Climate of Change
This writer may be forgiven for writing on a subject which may be very remote on what is on the mind of all Indians—the current state of relations between India and Pakistan. This phase has resulted from the horrific and barbaric terrorist attack on tourists at Pahalgam. As I write these lines Pakistan is continuing on the road of ignoring the restraint that has marked Indian response. Consequently, it has to bear the responsibility of the escalation in fighting that is occurring now. With all this happening why should I want to write on long-term threats that confront not only our region but humankind? The answer lies in what I recall my grandfather, Kailas Nath Katju, noted in one of his writings.
Grandfather was imprisoned during the Quit India movement. After he was released from jail he returned to his legal practice for a while before taking up political office again. He wrote that at that stage he had to catch up on the latest judgements delivered by the Privy Council which was the highest judicial forum during British rule. One of these judgments was on an intricate point of law. He showed it to a lawyer and asked him what struck him most about it. The lawyer after studying it began to tell him about its intricacies. Grandfather told the lawyer that he had missed the real point. He said that the most important aspect of the judgment was the time it was delivered. It was at the height of the Battle of Britain when the country was fighting with its back to the wall against Nazi Germany. The judgement showed that the judge who delivered it remained calm amidst the tensions of the times and focused his attention on the complex of law he had to judge. That showed true judicial detachment. The lesson I learnt from what grandfather had pointed out was the need to remain calm and balanced. In the context of my diplomatic career, it meant to focus not only on immediate issues but always to keep long term implications of matters relating to India’s interests. These included threats as well as opportunities. The most important long-term threat, as I noted earlier in these columns, facing India and the planet is that of climate change.
Climate change is already beginning to make pervasive changes to the world. One of these transformations is arising from the rapid depletion of ice in the Arctic region. A well-known Delhi based think tank organized a conference on the Arctic. It was attended among others by the former President of Iceland, Olafur Grimsson. Grimsson had come on a State Visit to India in January 2010. During that visit he had reiterated his proposal for the creation of a Himalayan Council to handle the issues relating to water which concern all the Himalayan countries. He had proposed that the Himalayan Council could be modeled on the Arctic Council to study the impact of climate change on the vast body of water which the Himalayan glaciers hold. That could lead to rational cooperation among the Himalayan countries on its usage.
Grimsson’s proposal may seem idealistic at this time when relations between the Himalayan countries which include India, Pakistan and China are difficult. Indeed, India has decided to hold the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance. In a briefing on April 8 on Pakistan’s actions against India Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said this on the Indus Waters Treaty—and I am deliberately fully quoting it because of its importance-- “The fact is that there have been fundamental changes in the circumstances in which the Indus Waters Treaty was concluded. And they required, they called for a reassessment of the obligations under the treaty. Over the last year and a half to two years, India has been in communication with the Government of Pakistan. We’ve sent several notices to them requesting for negotiations to a modification of the treaty. India has, for six plus decades now, honoured the treaty, even during periods when Pakistan imposed multiple wars on us, and even when relations were adversarial. Pakistan is the one that has been acting in violation of the treaty, deliberately creating legal roadblocks in India exercising its legitimate rights on the Western Rivers. And projects that India sought to build on the Eastern Rivers, and even on the Western Rivers, which we are allowed to by the treaty, were always challenged by Pakistan, thereby, hampering our rights to utilize our legitimate waters under the treaty. In fact, if your see the preamble of the treaty itself states that the treaty was concluded in a spirit of goodwill and friendship”
Misri went on to say “This was a treaty that was based on the engineering techniques of the fifties and sixties. We are living through the first quarter of the 21st century. Technological changes and technological advancements have to be taken into account. There are demographic changes. There are climate changes that have taken place. There is the imperative of clean energy. And, of course, the terrorism that Pakistan has wreaked in Jammu and Kashmir itself has hampered India’s ability to exercise its rights under the treaty. Pakistan’s persistent refusal to respond our request to enter into government-to- government negotiations on the modification of the treaty is in a sense itself a violation of the treaty. And, therefore India has taken the step of putting the treaty in abeyance until Pakistan abjures irrevocably its support for cross border terrorism”.
A renegotiation of the treaty can pave the way for cooperation among the Himalayan states paving the way for Grimsson’s idea which shows the way for what should be the nature of relations between these countries.
