Pakistan failed to read the writing on the wall. The Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) had been red-flagged by India as an aberrant legacy of the Nehruvian era, which not only privileged Pakistan but also did not factor in national security. India issued notices to Pakistan on the treaty in 2023 and 2024, to no avail. The Pahalgam terrorist strike was bound to invite the suspension of the treaty.

Under the Modi government, there has been a palpable policy shift in favour of the view that a treaty obliging India to protect Pakistan’s interests cannot endure if the latter sponsors terrorism on Indian soil, as it has done since the 1980s. Adhering to an international rules-based order is desirable but cannot be unilateral.

In the words of geostrategist Brahma Chellaney, the IWT is “the most generous water-sharing agreement in modern world history”, in that it allots to Pakistan, the lower riparian state, an 80.5 per cent share of the waters of the Indus River system. Not only is the treaty heavily weighted in favour of Pakistan, but it has effectively prevented India from harnessing the western rivers—Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab—even for permissible uses, such as generating hydropower through run-of-the-river dams. The Kishanganga I project, first mooted in 1988, was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi only in 2018, thanks to constant objections from Pakistan.

Why does Pakistan dub the halt of the........

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