Indus Waters Treaty: PM Modi has corrected 'historic betrayal,' says Himanta Biswa Sarma in brutal takedown of Pandit Nehru

Amid the escalating tension between India and Pakistan after the dastardly Pahalgam terror attack that killed 27 people, there are many lauding Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to suspend the Indus Waters Treaty.

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma joined the chorus as he hailed PM Modi’s ‘water strike’ against Islamabad. In a long post on X on Saturday, Sarma said that this step was India’s way of “reclaiming sovereign rights over its rivers, sending a clear message that India will no longer reward terror and hostility with appeasement.” He also took a sharp swipe at India’s first Prime Minister Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru for signing the treaty and termed it as one of “greatest strategic blunders.”

He said that Pandit Nehru took the step due to his “misplaced obsession with international approval.” The Assam CM said, “despite India’s natural upper riparian advantage, Nehru, under immense pressure from the then American administration and the World Bank, handed away over 80% of the Indus basin waters to Pakistan — gifting full control over the mighty Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab rivers, while restricting India to the smaller eastern rivers (Ravi, Beas, Sutlej).”

Sarma also claimed that the treaty curtailed “India’s rights over the western rivers.” In the post, Sarma mentioned that New Delhi’s rights “were limited to minor irrigation and run-of-the-river hydro projects without meaningful storage, permanently compromising the water needs of Punjab, Haryana, and Jammu & Kashmir.”