By Trying To Convert Kashmir Cease-fire Line Into An International Border, India Wants To Retain Its Hold On The Headwaters Of The Jehlem, Chenab And The Indus Rivers To Strangle Pakistan
Washington, D.C., Wednesday, February 24, 1999 - The crafty Brahmin rulers in Delhi, our reliable sources in India tell us, plan to use the new life-giving Ranjit Sagar Dam in Sikh Punjab to create misunderstanding between two friendly people- the Punjabi speaking Sikhs and their neighbors the Punjabi-speaking Pakistanis –who are getting too friendly. This column therefore, considers it worthwhile to upset the Brahmin’s plans by taking a historical journey backwards in time to set the record straight and perhaps in the process caution Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from entering into any hasty agreements with Pundit Vajpayeeji of Delhi he so naively called the "that shareef insan".This journey in time is necessary as none of the so called South Asian "experts" in the numerous "know-all" Washington think tanks, (or for that matter the umpteen Regional Institutes in Islamabad, Pakistan) have noticed that Indian Prime Minister Pundit Atal Behari Vajpayee’s visit to Lahore on February 20, 1999—a date selected by that crafty, superstitious, numerologist Brahmin—was synchronized with the installation of the fourth and final "stoplog" in tunnel-T of the new Ranjit Sagar Dam on the Ravi river which was allotted to India (Sikh Punjab) under the Indus Water accord, negotiated with help from the US and the World Bank way back in 1960. Numerals, (in this case 20) are very important in any superstitious Brahmin’s lexicon, as any expert will confirm.
The Indus Waters Treaty, as our readers may recall, was formally signed by Pandit Jawahar Lal and General Ayub Khan in Karachi, Pakistan, on September 20, 1960. One consequence of that treaty (our Punjabi Muslim brothers and sisters living in Lahore, Pakistan, may notice if they take a tonga ride to the Ravi river) is that that mighty Ravi river is slowly disappearing as Indian occupied Punjab, needs the Ravi’s water as most of its Sutlej river water is being siphoned off, nay stolen, by the crafty Indian rulers thanks to the Indian/Pakistan Indus Water Treaty, via the Rajasthan, Bikaner and Haryana canals which carry Sikh Punjab’s river water South to non-riparian Hindu-majority Indian states of Rajasthan and Haryana free of charge.
Some students of history may remember that Pakistan, under that short sighted Anglophile dictator-General Ayub Khan-was induced in 1960 by the US to sign the Indus Water Treaty with the ‘carrot’ of World Bank loans. Assurances were also given that the Indus Water Treaty provides the framework by which the mountainous area which constitutes the head waters of the three Western rivers (Indus, Jhelam and Chenab) in Indian Occupied Kashmir would fall to Pakistan in any final settlement of the Kashmir dispute. Incidentally that American suggestion (US State Department and Washington Think Tanks please note) still remains to this day the most viable solution for the Kashmir dispute if anyone cares to listen. India –that is Sikh Punjab occupied then, as now, by India—was allotted the three Eastern tributaries of the Indus river-Ravi, Beas and Sutlej rivers. Urged on by the United States, Nehru and Ayub Khan held talks, for a number of days in Pakistan in a hope of settling the Kashmir dispute. In a final joint communiqué issued at Lahore on September 23, 1960, the two South Asian nations promised further talks to "settle financial disputes and all border problems arising from the 1947 Indian/Pakistani partition".
The US did sincerely push for a settlement of the Kashmir dispute at that time for a couple of months but the crafty Brahmin in Delhi, Pundit Nehru, wore the Americans out, and they lost interest. Rest is history as they say. The partition era financial and other disputes, as every Pakistani knows, still remain unsettled today, nearly forty years later, as India’s Brahmin rulers are unwilling to "give", the only know how to take, as ’give’ is against the Brahmin’s nature unless someone gets his attention with a ‘danda’.
As a backgrounder on the Sikh plight it will suffice to say that the ink on the Indus Treaty had not yet dried when the crafty Indian rulers showed their Machiavellian bloody-mindedness. They ordered the digging of a huge canal—a white elephant experts called it—to deny Sutlej overflow river water to Indian Punjab and Pakistan by siphoning it Southwards to non-riparian Hindu-majority state of Rajasthan where 50% of the water just evaporates along the way and 30% of the water ends up waterlogging the Southern Punjab farmlands through which that wretched Canal passes. As if that was not enough the Machiavellian Brahmin rulers of India, to rub salt into the Sikh psyche, named the man-made river after that nemesis of the Sikhs, as the Indira Gandhi Canal.
Over the past three decades or so while the Sutlej River water was being siphoned South, instead of North, the naive Sikh Punjabi farmers have been encouraged by the government to dig thousands of tubewells which exercise depleted underground water. It has lowered the water table in Indian occupied Punjab, Khalistan, to record lows as the Sutlej river water which could have replenished the underground water source is not available as it is being siphoned off gratis to Haryana and Rajasthan. To make matters worse for the Sikh farmer of the Punjab the Indian rulers have a sword of Damocles hanging over Sikh Punjab in the form of a ditch called the Sutlej/Jumna Link canal which is supposed to draw water from the Sutlej river and carry it South to the River Jamuna in Haryana state the moment the Sikhs drop their guard or are conned or bribed into allowing the larceny. The 160 meters high earthcore gravel shell type Ranjit Sagar Dam, when completed in late 1999 will produce electricity and may replenish the underground water in some areas as well as irrigate some thirsty farmlands of Northern Indian Occupied Punjab.
In view of the above, this is as good an opportunity as any to remind the elder members of the Nawaz Sharif government as well as Think Tanks in Pakistan that when that Muslim hater Shyama Prasad Mukerjee left the Hindu Mahasabha in 1951, 48 years ago, to form the fascist Jan Sangh), a parcharak called Atal Bihari Vajpayee was loaned to him by the RSS to function as his private secretary. "Vajpayeeji" has not changed his stripes since then and he remains a RSS (Rashtriya Sevak Sangh) parcharak to this day. It is obvious that having won over some support from a few ill-informed America Pandays the old Brahmin has traveled to Lahore in the hope of conning the beleaguered Pakistan government with his Urdu poetry into settling the Kashmir dispute along the cease-fire so that the headwaters of the Jehlem, Chenab and Indus remain for ever in India’s grip for future use in coercive diplomacy.
Most international observers, in Delhi and Washington, are suggesting that the bus ride to Lahore on February 20, 1999 by Pundit Vajpayee was in pursuit of this RSS goal of converting the Kashmir Cease-fire line into an international border so that the future generations of Pakistanis remain enthralled for ever to the future generations of Brahmins in Delhi.
We Sikhs wish our Pakistani brothers and sisters well and find this idea revolting! Pakistan better beware and instead look at an independent sovereign friendly state of Khalistan as a very quick-very quick indeed –solution for the Kashmir dispute.