Modi’s Indus brinkmanship is another diplomatic blunder

When India placed the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance after the Pahalgam terror attack of April 2025, the decision was presented by the Modi government as an act of strategic resolve. The message was that Pakistan could not support cross-border terrorism while continuing to benefit from cooperation over shared rivers. The slogan might have been politically compelling but the policy behind it was legally doubtful, materially ineffective and strategically shortsighted. The latest ruling by the Court of Arbitration in The Hague, and India’s categorical refusal to accept it, have now converted a self-defeating decision into a serious diplomatic blunder.

The Court has ruled that the 1960 Treaty remains fully in force and India cannot unilaterally suspend its obligations. It has also ordered interim restrictions on construction at the Ratle Hydroelectric Plant in Kashmir. India must not raise the dam wall or power intake structure beyond specified levels until 90 days after a World Bank-appointed neutral expert delivers a decision, expected by July 2027. New Delhi has responded by calling the tribunal illegally constituted and insisting that its pronouncements will have no effect on India’s projects.

India has long contested the simultaneous establishment of a Court of Arbitration and a neutral expert process under the Treaty. It is entitled to advance that legal argument. But refusing to participate does not make the proceedings disappear, nor does labelling an adverse award an assault on sovereignty dispose of India’s treaty obligations. Sovereignty includes the capacity to enter binding agreements. It does not grant a state the freedom to disregard them whenever compliance becomes politically inconvenient.

The Indus Waters Treaty contains no provision allowing either party to place it in abeyance unilaterally. Indeed, its durability came from insulating water cooperation from the violent fluctuations of India-Pakistan relations. It survived the wars of 1965 and 1971, the Kargil conflict and repeated military crises. If even war did not extinguish the Treaty, linking its operation to an open-ended demand that Pakistan end all support for terrorism effectively turns a water agreement into an indefinite instrument of political caprice.

Terrorism is a legitimate and grave security concern for India. Pakistan must be held accountable for any assistance given to groups carrying out violence across the border. But punishment must be lawful, proportionate and strategically useful. Suspending a treaty that sustains Pakistan’s agriculture does not meet those tests. It shifts attention from terrorism to India’s conduct, allows Pakistan to portray itself as the defender of international law and exposes millions of ordinary people to uncertainty over a resource essential for food and livelihoods.

The material benefits to India are also greatly exaggerated. India lacks the storage and diversion infrastructure required to stop or substantially redirect the western rivers. The mountainous terrain makes large-scale transfer of their waters extremely difficult, while much of Indian-administered Kashmir already has more water than it can readily use for irrigation. New Delhi can disrupt data sharing, alter reservoir operations and create anxiety during sensitive agricultural periods. It cannot, however, simply turn off the Indus system without years of construction, enormous expenditure and profound environmental and security risks.

A policy that imposes substantial legal and diplomatic costs without usable leverage is political theatre, not tactical toughness. Keeping the Treaty in abeyance helps Narendra Modi maintain the veneer of resolve after Operation Sindoor failed to secure its proclaimed military objectives. Yet symbolic retaliation cannot be a substitute for coherent regional strategy. Water weaponisation may satisfy the domestic clamour for punishment, but it gives Pakistan precisely the international platform that India has traditionally sought to deny it.

Islamabad has approached the World Bank and taken the issue to the United Nations Security Council. The Treaty bears the World Bank’s signature for specified procedural responsibilities, and its dispute-resolution architecture depends on appointments made through the institution. India’s confrontation is therefore no longer confined to Pakistan. By rejecting the arbitral process outright, it challenges an international framework it accepted and used for decades.

This weakens India’s claim to be a responsible power committed to multilateralism and a rules-based international order.The timing is particularly damaging. Pakistan’s relations with Washington have improved, while its strategic partnership with China remains exceptionally strong. During Operation Sindoor, China supplied Pakistan with military equipment and operational and intelligence support. Pakistan can now combine its downstream vulnerability with diplomatic access in Washington and strategic backing from Beijing. Instead of isolating Pakistan, India’s Indus policy has created an issue on which Pakistan can mobilise wider international sympathy.

China is also the upstream power on the Yarlung Tsangpo, which becomes the Brahmaputra in India. Its enormous hydropower project near the Great Bend, close to the Indian border, will give Beijing greater capacity to regulate a river vital to India’s northeast. China may not be able to arrest the Brahmaputra completely; much of its flow is generated downstream of Tibet. Nevertheless, reservoir operations, the withholding of hydrological data and sudden releases can create serious risks. India cannot persuasively demand transparency and restraint from China while asserting the right to disregard binding obligations towards its own downstream neighbour.

The consequences extend to Bangladesh. The Ganga Waters Treaty expires in December 2026. Relations between New Delhi and Dhaka have deteriorated and Bangladesh’s engagement with China and Pakistan has expanded. Negotiations over a successor agreement already face obstacles involving dry-season scarcity, the Farakka Barrage and West Bengal’s political objections. India’s behaviour on the Indus will inevitably shape Bangladeshi expectations. If New Delhi can suspend one river treaty after a security crisis, why should Dhaka trust that another will remain insulated from political pressure?

Reputation is not a diplomatic luxury. It determines whether neighbours trust India’s assurances, whether international institutions accept its legal claims and whether smaller states view Indian leadership as cooperative or coercive. New Delhi cannot, in the same breath, advocate respect for sovereignty when China violates its borders, defend treaty obligations when they protect Indian interests, and dismiss an arbitral ruling when it imposes constraints. Selective multilateralism diminishes credibility at a time when India seeks greater global influence and a permanent place on the Security Council.

The Indus Waters Treaty needs updating. Climate change, glacier retreat, changing river flows and new energy demands were not adequately anticipated in 1960. India also has legitimate concerns about receiving its permitted share of benefits from the western rivers. But change must come through negotiation and the Treaty’s procedures, not unilateral suspension. India should comply with the interim measures, re-engage with the Permanent Indus Commission and seek structured talks on technical and climatic aspects. Far from appearing like a ‘reward’ for terrorism, returning to the Treaty would demonstrate the confidence of a country that can defend its security without abandoning the rules it expects others to follow.

India’s original decision produced negligible material gain while internationalising the dispute and strengthening Pakistan’s diplomatic hand. Rejecting the Court’s ruling now compounds that error. Rivers connect countries even when politics divides them. By treating the Indus as a weapon, the Modi government has weakened India’s legal standing, frightened its downstream neighbours and handed China a precedent that may one day be used against us.

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ASHOK SWAIN is a professor of peace and conflict research and UNESCO Chair on International Water Cooperation at Uppsala University, Sweden