Indus Basin Uninterrupted: A History of Territory and Politics from Alexander to Nehru

by Uttam Kumar Sinha

The Indus Waters Treaty between India and Pakistan marks six decades, but carries the reflection of 5000 years of history

Indus Basin Uninterrupted, with an easy narration and rich archival material, brings alive a meandering journey of peace, conflict and commerce on the Indus basin. The Indus system of rivers, as a powerful symbol of the passage of time, represents not only the interdependence and interpenetration of land and water, but equally the unfolding of political identities, social churning and economic returns. From Alexander's campaign to Muhammad-bin-Qásim crossing the Indus and laying the foundation of Muslim rule in India; from the foreign invaders and their 'loot and scoot' to the Mughal rulers' perspective on hydrology and water use; from the British 'great game' on the Indus basin to the bitter and bloody Partition; and finally, as a historical pause, the signing of the Indus Waters Treaty-this book is a spectrum of spectacular events, turning points, and of personalities and characters and their actions that were full of marvel.

Genres: India, History, Nonfiction

363 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 22, 2021

Reviews

[Himanshu Damle · Rating 5 out of 5]

A prequel to Trial by Water, Uttam Kumar Sinha's 'Indus Basin Uninterrupted' contributes to the history of the region beginning with the campaigns of Alexander from Macedonia in 326 BCE, Mohammad Bin Qasim's crossing the Indus in 711 CE and setting the foundation of Islamic Rule in India, Tughlaq & Mughals appropriating the hydrological system of the rivers flowing through the north and the northwest India, the site of the tensed 'Great Game' between the British and the Russian Empires and immortalized by Kipling's 'Kim', the carriage caused by the partition of the country, the fatiguing negotiation procedures as wrought by the Good Offices of the World Bank and finally the signing of the Indus Water Treaty between India and Pakistan in 1960. Sinha's Trial by Water does mention the treaty placed under abeyance in the wake of the Pahalgam terror attack in April 2025, which for the first time was suspended, despite India and Pakistan having fought two wars, the Kargil clash and numerous terror attacks. The book scores high on history, diplomacy, international relations, healthy Parliamentary Debates and finally the culmination of it all in the form of IWT, which three world referred to as a responding success, and in the words of David Lilienthal, the then Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), whose paper egged Eugene Black, the then President of the World Bank to enter as a mediator between the two neighbours.

Along the way, the book reintroduces the often forgotten side of luminaries from India. For instance, BR Ambedkar, who as a member of the Viceroy, Lord Wavell's Executive Council, contested the choice of engineer in the planning of the Damodar Valley Corporation, the first river valley project in India. While Wavell sought the services of the engineer who had worked on the Aswan Dam in Egypt, BR Ambedkar favoured the expertise from someone who worked with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in the US. BR Ambedkar prevailed eventually proving his indelible audacity. In his cause, BR Ambedkar was able supported by the Astrophysicist, Meghnad Saha, who initially got along well with Jawaharlal Nehru and later suffered an estranged relationship, firstly for not being a votary of Nehru's idea on Atomic Energy Commission, and then favouring TVA's expertise in scientifically assessing the rivers to come out with flood policies.

The book is divided into 5 sections, viz. the settlers and invaders, diplomacy and commerce, colonization and contestation, partition of land and rivers, and the coming into being of the Indus Water Treaty. For all his racist mindset, and unpopular decisions, Lord Curzon did make an exception with the appointment in 1902 of John Marshall, who at 26 was made the Head of the Archaeological Survey of India. It was under Marshall that India's prehistoric past saw the light of the day when Harappa and Mohenjodarro were discovered as relics of a civilization dating back to several millennia before the Christian era that came to commonly known as the Indus Valley Civilization. Similar excavations over time drew the map of the extent of this civilization all the way from the Punjab, Multan, Sindh and Gujarat. The Indus that once flowed through the Great Rann of Kutch shifted its bed westwards following the tectonic activity of 1819, and has its mouth in today's Pakistan, near its largest city, Karachi. The river has often confused geographers and historians because of various nomenclatures and has even been considered a subsidiary to the Mihran, which in itself might have been the Hakra-Ghaggar riverine system. Alexander mistakenly thought the Indus to be the Head of the Nile, which was rectified later, but he still counted only for rivers and missed Sutlej for his voyage stopped at Beas and didn't venture as east as the Sutlej. A couple of centuries later, Chandragupta Maurya extended his Kingdom as far as Aria (Herat) and Kabul by crossing the Indus. In 711 CE, Mohammad Bin Qasim laid to waste the Buddhist city of Siraj-ji-Takri, and moved along the western limestone terraces of upper Sindh before getting to Debal (near today's Karachi) in the Indus Delta and laid the foundation of the Muslim rule to follow. A series of travellers from foreign lands who accompanied the invaders wrote about the hydrological system of the northwest India, including Al-Badahuri, Al-Beruni and Ibn Batuta. Mention has to be made of Suyya, the waterman of Kashmir. Suyya lived during the 8th century was closely observed the reasons for the flooding of the Jhelum. His scheme of diverting the flow of the Jhelum was a forerunner to the present-day multi-purpose river valley projects. Suyya oversaw the demolition of the natural barrier that was preventing the waters of the Jhelum to flow. He made a network of channels and dug canals throughout the valley, allowing for as sustained flow of the river water on a permanent basis.

