For more than 60 years, the Indus Waters Treaty between India and Pakistan has stood as one of the few enduring triumphs of postcolonial diplomacy – surviving wars, diplomatic breakdowns, and cross-border skirmishes. The treaty, brokered by the World Bank in 1960, carved out a delicate but lasting compromise: India would control the three eastern rivers (Ravi, Beas, Sutlej), while Pakistan would rely on the three western rivers (Indus, Jhelum, Chenab), with India allowed limited non-consumptive use.
That delicate equilibrium fractured in April this year, when India unilaterally declared the treaty “in abeyance” – an ambiguous term not found in the treaty’s text nor recognised in international law. India cited national security concerns to justify its decision following a deadly terror attack in Pahalgam, Kashmir, that killed 26 tourists – blaming cross-border militants, though this claim remains unproven.
This wasn’t an isolated shift. It fits within a broader pattern of India recasting bilateral agreements under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, including the revocation of Article 370 related to Kashmir’s autonomy and recent signals to revisit the Ganges Water Treaty with Bangladesh.
There’s more at stake here than one treaty … In a region already strained by ecological vulnerabilities and food insecurity, retaliatory hydropolitics could have catastrophic consequences.
In response, Pakistan turned to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, a body empowered under the treaty to adjudicate disputes when bilateral mechanisms fail. In a Supplemental Award of Competence last month, the PCA ruled unanimously that “it was not open to India to suspend proceedings unilaterally,” affirming that the Indus Waters Treaty remains in force unless both parties agree to terminate it. The decision reinforced the court’s jurisdiction to hear Pakistan’s objections to two Indian hydropower projects – Kishanganga and Ratle – on the western rivers.
The court’s ruling marks a significant diplomatic win for Pakistan. From Pakistan’s perspective, the suspension was both a legal breach and a diplomatic provocation. India, however, rejected the award as “illegal and void”, with its Ministry of External Affairs claiming the court’s formation itself was a violation of the treaty’s dispute resolution protocol.
Critics, however, argue that India’s suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty reflects a growing inclination to use treaties as instruments of political pressure, rather than as frameworks for stability. The term “abeyance”, deliberately noncommittal, allowed New Delhi to assert leverage without invoking formal withdrawal – a posture that raised alarms not only in Islamabad but among regional observers wary of a precedent that could erode the sanctity of international agreements.
There’s more at stake here than one treaty. Rivers cross borders and are governed by treaties across South and East Asia. In a region already strained by ecological vulnerabilities and food insecurity, retaliatory hydropolitics could have catastrophic consequences. China, for example, an upstream riparian with contentious water-sharing dynamics of its own, may now feel emboldened to block the Brahmaputra River, which supplies about 30% of India's freshwater and nearly 44% of its total hydropower potential.
These are not hypothetical concerns. If India is considering renegotiating the Ganges Water Treaty with Bangladesh – potentially upending another delicate riparian balance – Beijing may feel justified in asserting similar upstream control, including damming, diverting, or regulating transboundary flows into India’s northeast.
For Bangladesh, a downstream nation heavily dependent on Ganges inflows for agriculture, fisheries, and urban water supply, any unilateral changes in this critical transboundary agreement forged in 1996 could have severe socio-economic and ecological consequences. Similarly, the Brahmaputra accounts for a major share of India’s freshwater and hydropower resources, so any retaliatory hydropolitics by China would not only strain Sino-Indian ties but also trigger cascading water insecurity in downstream regions including Assam and Arunachal Pradesh.
Beyond legality, there's a humanitarian and ecological cost to turning rivers into weapons. Under international law – including the Indus Water Treaty, the Geneva Protocol I (article 54) and the UN Watercourses Convention – disrupting water flows to harm civilian populations may constitute a war crime.
Pakistan is facing an acute water crisis, and threatening to cut its water won’t make India powerful, just dangerously irresponsible. With climate stress rising, Pakistan’s dams near dead levels, and agriculture at risk, even symbolic water disruptions have cascading effects – on food security, energy grids, and public health.
The Hague ruling should be seen not as a win for one side but as a vindication of the rules-based international order. The decision sends a strong message to Asia’s other important upstream riparian states, including China, a country sharing 110 rivers and lakes with 18 downstream countries, that hydro-politics must be governed by law, not leverage. In a region as volatile as South Asia, where ecological stress converges with historical animosities and strategic rivalries, the reaffirmation that no country can unilaterally exit its treaty commitments is more than symbolic – it is vital.
