North India has been overwhelmed by floods, particularly Himachal Pradesh and Punjab. Through August, Punjab, on both sides of the Indo-Pak border, faced its worst flooding in nearly four decades. On the Indian side, over 1,655 villages and 3.55 lakh people were affected, with at least 37 reported deaths and 3,71,475 acres of farmland submerged, destroying standing crops. All 23 districts of the state were declared ‘flood affected’.
Amidst this vast tragedy, a truly inspiring human drama was played out, a reflection of the true spirit of ‘Punjabiyat’, and, overwhelmingly, of the influence of Sikhism and its ethos of seva and the dictum, vand chako (share what you have). Even as state responses lagged well behind the scale and expanse of the crisis, thousands of volunteers, many of them farmers who had suffered significant losses themselves, poured out of the villages of Punjab, in an extraordinary and spontaneous outreach, to deliver relief to those worse affected than themselves, and to rescue the thousands stranded amidst the swirling waters. Unending convoys of tractor trolleys, loaded with volunteers, food and medicine, as well as earth to build embankments, raced across the state, through the flood waters. New boats were hastily ‘manufactured’, welded together in rudimentary workshops, to go where the waters were too deep. The most moving images of courage and of dedication flooded social media, even as the overwhelming proportion of rescue efforts remained anonymous. Crucially, this initial response was totally spontaneous, uncoordinated by any political or social organisation. Gradually, of course, a number of social organisations emerged in the relief efforts, with many of these filming carefully choreographed rescue and aid initiatives. Nevertheless, the initiatives outside the state sector were extraordinary and underlined the human capacity for empathy, as well as the exceptional proclivity of the Punjabis/Sikhs, to engage, and not for the first time, in such activities at a remarkable scale.
But where tragedies bring out the best in some, they also provoke the worst in others. As the magnitude of the disaster mounted, a malicious disinformation campaign was launched predominantly by the Khalistani Diaspora, and by some radicals in India as well. The most common theme was that the floods were not a natural disaster, but an act of sabotage, an intentionally malicious release of waters from dams, intended to cause harm in the Sikh-majority state, and to the farmers because they had successfully challenged the Centre during their agitation against the three farm laws in 2020-21. Elements in the Khalistani Diaspora have sought to project the floods as part of a protracted strategy by ‘Dilli’, to ‘oppress’ the Sikh community. The idea of a ‘water war’ against Punjab is something that plays out across the border as well, with Pakistanis on social media claiming that India has ‘weaponised water’ against Pakistan.
The synchronisation of this theme in Indian and Pakistani Punjab is not surprising. As recently as on August 17, Punjab Director General of Police Gaurav Yadav, while discussing investigations into gang violence in the state, had noted that Khalistani terrorist groups, gangsters and smugglers were increasingly functioning interchangeably, under ISI’s direction to foment unrest in Punjab. Exploiting every crisis, political, economic or natural, dovetails into this orchestrated campaign to create narratives that feed resentment, distress, hatred and, consequently, instability, particularly in the Sikh community.
Rational voices have, of course, rubbished these claims, not only in India, but in Pakistan as well, where water resources and environmental analysts dismissed the ‘weaponisation’ theory, noting that Indian dams had reached critical storage levels due to unprecedented rainfall, and had to release the excess waters, and that such releases were normal in extreme rainfall conditions.
It is crucial to understand that, in a wider environment of deep mistrust, compounded by the perceived failure of the state to deliver adequate relief, as well as a preceding history of tensions between the Centre and Punjab, such narratives have cumulative impact on the security and stability of the region. Both the central and state governments need to act urgently to address these perceptions with extraordinary measures for relief and, crucially, rehabilitation, if the scars of past misfortunes in Punjab are not to be deepened even further.
