Living Paradox in Riverine Bangladesh: Whiteheadian Perspectives on Ganga Devi and Khwaja Khijir

Abstract

We begin with the words of rural and riverine women from Bangladesh recalling the events of their children's deaths by drowning. These events are cast as the work of supernatural beings, specifically Ganga Devi and Khwaja Khijir, who compel the mothers into forgetfulness and entice the children to the water. Is this a disavowal of loss and responsibility? This article considers that the women, specifically those from northern Bangladesh, assert not only their understanding of the losses that they have suffered but also their changing relationship to the river and its changing nature through their evocations of mythological figures. Alongside the many experiences of the river, the article takes note of its experience as paradoxical, with paradoxicality serving as the occasion for the coming together of the mythological, the material, and the social. The article draws upon Alfred North Whitehead to interrelate the strata of myths and their permutations, with the women's experiences of the river, and the river as a physical entity, allowing us to explore how the women's expressions portend the changing climate.

Slippery Entanglements: Spiritual and Gendered Experiences of Uncertainty in the Riverine Context of Bengali Char lands

“…This degree of ambivalence also surrounds the river goddess Ganga (Figure 1b), who is sometimes envisioned as Khizr's consort (Khan 2016). Indeed, in the context of Khan's (2016) fieldwork, both of these divine powers were honored together during the festival of Bera Bhasan and blamed together for the inexplicable drowning of young children.…”

“…In the context of Bengali char lands this unknowability and inexplicability also extends to the figure of Khwaja Khizr himself, who is often envisioned as an underwater presence operating beyond the limits of human perception. As such, he is brought in relation to inexplicable cases of drowning (Hossain 2018;Khan 2016) and instances of river bank erosion (Hossain 2018;Khan 2016;Shaw 1992;Zaman 1999). Hossain (2018, p. 74) describes how one of his interlocutors, a young man from a char in Northern Bangladesh, explained Khizr's involvement in erosion.…”

“…And when the monsoon floods come they fall upon the bank again" (Khan 2016, p. 186). During her own fieldwork Khan (2016), moreover, observed that the presence of Khwaja Khizr seemed to be ebbing away from the particular char where she carried out her research. Whereas in the past the char dwellers used to observe "Bera Bhasan" 8 , a festival closely associated with Khwaja Khizr (see Mukherjee 2008), this was no longer the case.…”

“…My analysis is based on the ethnographic literature on the Bengal river delta and includes sources that focus on chars in both India (Harms 2014(Harms , 2015Lahiri-Dutt and Samanta 2013) and Bangladesh (Hossain 2018;Indra 2000;Khan 2014aKhan , 2014bKhan , 2016Lein 2009;Zaman 1988Zaman , 1999. It is beyond the scope of this paper to offer an exhaustive review of the literature on chars.…”

Atmospheric happening and weather reasoning: Climate history in South Asia

“…Khan writes, “I realized that it was I who ought to question the certainty with which I alighted on climate change as the reason for the growing uncertainties and suffering in these parts” (p. 246). Instead, Khan observed among her subjects that eschatologies of creation and judgment structured their anticipations of increased hardship and precarity, as well as their multispecies strategies for survival (see also Khan, 2016). Anthropologist Nayanika Mathur has coined the term “climate translation” to describe the work of recognizing and elevating these kinds of marginalized explanations for changed and degraded conditions alongside the elitist narrative of “climate change.” (Mathur, 2017).…”