A historic blunder that gave Pakistan the upper hand on Indus waters

Excerpts from the upcoming book Ebb and Flow: Indus Waters Treaty and India-Pakistan Relations, Penguin Random House

It was not for the first time that Jawaharlal Nehru had to contend with East Punjab’s position on water sharing with West Punjab. In 1948, during the tensions following the cessation of irrigation water to West Punjab on 1 April as a result of the expiry of the stand-still agreements signed on 20 December 1947,[1] Nehru was determined to quickly secure a resolution. An agreement was reached between the engineers on 18 April regarding the canals in West Punjab with headworks at Ferozepur and Madhopur in East Punjab.[2] Water was restored to Pakistan on 30 April but not before the country endured a period of distress and outrage, exposing its lower riparian vulnerability. A need for a permanent arrangement was desperately sought by Pakistan. In May, during the Inter-Dominion Conference,[3] Nehru had overruled the initial draft prepared by the Indian team, which included N.V. Gadgil, minister of works, mines and power, his secretary G.K. Gokhale and A.N. Khosla, chief engineer of Punjab Irrigation. Their draft had proposed a five-year accommodation period for Pakistan, allowing time for alternative arrangements as India gradually reduced the Sutlej water supply. However, Pakistan insisted on a longer period. Striving for a middle ground, Nehru returned a revised draft to the team, firmly stating that India reserved the right to curtail water supply to Pakistan in the interest of its own people, without specifying a time limit. Despite Gadgil’s strong objections to this omission, Nehru’s decision prevailed. Gadgil in his memoir writes,

Gokhale suggested registering the agreement with the UN, as both nations were members. Although Nehru initially did not approve, he sent it for registration two years later, and Pakistan opposed it. Had it been done immediately Pakistan might not have opposed it, as the Indian interpretation was not disputed at that time.[4]

The tumultuous aftermath of the partition, with half a million non-Muslim refugees, victims of remorseless plunder, rape and arson, pouring into East Punjab, created a strong sub-nationalism imbued with bitter memories of loss and sufferings. The mood was deeply provincial and did not reflect the lofty reconciliatory goals of Nehru. The East Punjab’s civil engineers defined India’s rationale, as an upper riparian country, to establish claim of the waters in its territory before ‘downstream utilisation became a perspective right’. There was no halfway in addressing East Punjab’s water requirements. Nehru had a difficult task managing the strong provincial sentiments of the East Punjab establishment and simultaneously responding to Pakistan’s unceasing water sharing allegations. Long before Western scholarship framed ‘double-edged diplomacy’ and coined the phrase ‘a two-level game’[5] to describe how politics between nations affects politics within nations and vice versa, Nehru was already practising the delicate art. In a letter to the then East Punjab chief minister Gopichand Bhargava, Nehru explains his predicament,

I am greatly worried at the stoppage of canal water which used to flow to Lahore district. Whatever, the legal and technical merit may be, there is little doubt that this act will injure us greatly in the world eyes, and more specially when food production is so urgently needed everywhere. I have little doubt that water will have to be allowed in future because such stoppages cannot occur normally unless there is actual war.[6]

Anxious and desperate, and with an overwhelming sense of dread and urgency, Pakistan began in July 1948 secretly ‘digging’ a canal to divert the Sutlej waters to the Depalpur Canal, threatening India’s water needs from the Ferozepur headworks. Pakistan defended its action as a ‘precautionary measure’. Khosla had foreseen this and proposed building a barrage at Harike, where the Sutlej and Beas meet, connecting it with the Ganga (Gang) Canal to Bikaner. This plan also envisaged creating the Rajasthan Canal (renamed the Indira Gandhi Canal in 1984) to irrigate 3 million acres of desert land. Even the renowned public intellectual and historian Arnold J. Toynbee, during his travels in India and Pakistan a decade later, could not overlook the transformative benefits of ‘the magic touch of water’ that the Rajasthan Canal would bring.[7]Taking matters into his own hands, Gadgil swiftly approved the project, sanctioned funds from his ministry and initiated construction within a week. The Harike Barrage, located at the legendary site where sage Vyas completed the Mahabharata, was a strategic move to counter Pakistan’s action of digging a canal. It also meant that India had an additional structure which Pakistan feared could hinder the flow of water to its territory. In a predictable response, Pakistan threatened to take the matter to the UN Security Council. Internationalizing the water issues that essentially were bilateral was a prospect that Nehru was never comfortable with. A frantic Nehru called an emergency meeting with Gadgil and the East Punjab officials to discuss the matter and consider an appropriate response. Gadgil had candidly expressed that yielding to Pakistan would only signal India’s weakness while Nehru insisted on being generous. Gadgil recounts,

