HEADLINE: Indus Water Treaty: Nehrus Original Himalayan Blunder

No armies with bombs and shellfire could devastate a land so thoroughly as

Pakistan could be devastated by the simple expedient of India's permanently
shutting off the source of waters that keep the fields and people of Pakistan
green. David Lilienthal, former chief of the Tennessee Valley Authority, US
The Aqua Bomb is truly Indias most powerful weapon against Pakistan. As the
upper riparian state, India can control the flow of the seven rivers that flow into
the Indus Basin. And yet in the last 69 years only once has it exercised this great
power and not very well.
On April 1, 1948, with India and Pakistan battling for control of Jammu & Kashmir,
engineers in Indian Punjab shut off water supplies (http://www.ips.org.pk/themuslim-world/1328-indus-waters-treaty-a-dispassionate-analysis?format=pdf)
from the Ferozepur headworks to the Depalpur Canal and Lahore. Around 8 per
cent of the cultivable command area in Pakistan was impacted during the critical
kharif sowing season. The city of Lahore was deprived of the main sources of
municipal water, and the supply of electricity from the Mandi hydroelectric
scheme was also cut off. Water rationing was introduced in Pakistans second
largest city.
When India had its foot on Pakistans parched throat, when a little more pressure
would have forced Islamabad to behave, and when Indian soldiers were fighting
and dying to liberate Indian territory, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru
committed his first Himalayan blunder by relaxing Indias chokehold on Pakistan.
Under his leadership, India inked the Indus Water Treaty (IWT), giving away 82
per cent of the total water to Pakistan. Niranjan D. Gulhati, India's chief
negotiator, exemplified Indias muddled thinking: We had to keep in view the
interests of the other side: they must live; we must live. They must have water;
we must have water.
In his book Indus Waters Treaty: An Exercise in International Media, Gulhati
narrates Nehrus reaction to the stoppage of the waters: Officially, the provincial
government had acted without the federal governments prior approval, and
were to elicit little sympathy from some sections of the Indian central
government. In fact, Nehru is thought to have castigated the East Punjab
government and their engineers, in September 1949, for having taken matters
into their own hands.
Engineers in Indian Punjab had a valid reason for stopping the water to Pakistani
Punjab. While the borders of India and Pakistan were demarcated haphazardly by
British officials panicking in the backdrop of mutinies by Indias defence forces,
the distribution of water resources was not discussed at all. Therefore, as a
stopgap measure, India and Pakistan signed the Standstill Agreement on
December 20, 1947, which maintained the status quo till March 31, 1948.

According to the engineers, in the absence of any formal agreement, if East

Punjab had not closed the water temporarily this might have led to West Punjab
acquiring legal rights to the canal waters in that area. In effect, East Punjab was
concerned about allowing a precedent to arise that would prove detrimental to it
at a later stage.
On April 24, 1948 Pakistani Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan asked for the
immediate restoration of the water supply. Nehru replied on April 30 that he
had instructed East Punjab to restore supplies to Lahore and Dipalpur. He also
agreed to the Pakistani proposal for a conference to settle the dispute.
Delhi Agreement: Pakistan wriggles out
With Lahore screaming for water, Pakistan signed the May 1948 Delhi
Agreement, which restored the water supply but at a cost. Firstly, Pakistan was
to pay for the transport of water through India. Secondly, India was to be allowed
gradually to diminish this supply to Pakistan. Indias contention was that colonial
rulers had built the irrigation system in West Punjab but neglected East Punjab
completely. Such a state of neglect could not continue after independence, and
therefore it would need to draw some water that flowed into West Punjab.
The ink had barely dried on the Delhi Agreement when Pakistan started to dig a
channel from the River Sutlej in order to circumvent the Ferozepur headworks. It
justified its decision to dig as a precautionary measure against India closing
down the water supply in the future. India warned that it would take retaliatory
action, and dig a channel further upstream of Pakistans channel.
Pakistan said the Delhi Agreement had been signed under duress, and gave
notice of its expiry, in a note to the Indian government on August 23, 1950. With
both countries embarking upon competing and conflicting river diversion
projects, Nehru wrote to Liaquat Ali Khan, proposing a joint declaration that their
countries would not go to war over any dispute between them.
And typical of how Nehru had always acted and would do so over and over
again to the detriment of Indias interests he proposed that both countries
would seek peaceful means to resolve their differences, including third party
intervention in the form of mediation, agencies especially set up to resolve the
matter, or an international body recognised by both countries. This was like free
money for Pakistan Liaquat Ali Khan agreed.
Enter the World Bank
While India favoured a water sharing tribunal with an equal number of experts
from each side, Pakistan kept demanding foreign mediation, preferably the
International Court of Justice. It was even prepared to take the dispute before the
UN Security Council. However, it was the World Bank reality an American bank
that waded into the dispute.
While Pakistan was happy with the outcome, there were many in India who
doubted the World Banks intentions. One of these sceptics was President

Rajendra Prasad. However, Prasad was softened up by Nehrus nephew B.K.

