Floating Economies: The Cultural Ecology of the Dal Lake in Kashmir, India

By Michael J. Casimir

In the Himalayas of the Indian part of Kashmir three communities depend on the ecology of the Dal lake: market gardeners, houseboat owners and fishers.  Floating Economies describes for the first time the complex intermeshing economy, social structure and ecology of the area against the background of history and the present volatile socio-political situation. Using a holistic and multidisciplinary approach, the author deals with the socioeconomic strategies of the communities whose livelihoods are embedded here and analyses the ecological condition of the Dal, and the reasons for its progressive degradation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Release date: Mar 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9781800730304

Michael J. Casimir

Michael J. Casimir is Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Cultural and Social Anthropology, Cologne. His major publications include Growing up in a Pastoral Society: Socialisation among Pashtu Nomads in Western Afghanistan (Hundt Druck, 2010) and Culture and the Changing Environment: Uncertainty, Cognition and Risk Management in Cross-Cultural Perspective (ed. Berghahn, 2008).

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Floating Economies

Floating Economies

The Cultural Ecology of the Dal Lake in Kashmir, India

Michael J. Casimir

First published in 2021 by

Berghahn Books

www.berghahnbooks.com

© 2021 Michael J. Casimir

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages

for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A C.I.P. cataloging record is available from the Library of Congress

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Control Number: 2020050423

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-80073-029-8 hardback

ISBN 978-1-80073-030-4 ebook

For Hakim Shaukat Ali, a true friend for forty years.

Without his support, this book would never have been written.

I understand nothing. … I don’t want to understand anything now. I want to stick to the fact. I made up my mind long ago not to understand. If I try to understand anything, I shall be false to the fact, and I have determined to stick to the fact.

—Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

In the long run, structuralism teaches us to love and respect the ecology, because it is made up of living things, of plants and animals from which since it began, mankind did not only derive its sustenance but also, for such a long time, its deepest aesthetic feelings as well as its highest moral and intellectual speculations.

—Lévi-Strauss 1972: 23

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

List of Acronyms

Notes on Text

Introduction

PART I

Chapter 1. The Valley of Kashmir and Dal Lake

Chapter 2. Kashmir’s Early History and the Conversion to Islam

Chapter 3. The Social Organization of Contemporary Kashmiri Muslim Society

Chapter 4. The Market Gardeners of Dal Lake: Early Accounts

Chapter 5. The Market Gardeners’ Economy Today

Chapter 6. The Productivity of Lacustrine Market Gardening

Chapter 7. The Houseboat Owner Community and the Development of Tourism on Dal Lake

Chapter 8. The Gad Hanz: The Last Fishers on the Dal

PART II

Chapter 9. The Degradation of the Dal: Causes and Impacts

Chapter 10. The Political Ecology of a Degrading Lake: A Paradise Lost?

Appendix A

Appendix B

References

Index

Illustrations

Maps

1.1. The different parts of the region of Kashmir. Map by the author.

1.2. The Dal and Nageen Lakes with their raised fields, floating gardens, and lotus fields. Map courtesy of LAWDA.

1.3. The waterways in the valley of Kashmir with Srinagar and the Dal Lake. Source: Nouvelle géographie universelle: la terre et les hommes, 19 vols. (1875–1894). Vol. VIII, détail de L’Inde et l’Indo-Chine: 126–127.

4.1. Painted map of Srinagar and the Dal Lake (end of the seventeenth century). Courtesy City Palace Museum, Jaipur.

4.2. Detail from a Kashmir map shawl woven in about 1875 showing raised fields and floating gardens. Courtesy Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

4.3. Combined map adapted from Duke (1910) and Rushbrook (1883/1965). Map by the author.

5.1. Distribution of the most important mohallahs on the Dal Lake. Map by the author. Own enquiry and DPR 2000.

Figures

1.1. Annual average precipitation and average maxima and minima of temperature. Calculated from data published in TuTiempo.net.

3.1. Nesting positions of the different communities of Kashmiris. Figure by the author.

4.1. The floating raft-gardens of Dal Lake (1881). Source: Ermens 1881: 329.

4.2. The arrangement of floating gardens. Redrawn sketch from Ermens (1881).

4.3. The floating gardens of the Dal (1866). Courtesy Shaukat Wani, Srinagar, private collection.

5.1. A section from the Landsat scene, showing houses, gardens and raised fields. Source: Copyright 2011 DigitalGlobe Incorporated, 2011-04-23T06.

