Canal Rest Houses, When Sahibs were Sahibs
01 December 2015
In Victorian India when the canal engineer set out on tour, he travelled with a large entourage, his train of baggage animals carrying virtually his entire office and personal effects. His subordinates, the assistants and clerks, his personal attendant and much of the office paraphernalia travelled with him. Even if the sahib sped on ahead to inspect installations or address a convention of village elders, his convoy trundled along slowly on its way. While Tiffin was the mode for lunch, the convoy made the rest house in good time to prepare dinner and a warm bath.
 |
| Rasul, an A Class rest house, was built in 1899. It sits at the site of a major headworks of the same name where the Lower Jhelum Canal merges from the river. The village of Rasul is also home to a technical school for aspiring canal engineers |
In those days of horseback travel and slow animal-drawn carts, these rest houses were placed strategically at every 25 to 30 kilometres, which was, more or less, a standard day’s journey. As a result, some of these old rest houses were located in the loneliest of places. A district officer in the Punjab, obviously gifted with a fine sense of humour, noted wryly: “Many of the rest houses being far away from human habitation would be more appropriate as hermitages.”
Read more »Labels: Book of Days 2015, Waters of Empire
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
,
Canal Structures, Ingenuity at its Best
02 November 2015
If barrages and weirs are meant to raise water level in rivers and headworks to control flow, together making the irrigation system work, there are auxiliary structures on and along the canals that are examples of civil and hydraulic engineering at its ingenious best.
 |
| A distributary of Upper Swat Canal crosses a rivulet by aqueduct in the Yusufzai Plain |
As far as the layman is concerned, a canal is excavated and water let in by the headworks to make it flow. However, as the channel winds its way across the topography, it traverses variable conditions, the most common being a river or canal crossing. In such a situation, there are three possible variables: the canal and diagonal water body flow at the same level, the canal flows at a level higher than the other water body or the canal is lower than the one to be crossed.
Read more »Labels: Book of Days 2015, Waters of Empire
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
,
Sulemanki Headworks, Bloom the Desert
01 October 2015
The Sutlej River enters Pakistan at Sulemanki village, 80 kilometres east of Sahiwal. The area downstream of this point, now lush green and fertile, was once sand desert. In the early 18th century, the Abbasi family wrested this country from the desert Rajputs. How many canals were built by the Rajputs is not clear. What is known, though, is that the Abbasis were master canal builders and excavated a number of them in their newly acquired domain, turning a part of the desert green.
 |
| Fordwah, foreground, and Sadiqia East in the back taking off from the left bank of the Sutlej. The river here carries waters from the Chenab and Jhelum reaching it from Balloki headworks on the Ravi by the Balloki Sulemanki Link Canal |
When the first British political agent was seconded to Bahawalpur State in 1866, his officers found not one or two but no fewer than 26 major canals out of the Sutlej in the regions that now comprise Bahawalnagar and Bahawalpur districts. Additionally, there were a number of smaller canals as well as dozens of “cuts” that went only a short way off the river. All these works were, understandably, inundation canals, most of them in good fettle, flowing with every rise in the Sutlej.
Read more »Labels: Book of Days 2015, Punjab, Waters of Empire
posted by Salman Rashid @ 08:00,
,
Bambanwala-Ravi-Bedian Link Canal, Raiya Branch to the Rescue
01 September 2015
In 1860, as the Upper Bari Doab Canal (UBDC) took off from Madhopur near Gurdaspur, now in Indian Punjab, drawing water from the Ravi River, Raj administrators began to look into the distant future. As early as 1875, they devised the Triple Canal System to pool the waters of the Jhelum and Chenab with those of the Ravi through major canals. These were Upper Jhelum Canal, Lower Bari Doab Canal and, the last to be completed in 1915, Upper Chenab Canal (UCC), flowing from the Chenab at Marala, district Sialkot.
 |
| Wheat harvest in progress southeast of Lahore in the command area of the Bambanwala- Ravi-Bedian-Dipalpur Link Canal. Before the building of this great irrigation scheme, the area was part of the Lakhi Jungle and featured in many stories of Punjabi political resistance from the Middle Ages well into British times |
About 15 kilometres downstream of its head, at the little hamlet of Bambanwala, UCC gave off two canals: the Nokhar Branch flowing southwest into the upper parts of district Gujranwala and Raiya Branch heading southeast to irrigate the country east of Gujranwala all the way to Shahdara outside Lahore. Near Raiya village, 70 kilometres northeast of Lahore on the railway line to Narowal, it swung on a south-westerly alignment to reach its terminus.
Read more »Labels: Book of Days 2015, Punjab, Waters of Empire
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
,
Khirthar Canal, A touch of picturesque
01 August 2015
Work began on Sukkur Barrage in July 1923 and shortly after the first civil works were put in place in the turbid waters of the Indus, excavation of its seven canals was taken in hand. Along the left bank there were to flow the Eastern Nara, Rohri, Khairpur Feeder West and Khairpur Feeder East. Along the right bank, the Rice and Dadu canals, close to each other and only a short way west of the Indus, were designed to flow in a southerly direction.
 |
| Canal regulators on the right bank of the Sukkur Barrage for Dadu, Rice and Khirtar canals, the last of which was once called North-Western Canal |
The third canal on this side was the North-Western that we today know as Khirthar Canal. It took off from the barrage and flowed, as its name implies, on a north-westerly bearing through Shikarpur and into what now comprises the districts of Jafarabad and Naseerabad in Balochistan. Much of this area was beyond the command of the Begari Canal that was flowing well since its rehabilitation in the 1840s.