It were the Tughlaqs, the third of the Delhi Sultanate that played a prominent role in irrigation in the area. Firoz Shah Tughlaq, known for bigotry and orthodox Islam, is often referred to as the father of the Indian Irrigation System for having constructed four waterways, from Yamuna to Hisar, Sutlej to Ghaggar, Ghaggar to Firuzabad and from Sirmour Hills to Hansi. The Mughals carried the work onwards with Akbar, Jehangir and Shah Jahan building canals in Sindh, Kashmir and Punjab. The last of the great Mughals, Aurangzeb constructed inundation canals in the dry areas of Multan and between the Sutlej-Chenab Doab.

Section 2 is about the diplomacy and commerce on the Indus and opens with the story of Lord Minto's three wise envoys, viz. John Malcolm, Charles Metcalfe and Mountstuart Elphinston, who were interested with the responsibility of surveying the porous borders of Northwest India with Afghanistan. This was the beginning of the 19th century and the time when the Great Game was being initiated. The Great Game was a 19th-century rivalry between the British and Russian empires for control and influence in Central Asia, primarily centered on Afghanistan. The competition was a political and diplomatic confrontation that used a mix of military and espionage tactics as both empires expanded their territories and sought to secure their interests, with the British aiming to protect their "jewel in the crown," India, from Russian expansion. The rivalry intensified in the 1830s as both powers expanded into Central Asia. Russia conquered Turkestan, while Britain consolidated its rule and borders in British India. Afghanistan became a crucial buffer state in this conflict, as both empires sought to control it to prevent the other from gaining a strategic advantage. The conflict involved a combination of military invasions, diplomatic pressure, espionage, and the mapping of uncharted territories, often through secret missions by officers and explorers. The term "Great Game" is often credited to Arthur Conolly, a British political officer in Central Asia, and was popularized by Rudyard Kipling in his novel Kim. The intense period of rivalry formally ended with the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907, which divided and defined the spheres of influence in the region, although the competition for influence continued in different forms. Back to the time of Lord Minto's, when his three envoys mapped the Indus and its tributaries, before Sir Alexander Burnes, a Scottish explorer and diplomat traveled along the Indus River in 1831. His journey, ostensibly to deliver horses from King William IV to Maharaja Ranjit Singh, was a secret mission to survey the river, which the British government saw as a strategic route to Central Asia. This eventually opened up commercial navigation up the Indus helping the British to see control over Sindh and improving accessibility to Afghanistan.

The third section on colonization, canals and contestation deals with how Punjab became a hydrological society after it came under the British with the death of Maharaja Ranjit Singh in 1831. Unlike the eastern part, the western part of Punjab didn't enjoy as much rainfall and this has a lesser settlement. Subsequently, the drier western part became the cradle for agrarian revolution as the five rivers were harnessed into assets. Technological innovations were introduced in canal development with permanent Headworks, head regulators and construction of distributary systems turning the semi-arid lands into lush green fields. It was in 1870 that Lord Mayo introduced the decentralisation of public finances into separate central and provincial compartments. This was an important intervention for it led to an era of Legislative thinking and administrative reforms in the public works sector. That's how was born the Northern Indian Canal and Drainage Act in 1873, which acted as a statutory guideline for state-led irrigation development in North India. After the Mutiny of 1857, the Government of India Act 1858 transferred power from the East India Company to the British Crown. While, projects such as the Sirhind project continued to be built, towards the end of the century, India faced with the serious crisis in the form of a famine. The British Parliament expressed serious dissatisfaction on the callous attitude of the administration when the crown was observing 60 years of Queen Victoria's ascension to power. Canal administration was stringently enforced, and only with the passage of the Government of India Act 1919 did irrigation become a provincial subject. With the recommendations of the Act, there Public Works Department was merged with the Department of Industry and Labour. Irrigation and power fell under the purview of this Department leading to the constitution of the Central Board of Irrigation in 1927. Sinha mentions the contribution of Indian engineers, especially AN Khosla, and M. Visvesvaraya. The latter's stint at the water supply project at Sukkur in Sindh province in 1893-95 married a high point when he devised a method of collector weeks to filter the muddy waters of the Indus on the riverbed and create a passage to bring drinking water to the pumping station.

