ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at fluvial landscape of northern and eastern India – variously called diaras or churs – to understand the process of colonial legal interventions, and how such interventions shaped the meanings of land and rights in this landscape. By doing so, it addresses two core conceptual questions of this volume: first, how do codified laws and regulations converse with legal practices, and how together they shape the parameters of rights and subjecthood; and second, what role does space and spatial practices play in the relationship between law and subjecthood?