5.2. a, b. A cluster of hamlets with adjacent raised fields and lotus gardens 1965 and 2011. Source: The KH-7 surveillance system July 1963 to June 1967 and Copyright 2011 DigitalGlobe Incorporated, 2011-04-23T06.

5.3. Annual variation of influx to the Dal 1985 to 1998. Graph by the author calculated from DPR 2000: table 2.13.

5.4. Monthly precipitation averages for Srinagar (1973–2009). Graph by the author.

5.5. Monthly average discharge from the Telbal Nala into the Dal (1985–1998). Graph by the author, calculated from DPR 2000: table 2.14.

6.1. Ranked distribution of ownership (ha) of agricultural land and/or lotus gardens. Graph by the author, calculated from DPR 2000: table 2.14.

6.2. Relation between number of households and ownership of arable land (ha). Source: Department of Agriculture, Srinagar.

6.3. Kinship relations in a family showing a case of an adoption and a khānadāmād/dukhtār-i-khāna nashin marriage. Figure by the author.

6.4. False-color image of the Dal Lake and adjacent areas. Source: Copyright 2011 DigitalGlobe Incorporated, 2011-04-23T06.

6.5. Classification of the Dal Lake and adjacent areas using remote sensing data. Source: Copyright 2011 DigitalGlobe Incorporated, 2011-04-23T06.

6.6.a, b. Classification of the framed area in figure 6.4. Source: Copyright 2011 DigitalGlobe Incorporated, 2011-04-23T06.

6.7. Classification of water areas in the main region where lotus are cultivated. Source: Copyright 2011 DigitalGlobe Incorporated, 2011-04-23T06.

6.8a. Monthly availability and market price for all-season vegetables. Figure by the author.

6.8b. Monthly availability of summer vegetables. Figure by the author.

6.8c. Monthly availability of cucurbits. Figure by the author.

6.8d. Monthly availability of lotus rhizomes. Figure by the author.

6.9. Economic diversification in two market gardener families. Figure by the author.

6.10. Dependence of the Dal market gardeners’ economy on the lacustrine ecosystem, the products they generate, and their relation to the market. Figure by the author.

7.1. British sportsmen: The way to the hunting grounds. Source: The Graphic, 9 September, London 1882. Source: The Graphic, 9 September, London 1882.

7.2. Houseboat life in Kashmir … on the Thelum [Jhelum] River. Source: The Graphic, 8 August, London 1891.

7.3. Ground plan of an upper-class houseboat. Figure by the author.

7.4. Periodicity of tourists coming to Kashmir registered at Srinagar airport. Source: Department of Tourism and Planning, Srinagar. Figure by the author.

7.5a, b. Number of Indian tourists visiting Kashmir in the years 1975 to 2002 and Number of foreign tourists visiting Kashmir in the years 1975 to 2002. Graphs by the author. Source: Department of Tourism and Planning, Srinagar.

7.6. Annual number of tourists staying on one houseboat from 2005 to 2017. Figure and data by the author.

7.7. Dependence of the houseboat owner’s family on tourists and the market. Figure by the author.

7.8. Marriage relations in three houseboat owner’s families. Figure by the author.

8.1. The total weight of fish (tons) caught in Dal Lake in the years 2010 to 2015. Source: Office of the Chief Project Officer Fisheries. Srinagar, Government of J&K.

8.2. The present economic situation of the Dal fishers. Figure by the author.

9.1a, b. Population growth 1823–2001 and expansion of Srinagar 1901–2000. Graphs by the author. Source: Primary Census Abstracts Jammu and Kashmir, published in Wani 2012: Table 2, p. 601.

9.2.a, b. A comparison of the situation north of the Dal Lake in 1965 and 2011. Sources: The KH-surveillance system July 1963 to June 1967 and for 2011, Copyright DigitalGlobe Incorporated, 2011-04-23T06.

9.3. Locations of water samples taken in 2013 and 2015. Authors own data and Copyright 2011 DigitalGlobe Incorporated, 2011-04-23T06.

9.4. The measured conductivity (µS cm-1) in Dal and Nageen Lakes. Graph by the author.

9.5. Concentration of Ca, Mg, and K (mg/l) in the Telbal Nala and on their way through the Dal. Graph by the author.

9.6. Concentration of N and P (mg/l) in the Telbal Nala through different areas of Dal and Nageen Lakes, to the Dal Gate. Figure by the author.

