New Delhi, July 12 -- Can you ever order a river to do your bidding? Toronto-based artist Shahana Rajani asks this question in the film, Lines that World a River. This new iteration of her moving image work, Four Acts of Recovery, offers criticism of colonial cartography around the Indus. Every year, the river could change its course, and each year the British had to revise their maps. Eventually they used hydraulic technologies, irrigation infrastructure and civil engineering so that the Indus stayed its course. This exercise was carried out in other parts of the subcontinent as well.

Over time, the formation of new nation states, followed by the rise of hydroelectric ambitions and the ongoing threat of climate change have destabilised ...