Endangered Wooden Architecture Programme (EWAP)

AFLOAT FOR CENTURIES: THE FLAT-BOTTOMED INDUS BOATS AN ABODE,
AN AGENCY FOR LIVELIHOOD AND AN EXPRESSION OF CULTURAL IDENTITY

Principal Investigator: Prof. Dr. Anila Naeem

This documentation research project is funded by Oxford Brookes University’s “Endangered Wooden Architecture Programme (EWAP that provides financial support for the recording of endangered wooden architecture. In December 2022, the Heritage Cell at Department of Architecture and Planning, NED University received small grant for the documentation of Indus wooden houseboats of Mohanna’s, an indigenous community of fishermen, living along the banks, lakes and islands of the Indus River in Sindh province.

The project, spanning from December 2022 to February 2024, aimed to documenting the dying culture of Indus houseboats generating a visual and technical record of the processes and traditional ways of living, maintaining and building them. Being an oral tradition there is no documentary record of these traditions or rituals, nor is there a record of the rituals related to this unique lifestyle. The produced documentation is a first-time attempt at creating a comprehensive archival and documentary record of the central and most tangible material aspect of this ancient cultural tradition.

The research project focused on the last surviving floating village Manchar Lake near Sehwan, comprising of 44 wooden houseboats, having suffered from an impoverished status for over three decades, due to polluted water and mismanagent of the fresh water lake the community has not been able to undertake annual maintenance of their houseboats. As a result, they have become extremely dilapidated. The Wadero Umer village is the last remaining remanent of Indus houseboat culture and now on the verge of extinction. The research was expanded to some locations in lower Punjab near Taunsa Barrage and Ghazi Ghat.

This research is based on the field work as carried out at Wadero Umer Village involved one cluster of 35 houseboats and few houseboats in Taunsa. The collected data includes the following:

a) Socio-economic profiling of families living on 35 houseboats at Wadero Umer Village
b) Profiling (physical condition and damage assessment) of 35 houseboats
c) Measured documentation of 2 houseboats (Galiyo)
d) Measured documentation of 1 fishing boat (Hurro)
e) Focus group discussion with the community members
f) Interviews with boat-makers and extinct houseboat dwellers at Manchar, Sukkur, Ghazi Ghat and Taunsa
g) Photography and videos of houseboats at Manchar and Taunsa
h) Drone photography of the village on Manchar Lake
i) Project Documentary titled “Goth Wadero Umer: The last surviving houseboat village of mohannas on the Manchar lake A centuries old cultural tradition on the verge of extinction”
j) Webpage showcasing project research and its outcomes

The research outcomes are submitted to EWAP available from the open access EWAP repository at ARCHES datbase, at https://ewap.brookes.ac.uk/report/d9cae513-4722-41d6-9b1f-6425139366cf