For 5,000 years, the five ‘torrents of water’ that flow through its plains, have fashioned Punjabi life and character
An Indus dolphin swims alongside a boat on the Beas in Punjab. Photo: Gitanjali Kanwar Recent events in Punjab have once again put river water sharing in the spotlight.
Sikh separatist leader Amritpal Singh, who is now on the run, had espoused the demand for an independent Sikh homeland, stating that it was the permanent solution to Punjab’s present problems such as drug addiction, mass migration to foreign countries and river water disputes among other things.
Rivers and their waters have been an emotive issue in Punjab since the partition of the erstwhile British province in 1947 between the new dominions of India and Pakistan.
The 1960 Indus Waters Treaty mandated that Pakistan had exclusive rights to the waters of the Indus, the Jhelum and the Chenab. India, on the other hand, had rights over the Ravi, the Beas and the Satluj.
In 1966, Haryana was carved out of Punjab. It demanded that waters from the three rivers be shared under the Punjab Reorganisation Act.
In the past almost six decades, various efforts have been made to sort this issue but to no success, Down To Earth (DTE) had noted in 2021. Legislative and judicial efforts include:
The sharing of waters with Haryana through the proposed controversial Satluj-Yamuna Link canal as well as with Rajasthan through the Indira Gandhi Canal led to violence and bloodshed during the peak of Sikh militancy in the 1980s and 1990s and continue to find an echo to this day among sections of the Sikh community.
The state is already grappling with the ill-effects of the Green Revolution. Excessive use of pesticides and fertilisers poisoned its soil and groundwater.
Paddy, a water guzzling crop, is now grown in Punjab, leading to a catastrophic drop in the groundwater table. Report upon report has warned that the state risks becoming a desert if excessive groundwater extraction is not stopped.
The depletion of Punjab’s water — both surface and ground — has thus been a source of heartburn for the state’s people, especially the Sikh majority.
One reason for that could be the role that rivers have played in defining the Punjabi (and by extension Sikh) identity.
‘Punjab’ is first documented in the writings of the Moroccan traveller, Ibn Batuta, in the 14th century, according to the official website of the Punjab government.
In the Rig Veda, the same region has been called Sapta Sindhu or land of seven rivers. And in the Mahabharata, it has been called the Panchanada or five rivers.
In their paper Singing the River in Punjab: Poetry, Performance and Folklore published on October 23, 2023, historians Radha Kapuria of Durham University in the United Kingdom and Naresh Kumar of Kamala Nehru College, New Delhi “emphasise ‘rivercentrism’ in the Punjab’s spatial and affective geographies”.
A map of the Indus basin. Photo: iStock
They did so through “an analysis of folk songs, proverbs, poetry, and recorded and film music in modern and contemporary Punjab”.
Whether describing longing and sorrow for one’s beloved or as witnesses to both the love of folk heroes and heroines but also the hatred, violence and bitterness of Partition, rivers as metaphors occupy a central place in the Punjabi imagination, they note.
Sikhism, which emerged in the Punjab region with the birth of Guru Nanak in 1469 Common Era, has its fair share of instances where rivers play a pivotal role.
For instance, the story of Sikhism itself begins with a rivulet. Guru Nanak worked as an accountant for Daulat Khan Lodhi, a nobleman in the court of the last Lodhi Sultan of Delhi.
In 1499, he went for his bath in a rivulet called the Kali Bein which flowed through the town of Sultanpur Lodhi, where he lived. Guru Nanak disappeared for three days. When he came back, he proclaimed his ministry.
The third Guru, Amar Das, an aged disciple of the second, Guru Angad, is said to have gone to the Beas river every morning to fetch its water for his Master’s bath.
Finally, the tenth Guru, Gobind Singh and his family were separated at the Sarsa rivulet in the winter of 1704, never to be together again.
Kapuria and Kumar also call India and Pakistan as ‘trans-river’ rather than the Punjab rivers as ‘trans-national’, thus taking a hydro-centric, as opposed to a ‘terra-centric’ view.
“Rivers always give a message of intermingling, interconnectedness, togetherness, harmony, love, growth. A river has water, which is the source of all life. It is the commercial use we put rivers to that causes problems. It is just modern, populist politics. Otherwise, rivers have been unifiers and not dividers,” Birinder Pal Singh, Professor of Eminence, Department of Sociology & Social Anthropology at Punjabi University, Patiala, told DTE.
“Every river has a fluvial memory. It gives a composite cultural landscape to the riparian catchment. By transferring water elsewhere, the community’s connect and its stake vanishes in the region,” Professor Venkatesh Dutta from the Department of Environmental Science, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Lucknow’s Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University told DTE.
“Today, water is not flowing according to its terrain and catchment system. It is flowing according to power and money. If we have political backing, we can bring water to wherever we want by making canals, dams, diversions and barrages,” he added.
Maybe, we should just let the rivers of this world flow free and wild like they used to and re-unite people. But perhaps, that is too much to ask for.
We are a voice to you; you have been a support to us. Together we build journalism that is independent, credible and fearless. You can further help us by making a donation. This will mean a lot for our ability to bring you news, perspectives and analysis from the ground so that we can make change together.
India Environment Portal Resources :
.png)
Comments are moderated and will be published only after the site moderator’s approval. Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name. Selected comments may also be used in the ‘Letters’ section of the Down To Earth print edition.