I retorted that generosity grows through gratitude and said ‘What is the good of casting pearls.’ I intentionally left the sentence incomplete. My statement provoked Nehru to ask whether he had any rights as the Prime Minister. I quietly said, ‘You have all the rights given to you under the Constitution and I have nothing to say against them. But as a member of the Cabinet working on the principle of joint responsibility, I too have a right to say what I feel about the matter under discussion and that is what I am doing.[8]

There was palpable unease between Nehru and Gadgil over water sharing with Pakistan. Gadgil, steadfast in his commitment to India’s water security, was far more unyielding, refusing to compromise what he saw as the nation’s vital interests. Nehru, on the other hand, driven by a broader vision of reconciliation and peace, sought to resolve the dispute through diplomatic overtures and generosity. Interestingly and in quite a contrast, this was not the case with Kashmir. While India had accepted the idea of plebiscite, which in any event it felt would be greatly delayed, Nehru emphasised the moral aspect of the Kashmir problem, condemning Pakistan’s ‘aggression and gangsterism’. He found it unacceptable that the British were pushing India for a solution on Kashmir on some ‘vague basis of generosity’.[9] Nehru had a divergent view on what generosity entailed. His sense of generosity in water sharing with Pakistan, which he felt was not a political question, differed from his more strategic and nationalistic interpretation of Kashmir. While he readily agreed to World Bank mediation on water sharing with Pakistan, he was adamant about similar intervention in Kashmir.[10]

The Nehru–Gadgil clash of perspectives, often misconstrued as personal rivalry and dislike, actually reflected the deeper philosophical divide between pragmatism and idealism in India’s early statecraft. M.O. Mathai, Nehru’s private secretary and a formidable power broker, had unkindly described Gadgil, a protégé of Sardar Patel, as lacking statesmanship and up to ‘monkey tricks’.[11] Mathai was known for his art of insinuation, which he practised with great effrontery before he was thrown out in 1959. But one wonders how he had managed to become a close confidant of Nehru. Those who knew Nehru closely often concluded that he was a poor judge of character and amenable to flattery.Gadgil had great respect for Nehru but drew a clear line between blind obedience and voicing his own opinions, balancing deference with discernment. In fact, Gadgil was captivated on listening to Nehru’s presidential address at the Lahore Congress in 1929, delivered on the banks of the Ravi. It had made an indelible impact, as he reminisced,

Stars crowded the cold sky to witness the glorious incident.[12]

Gadgil till the end remained a staunch Nehruvite in his socialist views and economic matters but was also a follower of Sardar Patel:

. . . in-as-much-as I admire his administrative acumen.[13]

Both Gadgil and Bhargava met their fate in the hands of Nehru. Displeased with Bhargava’s administration in Punjab, Nehru made a decisive move by dismissing his government in 1951, marking the first-ever imposition of Article 356 (President’s rule). Just months prior, a major cabinet reshuffle took place. The Ministry of Works, Mines and Power along with Ministries of Industry and Supply and Commerce were reorganized and grouped differently to make it ‘more logical and scientific’. Natural Resources and Scientific Research was added to the Ministry of Education with Abdul Kalam Azad as the minister. In the process, irrigation was removed from Gadgil’s portfolio, and he was reassigned as the minister of works, production and supply. By 1952, Gadgil’s political fortune took another twist. Without a ministry in the new Nehru government, he transitioned to a role within the Congress Working Committee and in 1955 was appointed as the Governor of Punjab. As coincidence would have it, another big dam, like the Bhakra, was planned, this time on the Beas. The project aimed to take the waters through a canal from the lake formed to the Sutlej near Pong.

