India, July 12 -- Partition was an error, and on a smaller scale, so was the 1961 Indus Water Treaty negotiated between India and Pakistan. Nehru knew it was one-sided.

In 1947, the Partition of India was an avoidable tragedy. Although M.A. Jinnah was called the "father of Pakistan", he was only so as a formality. The actual creators of Pakistan were senior officials in Whitehall, the seat of power in the then British Empire, who sought as truncated a country as was possible to be handed over to the Congress and other freedom fighters.

The drive for Partition gained speed in 1942, when Mahatma Gandhi called on the British to "Quit India". At that point in time, it looked as though the Allies (Britain, the US and the Soviet Union) were l...