Lord Mountbatten with then PM Jawaharlal Nehru (left) in 1963. A last hour plea by Nehru to Lord Mountbatten on Ferozepur, among other issues, might have held back the Radclifffe award by a few days
NEW DELHI: The alertness and diligence of Indian civil engineers, such as erstwhile Bikaner state chief engineer Kanwar Sain, in realising the strategic importance of Ferozepur headworks of the Sutlej remaining in Indian hands led to an urgent intervention that moved the Radcliffe line a few crucial kilometre west. A last hour plea by Jawaharlal Nehru to Lord Louis Mountbatten, India’s last viceroy, on Ferozepur, among other issues, might have held back the Radclifffe award by a few days. When the award was announced on August 17, 1947, the entire area on the left bank with the Gang(a) canal was Indian territory, reveals a new book ‘Indus Basin Interrupted’ by Uttam Sinha, currently with the IDSA.
View: A new book explores Indus Basin with a lesson on war and peace
SECTIONS
View: A new book explores Indus Basin with a lesson on war and peaceBy Col (Dr) Divakaran Padma Kumar Pillay (Retd.), ET CONTRIBUTORS
Last Updated: Feb 12, 2021, 03:37 PM IST
Share
Synopsis
There are some very interesting conversation between Sadul Singh, the maharaja of Bikaner, Sardar Pannikar, Jawaharlal Nehru and Lord Mountbatten over the canal headworks and how eventually the headworks by drawing the Partition line came to India as a ‘strategic asset’.
Agencies
Uttam Sinha’s Indus Basin Uninterrupted, written with remarkable ease, engages not only with the ‘hydrology heritage’ of the basin but also with the history of major developments on its banks