Read more »Labels: Book of Days 2015, Sindh, Waters of Empire
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
,
Sukkur Barrage, Fife Dream
01 July 2015
When the Begari Canal was first reactivated along “modern” lines in 1847, it was learnt that inundation canals were beset with defects due to their off-take from the river. Water supply remained perpetually erratic due to continual silting at the canal mouth, necessitating frequent maintenance. Moreover, the channel of the Indus – and it had several in the flatlands of Sindh – that fed the canals was fickle in flow and trail.
 |
| Sukkur Barrage commissioned on 13 January 1932 as Lloyd Barrage. The sixty-six spans each 18.29 (sixty feet) wide stretch a kilometre and a half across the Indus between the cities of Sukkur and Rohri. It was and still is the largest single system of irrigation canals in Pakistan commanding an area of 8.24 million acres through canals totalling 76,480 kilometres in length |
By 1855, the young and energetic Lieutenant J. G. Fife, working with John Jacob of Jacobabad, called for building a scheme of more regular supply for four new canals. Fife wrote several impassioned reports advocating his vision. In five years of studying the irrigation dynamics of existing inundation canals, he observed that paucity of water supply forced Sindhi farmers to sow later in the season, resulting in poor harvests. On the other hand, excess water in the canal frequently led to breaches and flooding. In either event, farmers faced jeopardy.
Labels: Book of Days 2015, Sindh, Waters of Empire
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
,
Upper Swat Canal, Defying Mountains
02 June 2015
The Yusufzai Plain stretches from the Mahaban Mountains in the north to the line of the Grand Trunk Road, passing through Nowshera and from the Indus in the east just west of Mardan. Of all the districts of the North West Frontier, now called Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, this is agriculturally the richest and most prosperous.
 |
| The weir |
Labels: Book of Days 2015, Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa, Swat, Waters of Empire
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
,
Begari Wah
30 May 2015
When the first Dombki and Jakhrani farmers turned to agriculture along the Begari, they would surely have been surprised by the fertility of this virgin land - from Begari Wah.
Labels: Book of Days 2015, Photo Stream, Sindh, Travel Photography, Waters of Empire
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
,
Upper Jhelum Canal, No Small Wonder
01 May 2015
“The River Jhelum emerges from the Himalaya mountains through an S curve. Just before emerging, it strikes against a cliff on its right bank, which deflects it to the left, where it strikes against the cliff which is surmounted by the old fort of Mangla; which once more deflects it to the right, where it debouches on more open country.” So reads a document written fully 110 years ago by a most ingenious mind.
 |
| The old abandoned headworks of the Upper Jhelum Canal sits right below Mangla Fort seen on the skyline. Tumbling down the mountains of Kashmir, Jhelum River washed the hill of the fort before turning sharply to the right, forcing its flow in the direction of the headworks. This was the first major canal that drew off without a barrage or weir spanning the river |
The issue at hand was the take off point for a new irrigation canal dubbed the Upper Jhelum Canal, the last of the three canals built under the remarkable project known as the Triple Canal System (TCS), Punjab. The year was 1908 and the TCS was already turning large bandit-infested tracts of primeval forest in the doabs of Bari and Rachna into farmland and new villages. Similarly, the Lower Jhelum Canal, not part of the system, taking off at Rasul was already irrigating country where new farming villages and towns were fast emerging in present-day Sargodha and Khushab districts.
Labels: Book of Days 2015, Punjab, Waters of Empire
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
,
Lower Bari Doab Canal, Boundless Magnanimity
01 April 2015
By the turn of the 20th century, much of the irrigation system inherited by Pakistan and India at Independence was already established. A part of this, the Upper Bari Doab Canal taking off the Ravi River at Madhopur near Gurdaspur, India, had just started to turn things around in the doab of Bari, the name a compound of Beas and Ravi.
 |
| Ganga Power Station on the Lower Bari Doab Canal. In 1992, the station was renamed Zaheeruddin Babar Power Station by an over-zealous mob incensed at the demolition of the Babri Mosque in Ajodhya, India. Except the new name did not stick for more than a couple years. |
Plans were afoot for a second canal in this land belt. Designated as the Lower Bari Doab Canal (LBDC), it was debated whether it should off-take from the Beas instead of the Ravi, canals from which were already flowing.
Read more »Labels: Book of Days 2015, Punjab, Waters of Empire
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
,
Khanki Headworks, From Primeval Forest to Breadbasket
02 March 2015
Nestling between the Ravi and Chenab rivers, the Rachna doab, meaning two waters in Persian, takes its name from the first syllable of the former and two of the latter. Despite the poetic reference, this thickly forested land was once notorious country infested with brigands and wild beasts.