Nehru who was the Indian Executive Director of the World Bank. In early 1952, he
allayed the Presidents fears of falling into a debt trap by telling him that
international debts were never meant to be repaid.
The World Bank also hinted that funding for the Bhakra-Nangal project, which
was to usher in Indias Green Revolution, depended on the successful settlement
of river disputes. A country on the brink of war would hardly be regarded by the
World Banks bond investors to be a good investment opportunity, the banks
representative pointed out.
The pressure worked. India agreed to World Bank mediation, surrendering all its
advantages as the upper riparian state. Incredibly, Nehru refused to link the
Indus river dispute to the settlement of the Kashmir issue. In a letter to the World
Bank, the Prime Minister made it clear: The canal waters dispute between India
and Pakistan has nothing to do with the Kashmir issue; it started with and has
been confined to the irrigation systems of East and West Punjab.
The Pakistanis couldnt believe their luck. Liaquat Ali concurred with this opinion,
stating that the parties should refrain from using the negotiations in one dispute
to delay progress in solving any other. How convenient!
Generous to a fault
After nearly three years of negotiations, in 1953 India and Pakistan presented
their respective proposals. Again, typical of Nehrus misplaced magnanimity,
India was more generous than Pakistan was towards India. India was willing to
give Pakistan 76 per cent of all the waters of the three eastern rivers, whereas
Pakistan was allocating a meagre 13 per cent to India. Even the Indian claim to 7
per cent of the western rivers was drawn from the River Chenab flowing through
Indian controlled Jammu and Kashmir.
Keeping in view how much each side was willing to yield, and sensing Nehrus
soft side, the World Bank Plan allocated 82 per cent to Pakistan and a mere 18
per cent to India. Nehru gave the thumbs up to the plan.
The Indian negotiators believed there was enough water within the entire Indus
Basin to meet Indias requirements. Nehru stated: We are convinced that there
is more than enough water in the Indus Basin to satisfy the needs of both India
and Pakistan, provided it is properly exploited.
China on his mind
There was another critical factor that contributed to the undue haste with which
Nehru gifted the Indus Basin to Pakistan. In the early 1950s, China had began its
incursions, first into Tibet, and then into the Indian border regions themselves.
For years, Nehru had dismissed the Chinese threat, sideling and even rebuking
loyal army officers who pointed out the fallacy of his China policy. He had even
declined a permanent seat in the Security Council, saying that it belonged to
Beijing. With Chinese troops making provocative incursions across the McMahon

Line, Nehru realised he now had more than the Pakistani boundary to defend. He
believed he could buy peace with water.
Pakistans mindset
The treaty provides a peek into the Pakistani way of thinking. For Pakistan,
anything that involves India is the unfinished business of Partition, which was
essentially the fundamentalist Indian Muslims vision to establish a beachhead
from where it could launch jihad or holy war on India. This is part of some
subcontinent Muslims dream to re-establish Mughal India.
Islamabads constant cribbing is in keeping with that mindset. From Pakistan's
perspective allocation of "only" 75 per cent of water as against 90 per cent of
irrigated land violated the principle of "appreciable harm", writes Moin Ansari in
the book Indias Aqua Bomb.
Western involvement
For many Indians its a mystery why the West rushes to Pakistans defence every
time it gets into trouble. Well, its not such a mystery. Pakistan was midwife by
Britain and the United States as a bulwark against Russia. There was no way they
would have allowed it to fail.
In all its wars against India, Pakistan was rescued by its patrons in the West
before it was destroyed as an entity by India. The IWT was backed by the
governments of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, the US, West Germany
and the World Bank itself. It is clear the Anglo nations did not want their future
satellite to fail or be absorbed by India.
Pakistan is today the Ivy League of terror but the West isnt ditching its baby yet.
The Anglo countries continue to describe the IWT as the treaty that has survived
four wars. These are the same words the leftist media and Lutyens crowd use,
urging India not to abrogate the treaty.
The IWT should have been abrogated in 1965 when Pakistan launched a war in
Kashmir. But many liberal Indians continue to believe India is Pakistans older
brother and reckon that being generous towards Pakistan will buy peace. Well,
that theory has been proved wrong hundreds of times most lately in Uri by
Pakistan. At any rate, after Uri, the treaty is past its use by date.
If India walks out of the treaty, Pakistan is in big trouble. Even with the plentiful
waters of the Indus Basin, it remains a semi-arid country where drought has
parched many parts. Its water table is falling rapidly. Pakistani Punjab, which has
the largest canal density in the world, is getting waterlogged. Its vast reservoirs
that were built to offset the loss of the three eastern rivers to India are silting
up. India, which never quite stopped building dams and hydro power projects in
Kashmir in keeping with the spirit and letter of the IWT, is ideally placed to divert
water to its own parched cities.

The impact of the Aqua Bomb will indeed be greater than the impact of multiple
nuclear explosions. India should use it wisely to make Pakistan wind up its terror
industry and give up anti-India policy.