Taming Rivers: Recollections of a Civil Engineer During the British Raj
By Khan Bahadur Abdur Rahman Khan
Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9789697342716
297pp.

Taming Rivers: Recollections of a Civil Engineer During the British Raj presents a captivating montage of narrative vignettes from 20th century British India.

Abdul Rahman Khan (1891-1980) belonged to the Mohmand tribe of Bajaur. An irrigation engineer, he was tasked mainly with the scoping and construction of dams across British India and later Pakistan. Naturally, he got to travel a lot, often with armed convoys, through precarious, uncharted terrains and remote tribal regions.

His professional engagements were mostly focused in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), known now as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Balochistan, and he played an active role in engineering works across both provinces. He was a member of the Imperial Service of Royal Engineers, and received the title of ‘Khan Bahadur’ for his exceptional services.

Throughout his years of practice, Khan got to witness the peak and gradual decline of British political and administrative power in India. He was indeed deeply plugged into this governance system, through being a vital part of the technical foundations that made it work.

He retired as a British government engineer in 1946, and subsequently served in various projects and Public Works Departments across Pakistan from Independence up to his death in 1980. Based on his experience with critical water infrastructures, the Pakistan government nominated him to negotiate the Indus water dispute with India. He also contributed to the designs of the Warsak and Mangla dams.

A heartwarming memoir describes not just personal events but also the broader political backdrop of a transitioning Empire

The 27 chapters of the book are organised chronologically, with catchy titles denoting either regions or major events — such as ‘Boyhood in Abbottabad’ and ‘Farewell to D.I. Khan’. Throughout the book, the author weaves together significant events and personalities of the 20th century into his personal narrative.

However, the book is far from a formally structured autobiography, nor was it originally written with the intention of being composed into one. The contents of the book are based on a collection of journal entries, notes and anecdotes that Khan had meticulously penned down at various points throughout his career and life. These fragments were only recently discovered by his family and compiled in the form of an autobiographical account, providing intriguing insights into everyday life during the Raj and after Partition.

The book begins with recollections of Khan’s childhood memories, when he was about two years old. Some events are hazy and phantasmal, others more concrete. He captures these early, fleeting moments in vivid descriptions of tastes, smells and sights: his mother’s funeral, a jostling bazaar, a train journey, an old family mansion. These enchanting anecdotes pull the reader right in from the very first page.

Further on, Khan describes his extended family and the role it played in his upbringing: his grandfather’s construction business, the everyday routines of labourers on site, the festivities around food and langars [communal meals], managing time and expenses, cultural events comprising music and socialising with the ‘Mohammedan’ families of India.

He also comments on the intergenerational ebbs and flows of his family’s fortunes: his grandfather’s very successful construction business declining after a few projects proved financially unviable, and the impacts this had on the whole family. The first couple of chapters set up the tone of the book, drawing on intimate human elements around work, family, routines, demeanours, and relationships, which then shape the subsequent memoir.

As a professional engineer, Khan was able to travel all over India — by train, on horseback, on foot. Sometimes he would undertake long, arduous journeys hunting for a job. At other times, he would venture off with armed guards into rugged terrains, scouting out locations for engineering works, documenting foothills, river sources and meanders.

Khan spent his adolescent years in Abbottabad, and he beautifully captures the town’s ambience in his words: “the autumn foliage, frolicking in the winter snow, hypnotic sunsets and the silhouettes of pines, blossoming fruit orchards and the smells of fresh dew.”

His family shortly after relocated to Sialkot, from where he explored smaller towns such as Dera Gopipur and Kangra — he describes temples, craftsmen and the apparently mundane lifestyles of fishing villages up close. After school, Khan was tasked with helping his cousin run a grocery store in Abbottabad, which he was not very enthusiastic about. He was more interested in books, and convinced his father to enrol him at the Government College Lahore. Post college, he sets off to Sylhet by train, for an engineering apprenticeship.

During his years there, he narrates the intricacies of village life: the customs, the differences in culinary practices, social nuances, and leopard attacks — which were cruelly killed, if captured, and he describes in grotesque detail one such incident — as well as his very close encounter with a man-eating tiger.

He also closely documents the relationships he cultivated with members of ethnically diverse communities, as friends, co-workers, neighbours as well as domestic help. The accounts here are sometimes emotive, at other times humorous, painted as an external observer’s reactions to or amusement with the village culture.

As a professional engineer, Khan was able to travel all over India — by train, on horseback, on foot. Sometimes he would undertake long, arduous journeys hunting for a job. At other times, he would venture off with armed guards into rugged terrains, scouting out locations for engineering works, documenting foothills, river sources and meanders.

Throughout these fragmented travelogues, he provides glimpses of living with friends in various cities across India, interspersed with his own feelings of homesickness in unfamiliar spatial and social landscapes.

He also describes the time, during the First World War, when the British Raj was in conflict with the Northwestern tribes to establish the former’s dominion over these ‘uncharted’ lands. The majority of British troops stationed in India had left for Europe, with only a minimal force left behind.

Post-WWI, the British were highly wary of anyone they considered potentially ‘insurgent’ and the Pakhtun tribes of NWFP were a prime suspect. Here, Khan also refers to the Jallianwala Massacre as an epitome of that highly volatile sociopolitical landscape. Themes of cartography and hydrography interweave with the observations, correspondence and descriptions of hospitalities and hostilities, where Khan treads in a nuanced way.

He also provides glimpses into the ways British officials treated common Indians every day, in public spaces and on roads: expecting to be greeted and vocally addressed, hats removed and umbrellas lowered as they passed, with others moving out of the way or stopping altogether in their tracks until the officers had gone by, sometimes reacting furiously if they weren’t shown such ‘respect’.

Hence, the book describes not just personal events and the technical details of engineering, but also the broader political backdrop of a transitioning Empire: social frictions, cultural diversity, ethnic struggles, shifting allegiances and political manoeuvrings — all provide the complex milieu within which Khan situates his memoirs.

The book is punctuated with pleasantly surprising Forrest Gump moments: Khan’s professional engagements expose him to contemporaneous politically and socially influential personalities of British India. He is taught English Literature at the Government College Lahore by Iqbal. He is also able to directly observe Maulana Muhammad Ali and Shaukat Ali, and interact with Khwaja Nazimuddin, the Walis of various states, noted British archaeologists and aristocrats, and a young Bacha Khan. During his school days, he attends Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s Raja Mandi address.

The structure of the books is quite intuitive and reader-friendly. It might make sense to go through it chronologically, but it is not necessary to do so, for the anecdotes here are smaller and self-contained as discrete events during Khan’s life.

The book can be read in multiple sittings, in smaller bouts, and at one’s own pace. Each chapter or anecdote is only remotely connected to the rest of the contents. A few minimally annotated yet quite comprehensible maps also add richness to the written narrative, charting Khan’s several hundred miles-long train journeys across the Indian heartlands, as well as his daring treks deep into mountainous territories.

Overall, the book is a heartwarming reminder that, amongst the dreary mundanities of surveying, repair, technical drawings and measurements, life itself unfolds in wit, humour, poetry and nostalgia. Khan’s autobiography has captured these human elements in a satiating way.

The reviewer is Assistant Professor at the Department of Social Sciences and Liberal Arts, IBA Karachi, and Associate Director of the Karachi Urban Lab

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, August 20th, 2023