LAHORE: (Tuesday, August 11, 2015): Focusing on the history of canal system in the regions, a renowned US scholar, historian and an expert on South Asia has highlighted the ways that partition generated new conflicts about water after 1947, not only between India and Pakistan, but between centre and provinces on both sides of the border. North Carolina State University’s Prof Dr David Gilmartin from was addressing a seminar organized in connection with Independence Day celebrations at Punjab University’s Pakistan Study Centre here on Tuesday.

PU Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Mujahid Kamran presided over the session while Director Pakistan Study Centre Prof. Dr. Massarrat Abid, senior faculty members and a large number of students were present on the occasion. Addressing the seminar, Dr Gilmartin said the BRB canal on the Pakistan side and the Rajasthan canal on the Indian side embodied nationalist ideologies. He said that but many of the new canals built after 1947 (and after the Indus-Waters Treaty of 1960) came to be caught up in intense inter-provincial rivalries. He said that the talk used the Sutlej-Yamuna Link canal in India and the Chashma-Jhelum link canal in Pakistan to illustrate these conflicts. He said that the talk demonstrated the importance of historical analysis for understanding the ongoing water conflict in the Indus-Basin region. PU Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Mujahid Kamran highlighted the unhealing wound of partition and the role of the British Viceroys in that phenomenon. Criticizing the Radcliff’s plan and handing over Gurdaspur to India, the British authorities basically sowed the seeds of unending conflict between the two neighbours and it provided the Indian access to Kashmir which ultimately occupied it with her nefarious designs. He praised Prof Gilmartin for a clear talk on the complicated issue. A lively question answer session followed the seminar.