on The Upstream Superpower: China’s Transboundary River Policies, presented by Dr. Selina Ho of the National University of Singapore. The entire seminar is presented below (apologies for the video quality, but that’s what E-W Center provided):



An audience member raised the issue of the Red River, which flows through China and Vietnam. Naturally, I had to launch ArcMap to create a map. You may see the map of the Red River Delta and find information about how I created the map on the Bahu of Bengal Facebook page.

UNESCO has designated the Red River Delta as a biosphere reserve notable for mangroves and intertidal habitats.

The Souls of China

The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao by Ian Johnson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Recent surveys indicate that Chinese hold beliefs, but don’t claim to follow a religion.

The Souls of China by Ian Johnson focuses far too much on ritual (particularly funeral ritual) and too little on Chinese thought. If you want to learn about Chinese thought, then enroll in the edX online course on Humanity and Nature in Chinese Thought once it has been archived.

Readers will be surprised to learn about Xi Jinping's patronage of the Buddhist Linji Temple, where the monk Linji Yixuan founded the Linji School of Chan (Zen) Buddhism.

Johnson organizes his stories by seasons/months of the Chinese calendar, but in his afterword, he says that tian (heaven) is the aspiration of the people he followed for the book. Perhaps tian would have been a better way to organize this book. He says that tian suggests a sense of justice and respect and something higher than any one government. Tian might be a non-translatable, an ineffable concept.

For further reading, the Indian magazine Swarajya has an article Maoism Marries Confucianism - How China's Communists Are Appropriating Confucius. Appropriation serves Chinese nationalism, or what the article calls "Chineseness". I also think that Chinese leaders are concerned about materialism, consumerism, and the need for a moral compass.

The Blood Telegram: India's Secret War in Pakistan by Gary J Bass

Namaste

The Blood Telegram : India's Secret War in East Pakistan by Gary J. Bass
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was released in the U.S. as The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide. This version was released in South Asia as The Blood Telegram: India's Secret War in Pakistan.

The U.S. title is more accurate. Nixon and Kissinger claim the opening to China as their greatest foreign policy success. In actuality, Pakistan was the conduit to the U.S. opening to China. To reward Pakistan, Nixon and Kissinger shipped arms, which Pakistan in turn used to brutally crack down on the Bengalis in East Pakistan, resulting in a near-genocide of Bengali Hindus. In The Blood Telegram, Garry Bass seeks to correct Nixon and Kissinger's foreign policy record.


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China turns down India's proposal for joint mechanism on Brahmaputra - The New Indian Express

I feel a connection to the Brahmaputra River. In 1995, my husband and I visited Assam and even took a rafting trip on one of the Brahmputra's tributaries.  In 1998, I had the privilege of going to Tibet, where I traveled along the Yarlung Tsangpo River, as the river is known in its upper reaches.  Water issues concerning the river basin have since been of interest to me.

As I wrote in a previous post, Brahma Chellaney dedicated a whole chapter on the Tibetan Plateau in his book  Water: Asia's New Battleground.  He also discussed China's unwillingness to participate in transnational water commissions or international agreements.  It should come as no surprise then that China turns down India's proposal for joint mechanism on Brahmaputra.

The Ganges Brahmaputra River Basin area was created from the data set Hydrological basins in Southeast Asia.

The majority of the linework of the map was obtained by delineating drainage basin boundaries from hydrologically corrected elevation data with a resolution of 15 arc-seconds. The elevation dataset was part of a mapping product, HydroSHEDS, developed by the Conservation Science Program of World Wildlife Fund. Original input data had been obtained during NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM). Areas north of the SRTM extent, 60 degrees N, were obtained by merging with the HYDRO1k basin layer.

You may download a JPEG, PDF, or ArcMap document of the Ganges Brahmaputra River Basin.

Tales from River Brahmaputra

Source: amazon.com via Julie on Pinterest

Namaste, 

I'm only on page 60, and Tales from River Brahmaputra by Tiziana Baldizzoni is already proving to be a better book than Rivers of India. It has a superior pressing and stunning photos. It's easy to overlook the text, which is filled with lore about the Brahmaputra.

It seems to be a little thin on the coverage of the river's course through India.

Reproductions of antique maps are provided on the back side of the front and back covers.

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Where China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia

Where China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia by Thant Myint-U
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is a travelogue: the first third covers Thant Myint-U's travels through Burma; the second third, his travels through Yunnan province in China; and the final third, his travels in India - New Delhi, Kolkata (Calcutta), and finally, India's northeast.

Burma borders Yunnan Province and India's northeast, and connects India and China. Because it also borders the sea, it might also end the isolation of the land-locked Yunnan province and India's northeast. China has invested more aggressively in Burma than India, and insurgencies in its northeast hinder India from increasing its influence in Burma.

Map of Myanmar (Burma)

I regard Kolkata as a second home, as my in-laws live there, and I resent the popular characterization of Kolkata as a poor god-forsaken city rescued only by a European nun (Mother Theresa). For this reason, I appreciate Thant Myint-U's chapter on Kolkata.

If Thant Mying-U's name sounds familiar, it is because he is the grandson of former UN Secretary-General U Thant.
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IndianExpress.com :: Why Tibet matters

From IndianExpress.com (via the IndiaPride mailing list) comes an excellent column by Sonia Jabbar on Why Tibet matters.

She cites two reasons why Tibet is important to India.

The first reason is that Tibet has preserved the knowledge that disappeared from India after the Muslim sacking of Nalanda and other centers of Buddhist education. This is an important consideration for this blog, which promotes conservation of India's heritage, be it natural or cultural, tangible or intangible.

The second reason is that India has treaty obligations with Tibet that she inherited from Great Britain when India became independent. As Ms. Jabbar notes, "... when two countries have concluded an agreement between them, China has no locus standi as a third country. A sovereign state is one that negotiates and sign treaties with other states. Once a state exists it cannot simply be wished away simply because another nation has invaded it."


The Brahmaputra Watershed from Watersheds of the World: Asia and Oceania

Ms. Jabbar further notes, "... one should be aware that China controls the headwaters of many Indian rivers that originate in the Tibetan platea." There have been longstanding concerns that China is planning to divert waters from the Brahmaputra to the Yellow River.