By India's partition in 1947, the land irrigated by the Indus system was overwhelmingly in favour of Pakistan, whereas the need for the Indian province of Punjab was dearly felt. How was this logjam negotiated before three signing of the treaty forms the major part of the fourth section, which deals with the partition of land and rivers. This disparity led to the Canal Dispute between the neighbours in 1948, when our of the 19 Headworks and 13 canals in the Indus Basin, India got possession of merely 4 and 2 respectively. The dispute came to head immediately after the Headworks of Upper Bari Doab Canal (UBDC) and Sutlej Valley canals fell within the geography of India, while watering the lands in Punjab and Bahawalpur in Pakistan. In order to maintain and run the existing system as before partition, two Standstill Agreements were signed on 20 December 1947 by the Chief Engineers of East Punjab and West Punjab. These interim arrangements were to expire on 31 March 1948, after which East Punjab started asserting its rights on its waters. It was on 1 April 1948 that East Punjab cut off water supplies to Pakistan. In the subsequent negotiations held at Simla, two Standstill Agreements were signed on 18 April 1948, which provided for continued supply of water to the Pakistan canals for a limited period and also recognized India’s claims to the UBDC system and Ferozpur head-works. But Pakistan not only did not ratify the Simla Agreement, but mounted pressure on Nehru and also at the UN Security Council on Kashmir. Water supply was restored on 30 April 1948 and Inter Dominion Conference was held at Delhi on 3 May 1948, followed by an agreement on 4 May 1948 whereby East Punjab agreed not to withhold water from West Punjab, which agreed to deposit “with Reserve Bank of India such ad hoc sum as may be specified by the Prime Minister of India”. Though this agreement did provide a basis of dealing with the vexed issue, Pakistan reneged out of it unilaterally saying that it was signed “under duress”. Pakistan was more interested in using the Indus waters dispute as a political tool against India in its battle over Kashmir at the UN. Pakistan immediately began to churn is propaganda machine accompaniment's the world that only with Kashmiri annexation to Pakistan could the young country be able to fully harness the power of the rivers for its own good. While India always maintained that the solution lay in bilateral engagements, Pakistan was able to gather international support, thanks largely to the propaganda machine constantly at work. And Pakistan was successful in that it gathered attention from the US as well as Britain. That was the beginning of World Bank's role in the eventual treaty signed between the two countries. That's the subject of Section 5, which I have covered in the review of Trial By Water (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...), and thus will not repeat here.

As the sleeve says, this is as book of spectacular events, turning points, and of personalities, and characters that shaped the settlement of a challenging dispute, which otherwise remained sacrosanct until the terrible events unfolded in April 2025. Was placing the Treaty in abeyance an impulsive decision, as has been there case with most policies on the last decade, or was it properly calculated? But, who is to suffer in times? Only time will tell.

[Vineeth Nair · Rating 5 out of 5]

At a moment when the six decade old treaty stands in jeopardy, the book gives good insights on the Indus basin from Alexander’s times to present day. A must read.

[Souvik Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this book because the Indus is one of those rivers that quietly shapes so much of our history and politics, and I wanted a single, clear story of how that happened. From the very first page I felt the author had a plan: not just to tell the facts, but to show how water, power and people are tied together across centuries. That promise kept me reading.

The big sweep of history
What I loved most is the way the book moves through time. It does not stop at one era. It starts with ancient campaigns and cultural shifts, goes through medieval and Mughal periods, and then into the British colonial years before arriving at Partition and the making of the Indus Waters Treaty. For me this made the treaty feel less like an isolated event and more like the next chapter in a story that was already centuries old.

Rivers as living politics
The author treats the Indus not as just a physical thing but as an actor in history. I kept noticing how control of canals, irrigation and river routes meant control of land, food and therefore power. Reading these sections I kept thinking about how a river shapes how people live and how states are built. That perspective made many moments in the book click into place for me.

The engineering and the empire
The parts about canal works and engineering under British rule were eye opening. At first I worried these sections would be dry, but they reveal a lot about why the region developed in particular ways. The engineering choices were also political choices, and seeing that link so clearly explained helped me understand why water became such a central issue in the 20th century.

Partition, negotiation and the treaty
When the book reaches 1947 and the years after, everything the author had shown before suddenly felt urgent. The Partition divided the basin and left a tangle of technical, legal and human problems. The description of how the Indus Waters Treaty came to be made me appreciate how complicated and fragile water diplomacy is. I came away with a better sense of the choices both sides faced and why an international broker like the World Bank became involved.

The writing and how it reads
The book is well researched but it never felt like a textbook to me. The author keeps the narrative moving and ties technical details back to human stories and political decisions. I found the chapters balanced in tone: factual when they needed to be, but always aiming to make the reader see the bigger picture. For me that balance was just right.