9.7. The increment of nitrogen/nitrate and phosphate in the years 1977, 2000, and 2008. Graph by the author based on data compiled by Qadri and Yousuf 2008, Table 1.

9.8.a, b. The monthly distribution of nitrate and total phosphorus concentration at different sites. Graph by the author based on data obtained from Mushtaq et al. 2013, Table 1.

9.9.a–d. The distribution and expansion of yellow water lilies over parts of Dal Lake in 2004, 2011, 2015, and 2020. Source: Google Earth.

9.10. The interrelation between submerged macrophytes, sedimentation, sediment processing, and the availability nutrients. Figure by the author adapted from Barko and James 1998: 199.

9.11. The interrelated effects of silting, sewage, aquatic macrophytes, and encroachment. Figure by the author.

10.1. The rise in the number of articles published in Greater Kashmir, Kashmir Times, and Kashmir Observer. Graph by the author.

10.2. Number of plots allotted per month to Dal dwellers in Rakh-i-Arath between August 2010 and April 2017. Graph by the author based on data courtesy of J & K Lakes and Waterways Development Authorities, LAWDA, Srinagar.

10.3. The 2005 Houseboat Owners Association layout for relocating and realigning houseboats. Source: Courtesy HBOA.

10.4. Detail of the Houseboat Owner Association’s new layout for realigning houseboats. Source: Courtesy HBOA.

Images

1.1.a, b. Old dungas and the last bahātsh on the Jehlum River. Photo by the author.

1.2. The Resident Commissioner’s parandh (long boat) on river Jhelum1866. Courtesy Shaukat Wani, Srinagar, private collection.

3.1. Poster showing Iranian leaders next to the Floating Market. Photo by the author.

4.1. Floating gardens at the end of the nineteenth century. Courtesy Shaukat Wani, Srinagar, private collection.

5.1. A small two-year-old raised field in spring. Photo by the author.

5.2. A roughly three-year-old raised field ready to be cultivated. Photo by the author.

5.3. Old floating gardens used to encircle an area to make a raised field. Photo by the author.

5.4. A roughly twenty-year-old raised field with the new growth of winter vegetables. Photo by the author.

5.5.a, b. A lifting lever and the big iron pot traditionally used for irrigation. Photos by the author.

5.6. Harvesting the hil (Ceratophyllum demersum). Photo by the author.

5.7. Bringing the hil to the fields. Photo by the author.

5.8. Waterweeds piled up to make compost. Photo by the author.

5.9. Working the compost into the soil. Photo by the author.

5.10. Nets, khashū to lift mud and water plants from the lake’s bottom. Photo by the author.

5.11. A newly fabricated floating garden (2017). Photo by the author.

5.12. One of the floating gardens in summer 2018. Photo courtesy Sulfkar Nagoo.

5.13. Molding tulche out of waterweeds mixed with mud. Photo by the author.

5.14. Making pōkurs on a rād. Photo by the author.

5.15. Young gourds growing out of pōkurs. Photo by the author.

5.16. Inserting the tulche with the young plants into the pōkurs in the littoral zone. Photo by the author.

5.17. Stakes inserted into the rād to support climbers. Photo by the author.

5.18. Stakes tied together to form a lattice on which climbers can cling. Photo by the author.

5.19. Detaching the rād from the lake’s bottom with a liwan. Photo by the author.

5.20 a–c. Moving the floating rād to a new location. Photos by the author.

5.21. Mooring the rād at its new location. Photo by the author.

5.22. A lotus garden demarcated by rāds in early spring before the lotus plants emerge. Photo by the author.

5.23. The same garden in summer covered with lotus plants. Photo by the author.

5.24. Pulling up the lotus rhizomes with a nadir chomb. Photo by the author.

5.25. The special hook attached to a rod (chomb) for pulling up lotus rhizomes. Photo by the author.

5.26. Selling lotus pods and gourds at the roadside. Photo by the author.

5.27. Partly submerged free-floating rād during a high water level in May 2010. Photo by the author.

5.28. Sliced bottle gourds hung up to dry. Photo by the author.

5.29. Bringing home reeds and water lily leaves as animal feed. Photo by the author.

5.30. Weaving mats (wagu) from the leaves of the lesser bulrush. Photo by the author.

6.1. A nursery being prepared for sowing different vegetables. Photo by the author.

6.2. Fields on an island prepared for the cultivation of winter vegetables. Photo by the author.

6.3.a–c. The bottle gourd, the bitter gourd, and the ridge gourd. Photos by the author.

