India’s varied threat to Pakistan
India has discovered after forty-two years a new tool to hurt Pakistan decisively. And that is scrapping the Indus Water treaty to deny the waters of the Indus System to Pakistan, make the crops fail and cause widespread famine in a land of one hundred and forty million people of whom thirty million are undernourished. India says it can scrap the treaty and then it says it won’t. The treaty signed under the auspices of the World Bank President Eugene Black is coming to be more like a Sword of Damocles hanging over us despite Indian assurances.
India realizes it is running grave political risks in trying to undo Pakistan. If Pakistan is undone, the hundred and forty million Muslims of Pakistan will join together with one hundred and forty million Muslims of India. Together they will be almost four hundred million of Pakistan or over one third of the population of the two countries put together. A minority that large cannot be held down by the eight hundred million Hindus of India who may like to treat them more like the manner the Hindus of Gujarat treat their Muslims.
In an election with the Hindu majority divided as between the Congress and the Hindu extremist BJP and its more vicious factions. The Muslims may have the swing vote and that is not what the Hindus would like and the Hindus cannot eliminate them. Such considerations barred India from absorbing Bangladesh with its preponderant Muslim population into India after the break-up of Pakistan in 1971.