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India has rejected The Hague’s Indus ruling. Now it must act on the rivers

Annulling a treaty we cannot act upon is rhetoric. The test is whether water reaches a field in Malwa or a tap in Kathua.

On 31 August, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague issued two determinations. The first held unanimously that India’s decision of 23 April 2025 to place the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance was justified neither by the pact nor by general international law, and that India remains bound by it. The second barred specified concreting at the Ratle hydroelectric plant on the Chenab until 90 days after a neutral expert’s final determination, due around July 2027. By evening, India’s Ministry of External Affairs had rejected both, calling the court illegally constituted and without jurisdiction over India’s sovereign decisions.

Two facts are missing from most of the coverage of the development. The first is that India did not appear in the court. Since the World Bank constituted this court in October 2022, New Delhi has declined to file, plead, nominate or attend, including at the April 2026 hearings. The proceedings have been ex parte throughout, and the record was written by the only party in the room.

The second is that India is not boycotting the treaty’s machinery as such, but only one of two parallel tracks. Before the neutral expert, Michel Lino, appointed by the World Bank on India’s own request, India has filed, argued, and participated fully. India’s objection is not to adjudication but to simultaneous adjudication: the treaty lays down a ladder — commissioners, then the neutral expert, then Court of Arbitration. And a court cannot be seized of differences the neutral expert is already examining, because two forums on one set of facts can produce irreconcilable answers. We have spent four years declining to make that argument where it counted.

The word that is not in the treaty

Open the text of the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty and look for “abeyance.” It is not there. The treaty provides for........

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