6.4. The Floating Vegetable Market. Photo by the author.

6.5. Tourist shops on stilts near the Floating Vegetable Market. Photo by the author.

7.1. Simple dunga houseboats on the Jhelum River on which poorer families live. Photo by the author.

7.2. A doonga houseboat hosting tourists on the Dal Lake (about 1920). Source: Meyer-Illmersdorf 1926.

7.3. Entrance of a doong houseboat for tourists in the early twentieth century. Source: Petrocokino 1920.

7.4. Modern houseboats lined up in the southern part of Dal Lake. Photo by the author.

7.5. A comfortable houseboat with attached pile-constructed house. Photo by the author.

7.6. A luxurious deluxe class houseboat on the Nageen Lake. Photo by the author.

7.7. The living room in an upper-class houseboat. Photo by the author.

7.8. A bedroom in an upper-class houseboat. Photo by the author.

7.9. Taking pictures of tourists dressed up as a Kashmiri prince and princess. Photo by the author.

7.10. Displaying and selling jewelry to a tourist family on a houseboat. Photo by the author.

7.11. A traditional talim from Kashmir. Photo by the author.

7.12a, b. The final application of a floral design on a box lid. Photos by the author.

7.13. Displaying lacquered objects to a tourist on the veranda of a houseboat. Photo by the author.

8.1. A traditional fisher settlement on the northeastern shore of Dal Lake. Photo by the author.

8.2. Throwing the cast net to catch small and medium-sized species. Photo by the author.

8.3 a, b. Drying small fish in the sun to be sold in the market. Photos by the author.

8.4. The harpoon (nāruṭsh) used to catch big fish—nowadays mainly carp. Photo by the author.

9.1a, b. Typical conditions in the canals in the Old City. Photos by the author.

9.2. The floating ferns: A Salvinia natans plant surrounding Azolla christata. Photo by the author.

10.1a, b. A sewage treatment plant installed in about 2013 east of the Nagen Lake. Photo by the author.

10.2. Mechanical cutting of waterweeds with a harvester. Photo by the author.

10.3. A signboard leading to the Rakh-i-Arath colony (August 2015). Photo by the author.

10.4. Some of the half-ready houses built for rehabilitated Dal dwellers at Rakh-i-Arath. Photo by the author.

10.5. Kashmir Concern. Courtesy Touseef Ahmed Bhatt, Srinagar.

Tables

1.1. Physical and morphological dimensions of the Dal Lake. Table by the author based on data published by ILEC (2011).

1.2. The different biotopes/habitats of the lake area and of the catchment. Table by the author based on data published by Khan (2000: 97).

5.1. Concentration of some nutrients, conductivity, and pH values in water samples. Table by the author.

5.2. pH value and concentrations of some minerals in a mixed sample of compost. Table by the author.

6.1. Vegetables raised and harvested at all seasons and those harvested only in summer. Table by the author.

6.2. Annual yield of some important vegetables on the Dal lake islands and raised fields. Table by the author.

6.3. Total and water areas (ha) of the different parts where lotus rhizomes are mainly cultivated. Table by the author.

6.4. Prices of vegetables on the Floating Market and in Srinagar greengroceries. Table by the author.

Acknowledgments

My research on the Dal Lake in Kashmir would have never been possible without the help of many people. First of all, my deepest gratitude goes to my friend Hakim Shaukat Ali. Without his network of friends in Srinagar and on Dal Lake, I would never have gained access to so much of the information I needed. Next, of course, I thank all my friends on the lake who allowed me to participate in their lives in the years from 2009 to 2017. Here I especially wish to mention the family of Hamid, Jaqub, and Masjeed Dunoo, who own the houseboat moored on Nagin Lake where I lived. They provided me with not only comfortable accommodation but also much information about the lake dwellers and especially the houseboat owner community. Furthermore, I must acknowledge the contribution of the many families of market gardeners who helped me to understand the complex system of growing vegetables on their islands, raised fields, and famous floating gardens. Fieldwork on the lake would also have been very difficult without the help of my friend and knowledgeable counterpart Sulfikar Ali, the owner of a shikara, one of the gondola-like water taxis, who brought me to the more remote places of the Dal.

