In April 1950, the prime ministers of India and Pakistan met in Delhi to sign the landmark inter-dominion agreement known as the Nehru-Liaquat Pact, according to which India and Pakistan would be accountable to one another for the treatment of minorities in their countries. This agreement was the outcome of a mutual necessity for both governments to regulate the unchecked movement of minority population across the border, which led them into an unlikely—though nonetheless structurally integral—position of compromise and dialogue.

Whereas once the Indus Waters Treaty could correctly be described as a beacon of light in an otherwise gloomy relationship between India and Pakistan, this is no longer so. The odds now are that the crumbling IWT will be a cause for further tension and conflict between India and Pakistan. It is also true that with far-sided political leadership, especially in India but also in Pakistan, a bridge could be built over these troubled waters and the Indus could, again, become a catalyst for cooperation.

In 1978, several hundred Bengali refugees in Morichjhanpi, one of the northern-most forested islands of the Sundarbans, were brutally evicted by the authorities for violating the Forest Acts. This paper looks at how the memory of Morichjhanpi was evoked by the islanders to reveal their resentment about the unequal distribution of resources between them and the Royal Bengal tigers of the Sundarbans reserve forest.