This paper poses the following questions: how does one practice postcolonial pedagogies in an increasingly uncivil public sphere? What are the possible relationships between human rights, human welfare, ecological justice, and sustainable livelihoods? Komal Swaminathan’s 1970s play Water! Water! interrogates inter-caste imbalances, bond slavery, rural-urban tensions, gender inequality within local, regional, and national systems that create ecological and social injustices. These concerns remain relevant in the post 1990s era of diminishing human and citizenship rights in which most nations are conduits for the operations of global capital that increasingly commodify natural and cultural resources and human labor. This paper will also examine how the play frames a discourse on human rights and how ideas inherent to this discourse may be transposed to other contexts. For example, how does drama stage the tensions between various competing ideologies? What are the political possibilities of the classroom that also stages alterations in students’ attitudes to “other” cultures?