In Srinagar, many organizations provided me with valuable information and data. Here I especially wish to thank Mohamad Yousuf Dar IAS, commissioner, Survey and Land Records; Syed Altaf Ajaz Andrabi, director, Rakhs and Farms, Department of Agriculture, Jammu and Kashmir; Farooq Ahmed Factoo, director, Census Operations; Shafaat Noor Barlas (VC) J&K Lakes and Waterways Authority (LAWDA); and last but not least, Yaqub Dunoo, chairperson of the Houseboat Owner’s Association.

With her in-depth knowledge and understanding of Kashmir’s history—especially of the political and social changes that have taken place in the region since 1947—Nathalène Reynolds greatly helped me to comprehend the present sociocultural and political situation in many discussions.

Many of my friends and colleagues in Germany and abroad supported my work: Iris Hindersman, Katrin Matern, and Karin Greef (Department of Geography, University of Cologne) kindly analyzed the nutrients in samples of water, waterweeds, compost, and soil. I am most grateful to Andreas Bolten (Department of Geography, University of Cologne) who analyzed the remote sensing data, and I am especially grateful to the Indologist Walter Slaje (Department of Indology, University of Halle, Germany) who helped me to grasp the complex field of Kashmir’s early history through his profound knowledge of classical texts.

To Ravi Rao I am grateful for calculating the monthly minima, maxima, and averages of temperature and precipitation from the daily climate data in the years between 1973 and 2009. For many discussions and important suggestions and advice, I thank Peter Andrews, Konstantin Behrend, Sonja Esters, Kurt Falkenberg, Thomas Helmich, Berthold Riese, and especially Mirijam Zickel and Hauke-Peter Vehrs (who also kindly helped when my computer and I were on bad terms). Last but not least, I thank Monika Feinen, who drew the maps and figures, and Astrid Hegemann, the librarian of my department, who found and obtained even the most exotic books and articles I needed. I am also grateful for the helpful comments supplied by three anonymous referees.

Needless to say, I alone am responsible for any factual errors, faulty logic, or lack of cogency in the various chapters that follow.

Fieldwork was carried out in the years 2009 to 2017 with the exception of 2014. I distributed the months and weeks of fieldwork on the Dal Lake in such a way that, with the exception of the winter months between November and January, I could observe the agrarian cycle of the market gardeners several times. Interviews with the owners of houseboats and with different officers and heads of departments, organizations, and institutions were made in English; those with the market gardeners on the lake were conducted in Urdu and mixed especially with special Kashmiri terms for their agricultural activities. For more complex interviews, when my Urdu was not sufficient, Hussain Baba kindly helped.

My special thanks, however, are due to the German Research Foundation (DFG) that generously financed my research in Kashmir.

Acronyms

Notes on Text

Kashmiri (Koshur/Koshir in their own language) belongs to the Dardic branch of Indo-Arian languages. Most of the distinct vocabulary used by Hindus is derived from Sanskrit and that used by Muslims is derived from Perso-Arabic sources. Alongside some regional dialectal differences, Kachru (2004: 343) differentiates Kashmiri spoken in the city of Srinagar (shara koshur) from that spoken in the villages (gāma kashur) and also that spoken on the Dal. The latter reveals many differences compared to the Kashmiri spoken in the city (for a comprehensive analysis of the language, see Koul 2003).

Originally, Kashmiri had its own script (Śāradā) developed around the tenth century. Later, this was replaced by Devanagari. After the advent of Islam in the fourteenth century, Kashmiri was mostly written in the Perso-Arabic script. For many decades and mainly for religio-political reasons, Kashmiri was not taught in schools, and Urdu became more and more important. As a result, Kashmiri gradually became only a spoken language. Nowadays, not many people are able to write Kashmiri, and all official forms and letters, private or personal, are written in either Urdu or English. It is only since 2008 that the Kashmiris’ own language is being taught again in all schools in the valley.

Three Kashmiri dictionaries are available: the most comprehensive is by Grierson and Shastri (1916); others were published by Elmsly (1872) and Neve, E.F. (1977). Grierson and Shastri’s dictionary documents mainly the High Kashmiri spoken among the Hindus (Pandits) that is quite different from the Kashmiri spoken by Muslims. As a result, it does not list many of the words I collected on the lake.