Who this book worked for
If you care about history, geopolitics, or how natural resources shape nations, this book is for you. I think students, policy minded readers and anyone curious about South Asian history will find it rewarding. Even the more technical parts added to my overall understanding, rather than boring me.

Final thoughts
After finishing the book I felt like I had walked the Indus basin in time. I now see the Indus Waters Treaty and current disputes in a fuller light, because the book showed me the long roots of those issues. This book made a complex topic clear, and it left me more curious about how rivers will shape our future. If you want a clear, human way into the history and politics of the Indus, this is a book I would recommend.

[Amitbhanu Pandey · Rating 4 out of 5]

INDUS BASIN UNINTERRUPTED( A HISTORY of TERRITORY & POLITICS from ALEXANDER to NEHRU) by UTTAM KUMAR SINHA
After Lord Auckland’s unceremonious return to London, Edward Law, the Earl of Ellenborough took the charge ‘to restore peace to Asia’. Ellenborough had a great fascination for the Indus(river), matched only by his loathing for Russia…. He had recorded his dream of commanding British troops in a battle against the Russians on the bank of the Indus…. Hence, having got a chance, he plunged into war and ordered to seize Sindh… in 1842, under Charles Napier the entire territory of Sindh was captured along with the flowing Indus. The morally questionable nature of the annexation was so aptly expressed by the man himself who led it.. Charles Napier—
“ Our object in conquering India, the object of all cruelties, was money… he further added..” we shall yet suffer for the crime as sure as there is a God in heaven.”
His one word message to London- ‘Peccavi’ the Latin for ‘I have sinned’ and a perfect pun for ‘I have Sindh’.

“ Indian agriculture from time immemorial had to gamble with the monsoon. In the Punjab, with the advent of widespread canals, it had also gamble with canal.”

It’s a fantastic read and gives an elaborate account of the role played by The Indus River historically.. the author has extensively discussed the various aspects of Canals .. engineering politics administrative and other aspects( it’s a bit excess😀).
‘ At a time when railway communication in India was at an incipient stage, the Indus as a mode of transport was path- breaking and the reason why sooner or later, Sindh had to be occupied by the British.’

The issue of management of water resources.. rivers canals etc is of great importance for India as well as the world. Water should not be the cause of the next World War..because it will be a failure of humanity and human- intelligence.

The book is insightful and full of interesting historical facts… equally good for academic purposes.💐🙏

[Anamitra Roy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is well written in certain parts. the Historical section on Alexander and his conquest, Ghenghis khan and the coming of Islamic conquerors to india. the natural boundary made by Indus are all well written and good information to Digest.
the section on diplomacy by the British is also well documented. Good research here but probaby a lot f info is available . the colonization and canal business is very well documented. the fact that Punjab and Northern areas became good agricultural property only with the advent of the Canals. The impact the canals had on the economy of the region, however the canal documentation and details are too boring and drags. perhaps these chapters should have been much smaller . it almost becomes a referance book on canals. The making of the Indus Water Treaty is well documented. The period 1947 - 60 is also well drafted and how Nehru falters. It brings to light a number of new things, like how unequal the treaty was towards India. The anecdote on Atal Bihari Vajpayee was good to read. Overall an OK book, with middle chapters being a bit boring.

[Jindřich Zapletal · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you read the author's resume, you can already predict what the book is going to concentrate on. It is the story of legal and political wrangling over water rights in Punjab and the greater Indus basin from mostly 1800 to 1959, from Indian perspective. It is well-researched, and it contains enough cultural references to keep the motivated reader busy for some time.

What you will not find is any remarks on ecology, sociology, and technology of the irrigation systems. These things probably stand outside of the author's specialization, but I found them dearly missing. The direct competitor, David Gilmartin's Blood and Water, is much better on this front. There is also remarkably little on broader international context. The work of Punjab civil engineering school can be found all over the world, but Willcocks (the designer of the old Aswan dam and many other history-making projects) did not even deserve an index entry. Comparison with other international irrigation projects and water disputes is also missing except for a couple of perfunctory remarks.

[Ishaan Kochhar · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is more than a chronological narrative; it examines power and influence, seen through the lens of the Indus River. It delves into the policies of the dominant powers of the time and how their decisions/policies shaped the land and the politics of the region.

My personal favorite is the section detailing the water-sharing conflict that flared up in 1948, setting the stage for the Indus Waters Treaty in 1960. The masterfully describes the negotiations, the looming threat of conflict, and the critical role played by the World Bank in brokering peace.

[Kaustubh Verma · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love reading history but this book was too specific about irrigation, canals in and around the Indus. The history around Indus was only skimmed through (but whenever it was referred to it became an interesting read) and it turned into a drab to read about canals and water policies which literally is 50 % of this book