“Where we need water, we find guns instead”: understanding the securitization of sovereignty claims on the Brahmaputra

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article analyzes Indian and Chinese sovereignty claims on the Brahmaputra river through the lens of securitization theory. The approach, which looks at the escalation of an issue from normal to emergency politics, allows us to examine the resultant redefinition of the state’s rights and prerogatives. Taking the Brahmaputra river basin as its case study, the article focuses on the multiple hydropolitical contexts in which India’s and China’s pitched efforts to assert their respective user rights on its waters is situated. The securitization this has entailed, by way of structural, institutional, and discursive mechanisms, has only served to amplify existing patterns of state behavior, be it hydro-nationalism or opacity in information sharing. Drawing on experiences from other case studies of transboundary river basin management, it seeks to examine how the water conflicts between both states could be resolved. The article argues that federalizing the securitization debate in India is essential to grasping the layered narratives that have evolved around the Brahmaputra. Acknowledging the polyphonic nature of securitization would open new avenues for desecuritizing the water discourse. This in turn could entail rescaling politics and, by implication, reconfiguring sovereignty itself.