The Indus River
The Indus River
- David GilmartinDavid GilmartinDepartment of History, North Carolina State University
Summary
The Indus is the westernmost of the great arc of rivers across southern and eastern Asia flowing from the Tibetan plateau, and its watershed today includes parts of China, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. Flowing through a predominantly arid region, it was the site of South Asia’s earliest urban civilization in the 3rd millennium bce. Today, it features some of the most highly developed irrigation works in the world, supporting large agricultural populations on the plains of Pakistan and in northwestern India.
Its history has been defined not only by the dynamics of the Indus river system, with its highly seasonal, monsoon-fed flows descending from the mountains, but also by its critical role in defining a transitional zone of migration and mobility situated between central Asia and the Iranian plateau, on the one hand, and the wetter parts of the Indian subcontinent, on the other. Within this context, it played a critical role in the coming of Islam to the subcontinent from the west.
Since the late 19th century it has been the site of one of the modern world’s most dramatic irrigation-based transformations, rooted in British colonial canal-building and the opening of large canal colonies for agricultural settlement. What was already the world’s largest, integrated irrigation system was divided between India and Pakistan in 1947 (with the larger part going to Pakistan). The subsequent Indus Waters Treaty of 1960, which was intended to facilitate the continuing management of the river basin, accomplished this only through the intensification of irrigation investment and the maximization of the available water’s “use,” with all the difficult environmental and political challenges that has brought.
Subjects
- Borderlands
- Environmental
- South Asia