1 week Ago By Mohsin Leghari
Before the British seized control of the Indus Basin—annexing Sindh in 1843 after the Battle of Miani and Punjab in 1849 following the Second Anglo-Sikh War—Punjab, Sindh, and princely states like Khairpur and Bahawalpur existed in a delicate balance of abundance and ruin, tethered to a network of inundation canals shaped over centuries. These seasonal channels tapped the Indus and its Punjab tributaries—the Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej—during the kharif season (June–September), when monsoon rains and Himalayan snowmelt swelled rivers to their peak. In Sindh, the Nara Canal system stretched across Khairpur, Sanghar, and Tharparkar, irrigating ~800,000 acres and sustaining the princely state of Khairpur (founded 1783) with rice and millet, its distributaries reaching into the arid Thar Desert.
Nearby, the Pinyari Canal network watered ~300,000 acres around Hyderabad and Matiari, the Kalri Canal nourished ~200,000 acres in Thatta and Badin’s deltaic plains, and the smaller Guni and Fuleli canals supported ~200,000 acres in Nawabshah and Sanghar. In Punjab, the Hasli Canal drew from the Ravi to irrigate ~400,000 acres across Lahore and Sheikhupura; the Shahpur Canals, fed by the Jhelum, sustained ~350,000 acres in Sargodha and Shahpur within the Chaj Doab (Jhelum–Chenab); the Rasul system harnessed the Chenab for ~300,000 acres in Gujranwala and Sialkot in the Rechna Doab (Chenab–Ravi); the Beas supported minor canals irrigating ~250,000 acres in the Bari Doab (Ravi–Beas) and Jalandhar Doab (Beas–Sutlej), notably around Hoshiarpur; and the Sutlej’s flood channels nourished ~500,000 acres along Bahawalpur’s eastern fringes and Ferozepur. Collectively, these canals enabled ~3–4 million acres of kharif cultivation—bajra (pearl millet), jowar (sorghum), rice, and pulses—aligned with the rivers’ seasonal bounty.
Poultry mafia unchecked as chicken prices soar beyond official rates This system, however, faltered in the rabi season (October–March), when river flows dwindled—save for the Jhelum’s steadier snowmelt—leaving canals dry or barely flowing. Irrigation shrank to riverbanks or Persian wheel wells, and rabi crops like wheat, barley, or oilseeds were sparse, limited to small patches near Multan (Chenab), Jhang (Jhelum), or Amritsar (Beas), their yields too scant to offset kharif reliance. In Khairpur, flood-recession agriculture along the Indus banks produced meagre rabi harvests, dwarfed by kharif output, while Baloch and Seraiki pastoralists herded livestock across the Thar Desert fringes to endure lean winters.
Bahawalpur mirrored this plight, its agriculture tied to the Sutlej’s erratic kharif floods, with negligible rabi production forcing reliance on camels, goats, and sheep; its Nawab’s coffers remained thin, strained by a land yielding little beyond the monsoon. Rainfall was scant—10 to 20 inches in Punjab, 5 to 10 in Sindh, and less in Bahawalpur and Khairpur—and beyond these irrigated zones, over 10 million acres of “waste” land lay barren, grazed by nomadic tribes. In Khairpur, the Mirs’ rule hung on meagre land taxes, their treasury as precarious as their fields.
Across the region, this kharif-centric system left Punjab, Sindh, Bahawalpur, and Khairpur exposed, lacking the resilience to weather nature’s extremes or produce surplus for trade. Islamiyat, physics, economics, biology papers leaked in several Sindh cities These uncontrolled rivers plunged the region into ruinous swings: famines when floods failed, and floods when they overwhelmed. The Chalisa Famine (1783–84), one of South Asia’s deadliest, erupted after monsoon failures in 1782–1783, coinciding with Khairpur’s founding, and ravaged ~100,000 square miles across Punjab’s Jhelum Chaj Doab (Shahpur), Chenab Rechna Doab (Gujranwala), Beas–Sutlej Jalandhar Doab (Amritsar), and Ravi plains (Lahore), as well as Kashmir, Delhi, Rajasthan, and parts of Sindh.
Amid Mughal decline and Sikh rebellions, it claimed ~11 million lives, stripping Punjab of a third of its population. Lahore’s streets brimmed with corpses, necessitating mass burials; villages along the Chenab and Jhelum emptied, some marked by cannibalism. Sikh chronicles named it “Chalisa” (the forty)—perhaps for its peak from late 1783 to mid-1784, lingering into 1785, or the grim tale that only 40 households survived in some districts—leaving a legacy of economic ruin.
In Sindh, the 1800–01 drought scorched 30,000 square miles, halving Thatta’s population and slashing Khairpur’s harvests as the Nara Canal dwindled to a trickle; mass migration to Kutch ensued, date palms died, mangroves retreated, and the Mirs faced bankruptcy, their rule teetering. The Doab Famine (1837–38) struck the Beas–Sutlej Jalandhar Doab, claiming ~800,000 lives across 50,000 square miles as dry canals left fields barren, driving mothers to drown infants rather than watch them starve, villages deserted from Hoshiarpur to Ferozepur. Four-day Thar jeep rally 2025 kicks off in Nagarparkar Floods wrought equal havoc.
In 1841, the Indus surged from Attock to Rohri, flooding Punjab and Sindh; the Jhelum inundated Jhang, the Chenab swamped Gujranwala, the Beas swelled Amritsar, and the Sutlej stretched into “an inland sea 40 miles wide” near Ferozepur, as Alexander Cunningham recorded. Thousands perished, kharif crops vanished, and rabi offered no reprieve. The 1858 flood shattered the Pinyari Canal headworks, submerging Hyderabad district for months and erasing ~200,000 acres of winter crops, underscoring Sindh’s fragile rabi hopes.
The 1869–70 catastrophe capped this cycle: failed monsoons in 1869 devastated 75,000 square miles, killing ~50,000 in Multan and ~30,000 in Dera Ghazi Khan (Chenab), ~20,000 in Jhang (Jhelum), and ~15,000 in Amritsar (Beas), while Sindh’s Sukkur, Shikarpur, and Khairpur saw 25% losses, with some tehsils hitting 40% mortality. The 1870 floods followed, ravaging Punjab’s rivers—Jhelum in Shahpur, Chenab in Sialkot, Beas and Sutlej in Ferozepur—and Sindh’s Indus plains, obliterating seeds, stores, and lives amid cholera outbreaks. Colonial records detail despair: mothers drowning infants “to spare them slow starvation,” relief camps where ~60% perished, villages silenced—canals choked with corpses, Khairpur’s water wheels stilled, and Bahawalpur’s Nawab helpless with empty granaries.
These disasters left the region not as a breadbasket but as a land on the edge, its kharif yields undone by nature’s fury, with no rabi buffer to fall back on. Italian Consul General calls on Sindh Governor By the early 19th century, this relentless cycle—peaking with the 1869–70 catastrophe—exposed the dire need to master the Indus Basin’s wild rivers. The British, arriving in Sindh in 1843, Punjab in 1849, and establishing Khairpur as a protectorate in 1836, inherited a region where survival bowed to nature’s whims, poised for a sweeping intervention to redefine its fate.
Mohsin Leghari The writer is a former Senator, MPA, MNA, and former Minister of Irrigation Punjab. Tags: pre colonial insecurity.
