Is Modi taking aim at the Indus Water Treaty to satisfy war-mongers?

Perhaps mindful of the fact that his government’s response to the recent Uri terror attack threatens to dent his strongman image, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been making the right noises and taking incremental steps to contain the growing anger among supporters of the Bharatiya Janata Party who are demanding concrete action against Pakistan.

The government has already launched a diplomatic offensive to isolate Pakistan in the international community but this has clearly not satisfied the party rank and file, which expected Modi to live up to his pre-election rhetoric of launching an all-out military operation against Pakistan in case of a terror strike against India.

Water pressure

Realising that he has to be seen to be acting against Islamabad, the prime minister reviewed the implementation of the 56-year-old Indus Waters Treaty at a specially-convened meeting on Monday. There, he is learnt to have endorsed a suggestion that India should maximise the use of waters from the three rivers that the treaty allocated to Pakistan. Under the treaty, brokered by the World Bank in 1960, Pakistan has the exclusive use of waters of the Indus, Chenab and Jhelum, while the Ravi, Beas and Sutlej rivers were allocated for India’s use.

Adopting a tough stance, Modi told the meeting that “blood and water cannot flow together”. The government also decided to set up an inter-ministerial commission to review the treaty.

It was pointed out that so far India was using 20% of the Indus waters but the Modi government has decided to maximise the use of waters from the rivers allocated to Pakistan, which will help irrigate at least six lakh hectares of land in Jammu and Kashmir. Officials believe that this move will hurt the neighbouring country.

Target Pakistan

These decisions came on a day when external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj made a hard-hitting speech at the United National General Assembly where she underlined that Kashmir is an integral part of India and could not be taken away by force. Targeting Pakistan for its acts of betrayal against India, Swaraj said there are countries which “speak the language of terror, nurture it, peddle it and export it” and exhorted the UN General Assembly to isolate such countries.

But the moot question is: will the measures on the Indus Treaty and Swaraj’s fiery speech satisfy the war-mongering BJP cadres and party supporters who have come to believe that Modi is a strong leader who will not shy away from a direct confrontation with Pakistan? As it is, there have been murmurs in the party that the Modi government should have taken a far tougher position after the Uri terror attack on an Army camp in which 18 soldiers were killed.

In the coming days, Modi and BJP president Amit Shah will predictably hardsell the government’s moves post the Uri attack against Pakistan to its cadres to underline how it has succeeded in cornering Pakistan.

This has become particularly important as this issue is a subject of hot discussion in the villages and towns of Uttar Pradesh, which goes to polls early next year. While party cadres are disillusioned with what they consider to be Modi’s tepid response to Pakistan, even ordinary people have expressed their disappointment with the prime minister’s handling of the Uri attack.

Past words haunt Modi

Since the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election is critical for the BJP, it has to necessarily step up efforts to dispel the public perception that its response to Pakistan was not sufficiently tough. The saffron party, especially under Modi, has put nationalism at the centrestage of its political discourse and has always maintained that it will go to any length to avenge terror strikes against India.

As it happens, Modi finds himself in unfamiliar territory after the Pathankot and Uri attacks. Having promised an “aar paar ki ladai” in his pre-election speeches, Modi has to deal with the compulsions of office now that he is in a position of power.

As a result, Modi has been forced to do a fine balancing act – on the one hand, he goes about reassuring his supporters that concrete action against Pakistan is very much on the table and, on the other, he stops short of taking any extreme step which could discredit India internationally.

The compulsions faced by Modi were evident in his recent speech at a public meeting in Kozhikode, Kerala, when he declared angrily that India will not forget the terror strike in Uri and that the sacrifices made by its soldiers will not go in vain. Striking an all-familiar strident note, Modi held Pakistan responsible for promoting cross-border terrorism and warned that terrorists will be defeated.

While this vintage Modi was well appreciated by the public, the crowds were, however, flummoxed when the prime minister followed this up by reaching out to the people of Pakistan and sought their cooperation in fighting poverty together.

Although this is not the first time that Modi has articulated this formulation, it did not go down well with the surcharged crowds which only wanted the Prime Minister to reflect their mood for revenge and concrete action against Pakistan.