Dr. Shouraseni Sen Roy, the Geography and Map Division’s latest Philip Lee Phillips Society Fellow, has just finished her 8-week fellowship here at the Library of Congress to conduct research on her topic of historical analysis of transformations in the Sundarbans Delta in India and Bangladesh. An accomplished scholar, Dr. Roy is a Professor of Geography and Sustainable Development from the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida where she has been teaching and conducting research for 20 years. She has received honors and awards from the Fullbright Program, a senior short-term fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies and has over 70 professional journal and book publications.
Dr. Roy had completed previous research on the Sundarbans Delta utilizing satellite imagery, from which a paper “Local‑level impacts of Cyclone Yaas on the Islands of the Indian Sundarbans Delta” was published in 2023 in the journal Natural Hazards. However, for her fellowship she wanted to focus on changes in the Sundarbans Delta spanning the centuries before satellite imagery (prior to 1972). Her research goal was to find maps for each century from the 1700’s to 1900’s of the Sundarbans Delta area that spans the Parganas Districts of West Bengal, India to the Khulna District in Bangladesh, then digitize the physical boundaries for each set of maps in a Geographic Information System (GIS) for spatial analysis.
In an interview I asked Dr. Roy to summarize her research project, how she had planned to use the materials at the Library of Congress and if she found what she expected to find. She replied that she wanted to study the geomorphology (how landscapes form and change over time) of the Sundarbans across India and Bangladesh by examining maps across the past several centuries, which she did find and described as very helpful to her research. When asked whether she was able to find the maps she hoped she would find, she replied:
“Absolutely, I found more than I had hoped to find. I didn’t expect… look at the amount of detail this has- I didn’t expect to find this honestly. I have done a lot of papers that looked at the satellite images- it’s already a popular thing to do and I have done that with how things changed shape, but there wasn’t anything going this far back. Because these maps are hard to come by, you know you don’t get them, and thanks to you guys [Library of Congress Geography and Map Division] I could find these maps.”
Since her study area spanned two countries, she focused on pre-partition India (up to 1947) maps for consistency. On initial examination of the maps she found, she noticed that many of the islands that make up the Sundarbans Delta are dynamic and have transformed to varying degrees. She used Sagar Island, which is one of the bigger islands in the Delta and located at the mouth of the Hooghly River, as one example of land that was broken up into smaller islands in the past that is now one larger island (this island can be seen on the India Sheet VIII Calcutta map below as the westernmost large island on the coast; spelled as Sagor I.). She explained the geomorphological changes to the islands in the Sundarbans Delta of being subject to both additive and subtractive forces. While the rivers such as the Ganges bring silt from the Himalayas over 1,500 miles away adding land to the Delta islands, the rivers and the ocean cause subtractive erosion. The weight of the silt added to the islands also cause them to sink deeper, reducing the land area above water.
Dr. Roy described the Delta area ecosystem as predominately mangrove forest that serves as a habitat for a variety of wildlife including the freshwater Ganges river dolphin and the Bengal tiger. While much of the Sundarbans Delta consists of uninhabited areas such as the Sundarbans National Park, there are some inhabited parts. She said that many inhabitants try to build walls around their property to prevent saltwater intrusion from high tide or storm surge, but if the salt water does spill over their wall, it fills up like a bowl and they then have to make a hole in the wall to drain the saltwater out once the tide has subsided. However, once there is saltwater intrusion on a property it is almost impossible to practice agriculture. As a result, many people have to move away from the Sundarbans, with some salvaging the land by converting it into an aquaculture operation.
Dr. Roy told me the meaning of the word Sundarbans meant “beautiful forest” in the local Bengali dialect, but she found out it actually was named for a type of mangrove tree species (Heritiera fomes) known as sundri in Bengali. She noted the name Sundarbans, along with many other place names also had many different spellings or names for different time period maps. This was useful when utilizing literature published about the Delta as supplemental research material she found at the Library of Congress that could potentially refer to places by historical names or spellings.
The Geography and Map Division had many maps to offer of the Sundarbans Delta ranging from topographic maps, nautical charts, political maps, geological maps, British-produced historical maps, as well as Indian and Bangladeshi-produced political and tourist maps. Below is a 19th century example of one of the Geography and Map Division maps examined by Dr. Roy from the Maps of India Atlas published by The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. We may expect Dr. Roy to continue the diffusion of useful knowledge as she plans to prepare her research for potential publication.
