Beas Riverਬਿਆਸ ਦਰਿਆ

Of the five rivers that give Punjab its name, the Beas is the most intimate. It is the smallest of the five, about 470 km long, and the only one that never leaves India: every other river of the Punjab crosses an international border somewhere on its course, but the Beas is born in the Indian Himalaya and ends in the Indian Punjab, joining the Sutlej at Harike. Its basin covers about 20,303 square kilometres, modest beside the Sutlej or the Chenab, yet the river has shaped two regions, carried one of the oldest names in Indian literature, and once stopped the most successful conqueror of the ancient world.

From Beas Kund to the Punjab plain

The Beas rises at Beas Kund, a small glacial lake near the Rohtang Pass in Himachal Pradesh, at about 4,361 metres above sea level. From there it runs south through the Kullu valley past Manali, then west through Mandi and the Kangra hills, gathering mountain tributaries as it goes. At Larji it is joined by streams from the Tirthan and Sainj valleys, and the Pandoh Dam, built in 1977, diverts part of its water through tunnels to the Sutlej for power generation at Dehar.

The river enters the Punjab plain near Mukerian in Hoshiarpur district, and from that point it becomes a boundary river. For the rest of its course it separates Doaba from Majha: Hoshiarpur and Kapurthala districts lie on its southern, Doaba side, while Gurdaspur and Amritsar districts stand on its northern, Majha bank. Near the town of Beas in Amritsar district the river is at its most familiar to Punjabis, crossed by road and rail bridges and lined with the deras and villages of the Majha countryside. At its end, just below the village of Harike, the Beas meets the Sutlej, and the combined water is held by the Harike Barrage.

Which districts does the Beas flow through?

In Himachal Pradesh the Beas flows through Kullu, Mandi and Kangra districts. In Punjab it forms the district boundary for Hoshiarpur and Kapurthala on the Doaba side and for Gurdaspur and Amritsar on the Majha side, touching Tarn Taran district near its confluence at Harike. Travellers crossing between Jalandhar and Amritsar, or between Kapurthala and Gurdaspur, cross the Beas, which is why its bridges at Goindwal Sahib, Beas town and Harike are among the busiest river crossings in the state.

The river that stopped Alexander

The Beas is the Vipasa of the Rigveda, a Sanskrit name often read as 'unfettered' or 'unbound'. A well known tradition tells of the sage Vashishta, who in grief tried to bind himself with cords and throw himself into the river, only for the river to loosen the cords and set him free, earning the name Vipasa. Greek writers knew the river as the Hyphasis.

In 326 BC Alexander of Macedon, having defeated King Porus on the Jhelum, marched east and reached the banks of the Beas. There his soldiers, worn down by years of campaigning and the monsoon, refused to go further. Alexander built altars on the bank, turned back, and never entered the heart of India. The Beas thus marks the easternmost point of his conquest, and the mutiny on its banks is one of the most famous episodes of ancient military history.

Pong Dam and the Beas project

The Pong Dam, completed in 1974 across the Beas in Kangra district, is one of the highest earth-fill dams in India, and its reservoir, named Maharana Pratap Sagar, stretches back through the Shivalik foothills. The dam generates about 396 MW of power and stores monsoon water for irrigation in Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan. It is managed, along with Bhakra, by the Bhakra Beas Management Board. Together with the Pandoh diversion, Pong turned the Beas from a river that flooded the Kangra and Doaba countryside into a regulated source of water and power, though the reservoir displaced thousands of families in Himachal Pradesh, whose resettlement claims were argued over for decades.

Under the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960, the waters of the Beas, along with the Sutlej and the Ravi, were allocated to India. At Harike, the barrage built where the Beas meets the Sutlej sends water into the Ferozepur canals and the great Indira Gandhi Canal, which carries Punjab river water hundreds of kilometres into the Rajasthan desert.

Wildlife on the lower Beas

The Pong reservoir has become a Ramsar listed wetland and one of India's finest birding sites, drawing huge winter flocks of bar-headed geese, ruddy shelducks and other migrants to its shores. The lower river holds its own surprise: in 2017 researchers confirmed a small population of Indus river dolphins in the Beas between the Pong Dam and Harike, the only place in India where this endangered dolphin, otherwise found in Pakistan's Indus, still survives. A stretch of the river was declared the Beas Conservation Reserve to protect it. For a small river, the Beas carries an outsized share of Punjab's natural and human history.

Today the Beas remains the working boundary of Doaba and Majha, crossed daily by lakhs of people who may not know they are passing over the river where Alexander turned back. Its water fills canals at Harike, its reservoir shelters thousands of winter birds, and its name, Vipasa, is among the oldest river names still spoken anywhere in the world.