"But here, in the tide country, transformation is the rule of life: rivers stray from week to week, and islands are made and unmade in days …"
— Amitav Ghosh, The Hungry Tide (2004)
Legacy of the unforgiving bay
By the late 18th century, as European frigates charted the Bay of Bengal, the region remained as perilous as it was fertile.
The same winds that once carried Arab dhows and Javanese junks—and now propelled Portuguese carracks and British East Indiamen—could suddenly swell into deadly cyclones.
Beneath changing flags, the Bay's temperament stayed dominant, humbling empires and shaping civilisations. Cyclones, floods, and tides were not just natural events; they played a crucial role in shaping Bengal's ecological, cultural, social, and strategic development.
The Bay of Bengal is generous yet unpredictable. Its waters have carried trade, faith, and culture, but they have also brought destruction. As historian Sunil Amrith notes, "The Bay has always been both a cradle and a crucible—nurturing life even as it demands endurance."
Survival in this deltaic world was never passive; it was a strategic effort—an active engagement with nature's rhythms, combining observation, adaptation, and communal resilience.
Historical memory of storms
Cyclones have long shaped the human geography of the Bay of Bengal, and the region's low-lying coastal and riverine terrain is especially vulnerable to storm surges. Historical accounts suggest that environmental forces significantly impacted riverine trade routes.
For example, Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak in his 1590 document Ain-i-Akbari (later translated by H. Blochman in 1977) noted that the Saraswati river channel near Satgaon (Saptagram) was silting up, contributing to its decline as a major port. Over time, trade shifted toward Hugli (Hooghly), which became more prominent. These tempests served as reminders that maritime prosperity in Bengal was never uniform or guaranteed.
The colonial era introduced more systematic record-keeping, though it was distorted to fit colonial narratives (Collins 2021). The Great Bengal Cyclone of 1737 (sometimes referred to as the "Great Calcutta Cyclone") is said in some historical accounts to have caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, though modern scholarship questions the higher figures (Mausam journal 1985; NOAA 2017). This event reflected both the vulnerability of deltaic communities to storm surges and, over time, their capacity to adapt. In modern times, cyclones such as the 1970 Bhola cyclone, Cyclone Sidr (2007), and Amphan (2020) continue to underscore the Bay of Bengal's unpredictable and destructive potential.
Floods as both a blessing and a curse
Floods have long shaped Bengal's environment and society. The Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Meghna rivers deposit fertile silt each year, making the delta one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world. However, those same floods periodically destroy homes, crops, and lives. This duality—sometimes referred to metaphorically as "Bengal's paradox"—is reflected in the region's culture, language, and way of life.
In "Strategy: A History", Lawrence Freedman observes, "Strategy is about survival within constraints—about adjusting to forces one cannot control."
For Bengal, centuries of living with floods have fostered a form of social intelligence and adaptive resilience.
The coastal communities learned to read nature's mood: how the sky darkened before a surge, how specific bird calls signalled rain, and how the smell of the wind changed before a disaster. Seasonal migration, floating agriculture (baira), and stilt houses—which involve homes built on elevated wooden, bamboo, or concrete pillars in coastal and delta regions—are not modern innovations but centuries-old adaptations rooted in a deep ecological understanding.
Resilience as strategy
Coastal communities in the Bengal Delta are widely admired for their deep-rooted resilience in the face of recurrent natural calamities. This resilience is not limited to recovery after storms; instead, it reflects a continuous, mindful engagement with their environment. Over generations, people in the region have built earthen embankments, tidal canals, and elevated huts to withstand cyclones and tidal flooding. The state has even led large-scale embankment construction: for example, during the 1960s, the Coastal Embankment Project significantly changed the coastal landscape (Dewan, Coad, and Islam 2022). These water-management systems, rooted in historical practices, coexist with local ecological knowledge that has long guided communities in responding to seasonal changes and hydrological threats.
Today, Bangladesh is widely recognised for its community-based disaster management. Cyclone shelters, radio and mobile network warnings, and volunteer networks save thousands of lives annually. As Amrith observes, these modern systems owe as much to inherited memory as to imported models (Amrith 2013, 212). Disaster preparedness in Bangladesh represents a wisdom-based cultural continuum—a synthesis of ancestral knowledge and modern governance that highlights the critical role of traditional wisdom in shaping effective responses to environmental challenges.