Thus the Sutlej and Beas will unite at the Bhakra Dam. Nature brought about their union on the plains at Harike. The Punjab engineers will now unite them amidst the Himalayan mountains. The first was a love marriage. This would be a marriage arranged by the parents.[14]

Gadgil’s trusted irrigation engineer, Khosla, who had unwaveringly stood on the side of Gadgil and led the Indian side of the World Bank-initiated Working Party to negotiate the Indus Basin waters in 1952, unexpectedly left the team after two years to become the Vice Chancellor, University of Roorkee.[15] Given Khosla’s hardline stance on water sharing with Pakistan, one can only speculate how the Indus Waters Treaty might have differed had he continued in his role.

References

[1]Two Stand-still Agreements were signed between East and West Punjab in Jullundur on December 20, 1947. One related to the UBDC from the Madhopurheadworks and the other the Depalpur Canal from the Ferozepur head-works. The former, a perennial canal, irrigated the districts of Gurdaspur and Amritsar in East Punjab and Lahore in West Punjab. The latter, a non-perennial canal, irrigated the Montgomery district in West Punjab.
[2]Agreement between East and West Punjab on the supply of water to the channels of the Central Bari Doab Canal System, Simla, April 18, 1948. Bhasin, n. 4, Vol. VII, p. 5584-86.
[3]Inter Dominion Agreement on the Canal Water Dispute, New Delhi, May 4, 1948. Ibid.,pp. 5598-99.
[4]N.V. Gadgil, Government From Inside, MeenakshiPrakashan, Meerut, 1968, p. 110.
[5]Peter Evans, Harold Jacobson and Robert D Putnam, eds., Double-Edged Diplomacy: International Bargaining and Domestic Politics, University of California Press, 1993.
[6] Nehru’s letter to Punjab Premier, Gopichand Bhargava, April 28, 1948, Bhasin, n. 4, Vol. VII, p. 5592.
[7]Arnold J. Toynbee, Between Oxys and Jumna, 1961, Oxford University Press, London, 1961, p.36.
[8]N.V. Gadgil, n. 71, p. 112.
[9]Nehru’s letter to GopalaswamyAyyangar from London, October 18, 1948. The letter was written after Nehru met British ministers Ernest Bevin and Stafford Cripps and Noel Baker at the Claridge’s Hotel. Nehru Papers, Prime Ministers Museum and Library, File. 14, p. 111.
[10]B.K. Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, Penguin, 1997, New Delhi, p. 254.
[11]M.O. Mathai, My Days With Nehru, Vikas Publishing House, New Delhi, 1979, p. 270.
[12]Aruna Sadhu, KakasahebGadgil, Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, New Delhi, 1988, p. 29.
[13]Ibid., p. 41.
[14]N.V. Gadgil, n. 71, p. 107.
[15]A Working Party was established in 1952 to prepare a comprehensive joint plan. It was composed of A.N. Khosla, Head of the Indian Central Commission for Water and Power, as India’s nominee, assisted by N.D. Gulhati and J.K. Malhotra. M.A. Hamid, Chief Engineer of the Irrigation Department of Western Punjab, served as Pakistan’s designee, aided by four prominent engineers representing each province of Pakistan. The World Bank was represented by Raymond A. Wheeler, Engineering Advisor, with Neil Bass, formerly of the TVA and Dr. Harry Bashore, former Commissioner of the US Bureau of Reclamation, as assistants. See, Shashi K. Gulhati, n. 18, p. 148. Also, AsitK. Biswas, n. 29, pp. 201-09. A.N. Khosla later became member of the Rajya Sabha and the Governor of Orrisa (1962-1966).

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