Over the years, different scholars have also used different diacritical signs to represent the sound system of the Kashmiri language. Especially Grierson and Shastri’s transcription is extremely difficult. For instance, the term for the vegetable gardeners on the Dal islands is transcribed as ḍēmb-hönzü; that for the turnip cultivated by these people, as ḍēmba-gŏgüjü. For ease of reading, I have rendered these terms into Demb Hanz and gōgji. Also, for example, the Kashmiri word for the traditional small houseboat is transcribed in the dictionaries mentioned above as well as in various books and articles as dunga, dúnga, dūnga, doonga, ḍūnga, ḍǖnga, or ḍũnga. Here I shall simply transcribe this as dunga.

Fortunately, a comprehensible grammar of the Kashmiri language including a description of the sound system was recently published by Koul and Wali (2015). I follow the transcription system in that work, apart from some minor modifications in order to adapt it to the local variety of Kashmiri at issue in this study. Here, only five vowels are distinguished in short (a, e, i, o, u) and lengthened (ā, ē, ī, ō, ū) versions. Besides the unaspirated consonants, aspirated ones include ph, ṭh, and kh. The retroflexes include ṛ, ḍ, ṭ, and the aspirated ṭh. The affricates (c, ts) are differentiated from their aspirated counterparts (ch and tsh) and from the palatal fricative (sh). In general, I follow Koul and Wali (2015: vi); but to keep things simple, I confine myself to the symbols indicated above and disregard further particularities. For a comprehensive and detailed account, see Koul and Wali (2015: vi and 11–37).

All scientific names of plants and animals are italicized along with the terms used by the lake dwellers. If a term is not Kashmiri, it is annotated with an *, indicating that it is borrowed from either Urdu, Hindi, or English. The owners of houseboats who are constantly in contact with foreigners from different countries and from other Indian states in which Hindi/Urdu is not spoken use English; and with most North Indian guests, they speak Urdu or Hindi.

All names of contemporary individuals and those from the more recent past as well as geographical terms are written in their Anglicized form without diacritical signs. Thus the term for a canal, a mountain stream nāllah*, is written as nala (e.g., Telbal Nala). Also, familiar Islamic terms such as Shī’a are written as Shia along with Shiites and Shiism, and Quran is used for Qur’ān.

Introduction

After decades of research on human-environmental interactions, anthropology, and more particularly environmental anthropology, suddenly finds itself pushed into prominence. A vibrant and kaleidoscopic research agenda has ensued and borrowed extensively from other disciplines. This agenda coincides with increased interest in coupled human and natural systems from both the social and natural sciences. Such attention is not solely the product of academic integration or the analytical reflection of empirical realities; it also stems from growing concern over the role of humans in the global transformation of the environment.

—Orr, Lansing, and Dove 2015: 153

It was in the summer of 1981, when Aparna Rao and I first started our research among the Bakkarwal pastoral nomads in Kashmir, that I first saw Dal Lake. We spent some days on a houseboat and explored the different parts of the lake in one of the gondola-like water taxies, the shikaras. In those days, the lake to me seemed to be simply beautiful with its clear fresh water, patches of waterlilies, and lovely lotus fields. We saw the small hamlets of the vegetable gardeners, the artificially constructed small islands with their fields, and the floating gardens, those stretches of reeds on which different sorts of cucurbits were ripening. Back home, to our great astonishment, we found that no anthropological research had ever been undertaken on the lake dwellers and their habitat, and we thought that this could be our next fieldwork.

In 2009, now alone, I started this new project with the idea of describing and analyzing the construction and use of this unique hydroponic floating garden economy. But during my subsequent stays, I became more and more aware of the complex intermeshing of ecology and economy, of the social and political factors determining the livelihood of the mainly Shia market gardeners.

However, there were also Sunni houseboat owners accommodating tourists from all over the world, as well as some small fisher settlements. So I also became interested in these communities, finally deciding to put into practice the holistic and multidisciplinary approach called for so often and to try and describe Dal Lake as a complex sociopolitical and economic system against the backdrop of the lacustrine ecology.

