'Not peace, we bought appeasement': Jaishankar on 1960 Indus Waters Treaty, takes shots at Nehru

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Wednesday piercingly critiqued the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) that gave undue advantage to Pakistan over India. While speaking in the Rajya Sabha, Jaishankar accused the then Congress government of prioritising Pakistani interests over the concerns of Indian farmers. 

He further said that the then Indian leadership mistakenly took appeasement for peace. 

"The then Prime Minister said, let us do this treaty because the Indian government should consider the interests of Pakistani Punjab. Not a word was spoken about the interests of our own farmers in Kashmir, Punjab, Rajasthan, and Himachal Pradesh," the Union Minister told the Upper House.

Amping up his attack on the first Prime Minister of India, Jaishankar said that the Modi government corrected 'mistakes' made by Nehru, something that was long thought of as irreversible. 

"We were told for 60 years that Nehru's mistakes cannot be corrected. But the Narendra Modi government showed that they can," he commented. To substantiate his point, Jaishankar cited two major policy shifts — the abrogation of Article 370 and 35A in 2019 and putting the IWT in abeyance. 

Following the Pahalgam terror attack, the government had put the IWT in abeyance indefinitely due to Pakistan's sponsorship of terrorism. 

Explaining the rationale behind putting the IWT in abeyance, the diplomat-turned-politician said that it is "a very unique agreement" in several ways. 

Commenting on how the agreement favoured Pakistan, Jaishankar stated: "I cannot think of any agreement in the world where a country has allowed its major rivers to flow to the next country without having rights on that river."

Jaishankar's takedown of the water-sharing pact comes a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi told the Lok Sabha that the treaty is no longer viable in its current form. Calling it a "blunder committed by Jawaharlal Nehru," Modi reiterated: "India has made it clear that blood and water cannot flow together." 

He also said that Operation Sindoor would continue and it was red herring for Islamabad that "India will always act till Pakistan stops attacks."