Travellers braving its deep, leafy recesses, where the peelu (Salvadora persica), acacia and mango grew profusely, were routinely set upon and deprived of all they had. The pious 7th century Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang, himself a victim, leaves behind a doleful account of losing all, including much of the clothing he wore.
Read more »Labels: Book of Days 2015, Punjab, Waters of Empire
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
,
Jamrao Canal, The Dragon’s Tail
02 February 2015
East of the Indus River, there flowed a fabled river known as the Hakra or Ghaggar. Some 6000 years ago, this river cradled a civilization as great as that of the Indus Valley. At an unknown time in the past, geological changes near its source in the north caused this river to merge with another stream, drying out its lower reach. As a result, where that civilization once flourished, today roll wind-rippled dunes in every direction as far as the eye can see.
Through this wasteland there meanders an old channel believed to be the bed of the ancient lost river. Mostly dry, the bed filled up only during the worst floods in the Indus. Flowing from the vicinity of Rohri town to empty into the Kori Creek on the seaboard, its winding course earned it the moniker of Nara, the Sindhi cognate of snake or dragon. Along the way, the Nara broke its banks to create picturesque tarns amidst the dunes. Whenever available, its unreliable flow was used to water small plots of vegetables and cereal.
Read more »Labels: Book of Days 2015, Sindh, Waters of Empire
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
,
Evening falls on a Begari Wah
24 January 2015
Evening falls on a Begari distributary. Without such minor canals, a large swathe of Shikarpur and Jacobabad districts would have remained desert and scrub forest [Image from Book of Days 2015].
Odysseus Lahori one year ago: The funny side of… monkey business
Odysseus Lahori one year ago: The funny side of… monkey business
Labels: Book of Days 2015, Photo Stream, Travel Photography, Waters of Empire
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
,
Begari Wah, Salam, Jekum Sahib Bahadur
01 January 2015
When the British annexed Sindh in 1843, they found a land criss-crossed by a multitude of canals, each with a name of its own. The names rang of former rulers, mainly the Kalhoras, who held Sindh from 1701 to 1784. In the country north of what was then known as district Chandka in upper Sindh, present-day Larkana, there was one canal that nurtured gardens, orchards and excellent farmland. It had a peculiar name: Begari Wah, the suffix meaning canal in Sindhi.
The Persian word begar denotes forced, unpaid labour. The long-established method was that village headmen were obliged to provide labour proportionate to the estimated benefit derived from the canal. This explains the name Beghari Wah. What is still not known is the period in which the canal was first excavated.
Read more »Labels: Book of Days 2015, Sindh, Waters of Empire
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
,
Waters of Empire - Book of Days 2015
29 December 2014
Nature’s greatest gift to the Indian subcontinent is the multitude of perennial rivers. Every spring, they swell with glacial melt brought down from far off snow fields. And even as the first flood begins to ebb, there starts the great surge fed by the annual monsoons.
Our earliest ancestors, having given up their hunter-gatherer way of life and put down agrarian roots, were quick to realize the annual brown flood of high summer fertilized the soil. This knowledge, they put to good use.
Read more »Labels: Book of Days 2015, Waters of Empire
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
,
Peshawar and back – in a Jiffy
05 August 2014
Consider: trains do not exist. Or if they exist they can be days behind schedule. So my one-time favourite of getting on Khyber Mail at night from Lahore and sleeping through in air conditioned comfort as you chugged northwest is now a distant dream. You woke at Peshawar cantonment railway station early morning and rested as you were could work through the day. But now, I’d be a fool to rely on the Khyber Mail. Originating in Karachi and travelling all of 1500 km with the average rate of going late being thirty minutes for each one hundred kilometres travelled, the train generally arrives half a day behind schedule.
Read more »Labels: About, Book of Days 2015, Travel Photography, Waters of Empire
posted by Salman Rashid @ 10:46,
,
Sindh Sojourn
11 March 2014
After three days in Karachi, two of which were spent at the Sindh Archives Department, I got to Larkana to village Mirpur Bhutto. This is the home of my young friend Ali Bhutto. Now, Ali began corresponding with me sometime in November. He was interested in history and when we talked of books he wrote back to say his father’s library contained all the volumes I mentioned. Though I had no clue which Bhutto family this was, I knew they were landed and had fine taste in books.
On the last trip in January, Ali offered to meet me in Sukkur and take me to his village. As we got into his car he noticed the book in my hand and asked what I was reading. It was Kamal Azfar’s The Waters of Lahore. Very casually young Ali said, ‘Oh, we used to be neighbours in Karachi.’
Read more »Labels: Book of Days 2015, Sindh, Waters of Empire
posted by Salman Rashid @ 14:53,
,
Canals of Empire
26 February 2014
Then it will be to the Kalri-Baghar canal system to check out the way the waterway turned two lakes into one huge Kinjhar to supply water to the city of Karachi. It will be after a quarter century that I will again be staying overnight on Kinjhar that was once a favourite haunt for my wife and me.
Read more »Labels: Book of Days 2015, History, Research, Sindh, Waters of Empire
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
,
