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The rivers are already shut off for all intents and purposes. Pushing it further can set scary precedents in the sub-continent.
India could go upstream and cut off rivers at the source, but Pakistan's best friend (China) controls even more important rivers upstream. If China did a tit-for-tat than India would lose a lot more than they'd gain.
It's the main reason I consider Indian inaction to the Chinese annexation of Tibet to be the worst strategic misstep of a newly independent India. And for those who say 'India did not have the resources', Tibet is a defenders dream. All supply lines are cutoff for half the year. You can't lay siege, you can't set up shop, you can't invade. Well, I have enough reasons to dislike Nehru already. But here's one more.
Ofc Patel was on the right side of history. Everything I read about him makes him seem like a 'Lee Kwan Yew' style pragmatic statesman that India needed. But ofc, Nehru chose naive optimism as he always did. Oh, how I wish the man had just gone to Cambridge and been a brown Francis Fukuyama instead.
His stupidity fucked the nation up in ways that most will not be able to comprehend. I dislike Hindutva for being the Indian equivalent of the republican party, with their centrist Ideas, yet I can never defend someone as asinine as Nehru.
Jinnah was a much more opportunistic and capable leader than Nehru by all accounts. A book my grandad adores and I recommend heavily is Freedom at Midnight, which includes a quote from Jinnah where he says that Nehru is fit to be a professor of English but not the head of a nation. Jinnah was a "muslim" who shaved daily, ate pork, was fond of liquor and married a Parsi half his age, yet he had a sense for his people. His family converted to Islam due to Hindu purity spiralling, but that is a story for another day. Nehru, otoh had issues visiting temples as the Prime Minister.
His insistance on being cordial with china, straight up retarded beliefs on the issues of borders and armed forces fractured the himalyan front for India, which is beyond recovery now. Similarly, we lost the Indo-China war because in many ways, he always feared military coups. The soldiers had few resources for the cold. Patel was a much more competent man compatred to Nehru, or saner at least despite having fairy milquetoast views. Nehru was a socialist like Gandhi, and the two surviving post-1930s leaders damaged the subcontinent badly.
For context for people who are not from India, Nehru was the son of a super elite Kashmiri Pandit father, and he let his own Motherland get savaged for ideals that I would find hard to steelman. He was right about Phule and Ambedkar, but beyond that, anytime I hear him being discussed, I always shake my head. I learn something new that makes me dislike him even more. Until this thread I did not put together the Tibet connection but holy shit. This guy's family is still representing anti Upper Caste leftism in India.
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