I also noticed that, in contrast to a number of publications on late Paleolithic and Neolithic stilt house settlements (e.g., Menotti 2004; Menotti and O’Sullivan 2003), to the best of my knowledge, very few cultural anthropologists¹ and geographers have engaged in the study of populations living directly or indirectly with and from lakes. Whereas innumerable books and articles deal with the cultural ecology of past and present hunter gatherers; of pastoral, agricultural, or maritime cultures; and of populations living at high altitudes, the cultural ecology of lake dwellers was barely a topic. Also, whereas there are hundreds of publications on the different ecological zones and habitats—last but not least in the context of climate change—the importance of lakes is rarely a focus of interest. In 2011, the outstanding importance of lakes was articulated at the fourteenth World Lake Conference in Austin, Texas, organized by the International Lake Environment Committee Foundation (ILEC) and the River Systems Institute (RSI) of Texas State University:

One estimate is that there are more than 10 million lakes with a surface area of one hectare or greater. They contain more than 90 percent of the liquid freshwater on the surface of our planet at any given instant.² We use them for more purpose than any other water system, including drinking and irrigation water supply, industrial needs, sports and commercial fisheries, recreation, hydropower generation, and human and commercial transportation. They provide a range of ecosystem goods and services to humanity. They also represent major habitats and natural ecosystems. They have religious or spiritual significance in many cultures. Finally, they represent some of the most picturesque features of our global landscape. (RSI 2011: Invitation letter)

In the following years and after several more stays on the lake, during which I gained a degree of basic knowledge about the economy and social structure of the three populations on the Dal, some of my informants mentioned that they believe that it is only in recent centuries that people began to live on the lake. This triggered my interest in the history of the Vale, and I wanted to try and find out when the lake first became populated by market gardeners and later by owners of tourist houseboats. I worked my way through the early historical sources—the translated and published Sanskrit, Persian, and Urdu manuscripts—and read the discussions among historians about their verisimilitude. Then, for the later period, I also read the many books written by European, mainly British, explorers and travelers. I realized that the question when humans first inhabited the Dal could be addressed only by understanding the complex history, the transformation from a Hindu to an Islamic society, the permanent strife between Sunnis and Shias in later years, and the effects all this had on the fate of the different populations in the valley.

Nonetheless, the main part of the book deals with the socioeconomic strategies of the three communities, the ecological condition of the Dal, and the reasons for its increasing degradation. The book is organized into two parts.

Part I starts with a brief introduction to The Valley of Kashmir and Dal Lake, giving basic information on the geography and ecology of the lake and its surroundings. The next two chapters deal with Kashmir’s Early History and the Conversion to Islam followed by The Social Organization of Contemporary Kashmiri Muslim Society. The fourth chapter, The Market Gardeners of Dal Lake: Early Accounts, presents an educated guess as to when the wetlands and lakes first became populated and sketches the rise of the market gardeners’ economy on the Dal. The following chapter, The Market Gardeners’ Economy Today, describes the contemporary complex economy and livelihood of the gardeners in detail. It shows how, through their different modes of production, they minimize the uncertainties and risks of life in this hazardous lacustrine environment in order to achieve a fairly stable subsistent economy. The next chapter, The Productivity of Lacustrine Market Gardening, follows this up by describing the annual agrarian cycle and estimating the productivity of the market gardeners’ economy using interpretations of satellite images together with ground truth data on acreages, ownership of land, and the carrying capacities of the land, the floating gardens, and the lotus fields. The data obtained show the importance of the gardeners’ vegetable production for the Kashmiri capital Srinagar and its periphery. These data then form the basis for the chapters in the second part of the book.

The chapters on the market gardeners and their economy are followed by an exposition on The Houseboat Owner Community and the Development of Tourism on Dal Lake. In contrast to the quite early presence of market gardeners on the Dal, houseboat building and tourism began only toward the end of the nineteenth century. The chapter narrates the step-by-step evolution from the small traditional Kashmiri houseboat, the dunga, to the larger boats for traveling British colonial civil servants and tourists. It was only at the beginning of the twentieth century that the first large and luxurious houseboats were built that can still be seen moored on the Dal. Unlike the relatively self-subsistent market gardeners, the owners of houseboats depend completely on the annual influx of tourists—something that is highly unpredictable due not only to climatic change but also and mainly to the frequent periods of political unrest when only a few visitors dare to come to Kashmir.

This is followed by chapter eight, The Gad Hanz: The Last Fishers on the Dal, describing the fisher communities and their traditional methods for catching and conserving the different species of fish. Since the early twentieth century, however, their livelihood has changed dramatically. Not only has the snow trout (Schizothorax niger), a much-relished endemic species, become very rare, but the population of other fish species has also declined due to the ongoing degradation of the Dal. Now, except for some small species, the only fish still caught are the carp introduced in 1955. They have multiplied dramatically, thereby endangering even more endemic species. In contrast to the nineteenth century, only very few members of the fisher community work as full-time fishers nowadays, and their families can survive only because some members have taken jobs in the