Culture and the storm: Adaptation as a faith in motion
The storms of the Bay resonate through Bengal's poetry, music, and folklore, molding the region's cultural identity. In boatmen's songs (bhatiyali), the river is often portrayed as both lover and destroyer. Folk epics, like Behula-Lakhindar, highlight human resilience in the face of fate through water imagery. These stories are not merely superstitions; they conserve navigational knowledge—when to sail, where to anchor, and how to read the tides. Oral traditions thus function as early environmental records, holding and passing on practical knowledge through cultural forms.
The dual symbolism of the Bay—as nurturer and nemesis—permeates the region's spiritual imagination. It has shaped a worldview that combines submission with action, recognising, as the Qur'an reminds us, that "with hardship comes ease" (Qur'an 94:6). The people of Bengal have turned this metaphysical insight into practical wisdom: adaptation as a faith in motion.
The science of the storm: the arts of the storm
Modern meteorology provides what centuries of seafarers once deduced from observation: satellite imagery and predictive models now track cyclone paths and rainfall patterns with remarkable precision. Nevertheless, technology alone cannot guarantee survival. As studies in disaster sociology show, human resilience depends as much on social cohesion and trust as on infrastructure (Dynes 2006, 18; Tierney 2014, 112). Effective disaster response requires networks of communication, leadership, and solidarity—qualities long embedded in Bengal's communal life.
The same understanding forms the foundation of ocean literacy: knowledge of currents, tides, and climate patterns. Long before it became an academic discipline, coastal Bengal practised this as a lived experience. From fishermen reading the water's colour to farmers timing planting with lunar cycles, this knowledge base reflects a lasting way of understanding survival.
Economy of adaptation
Every storm leaves behind economic lessons. Fishermen rebuild boats with salvaged timbers; farmers shift to salt-tolerant crops; and communities form cooperatives for food storage and mutual aid. This practical creativity illustrates what Eric Grove once described metaphorically as 'the strategy of the weak'—turning constraints into capabilities (Grove 1990, 74). Livelihood diversification, including fishing, salt-making, and small trade, serves as a buffer against disaster. In this way, economic resilience reflects ecological adaptability.
At the national level, Bangladesh's blue economy vision now integrates climate resilience into maritime development policy. As sea levels rise and salinity intrudes inland, adaptation has become a matter not only of survival but also of sovereignty. The same waters that test the nation also sustain its economic and strategic aspirations.
The Bay as a strategic teacher
The Bay of Bengal's tempests are metaphors for history itself. Every empire that sailed these waters—Portuguese, Dutch, or British—was ultimately at the mercy of its moods. Naval superiority could not tame the monsoon winds or prevent coastal erosion. As Ibn Khaldun argued in the Muqaddimah, civilisations endure not solely through wealth or weaponry but through their capacity to adapt to their environments. In this sense, the people of Bengal exemplify this civilizational insight, turning environmental unpredictability into social and economic resilience.
Lawrence Freedman observes that enduring success arises from 'learning faster than one's environment changes' (Freedman 2013, 62). The coastal communities of Bengal exemplify this dynamic learning. Their resilience—manifested in reading the skies, fortifying homes, and sustaining communal networks—reflects not mere reaction but foresight, an indigenous form of strategic intelligence.
Climate change and continuity
The challenges of the twenty-first century—rising sea levels, intensified cyclones, and coastal erosion—reflect the struggles Bengal has faced for centuries, now on a larger scale. Modern climate models indicate that the Bay of Bengal is warming more rapidly than most tropical basins (World Bank 2021). However, Bengal's long-standing relationship with nature provides opportunities for adaptation. By combining traditional wisdom with modern science—through innovations such as floating gardens and community-based forecasting—continuity becomes a source of creativity and resilience.
Storms and floods have long influenced life around the Bay of Bengal. However, these same storms that tested Bengal's resilience also powered human ambition across oceans. The monsoon winds that once dictated the lives of delta communities became the pathways of early exploration. Well before the term globalisation was introduced, the Bay was already part of a worldwide exchange network—its currents linking Arab sailors of the Indian Ocean to European explorers seeking new lands beyond.
Finally, environmental resilience is more than just an ecological necessity; it is an existential philosophy handed down by the Bay itself. The waters that once tested wooden boats now challenge the modern state's governance, planning, and strategic vision.
Lead-in to Episode Seven – The Bay in the Age of Exploration: Columbus, Vasco da Gama, and the World Beyond
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