India is angry — and understandably so. On April 22, terrorists killed 25 tourists and a local pony-rider in Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir. It was the worst attack on tourists in Kashmir since 2000, and the country is baying for blood.
So far, though, what it has got is water.
Out of all of the diplomatic steps announced by the Narendra Modi government against Pakistan following the attack, the most significant measure is India’s decision to effectively put the Indus Waters Treaty on ice. The pact, signed in 1960, affirms that the waters of the Ravi, Beas and Sutlej rivers from the Indus Basin belong to India; while the waters of the Chenab, Jhelum and Indus predominantly belong to Pakistan.
If it chooses to ignore the treaty, India, as the upper riparian state, can, in theory, limit Pakistan’s access to the waters of the Chenab, Jhelum and Indus that its agrarian economy so desperately relies on. So the agreement is a natural weapon for India to wield against Pakistan.
Indeed, New Delhi has long complained that the treaty is unfair to it since the rivers that Pakistan is entitled to use have much more water than the ones India has access to under the IWT. Yet, while threatening to deprive Pakistan of water sounds like a reasonable response to an attack that New Delhi insists has Islamabad’s fingerprints on it, actually acting on it is a risky proposition. For while India might hurt Pakistan, it might also set an example that could backfire on New Delhi.
There are, for starters, the practical challenges. Partly because of the limitations imposed on New Delhi by the IWT, India does not have the kind of dams and hydroelectric power projects in place on the Chenab, Jhelum and Indus that it would need to block water flow to Pakistan. Trying to do it with the current infrastructure could lead to unpredictable flooding — in Pakistan, but possibly also in India.
But if India engages in a water war with Pakistan, it also creates a precedent for others in a region that has shared rivers throughout its history.
Just five months ago, when China announced that it was building the world’s largest dam on what India calls the Brahmaputra — it is called the Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibet — New Delhi responded with concern. The ministry of external affairs confirmed that it had communicated its worries to China and had demanded that lower riparian states — such as India — be consulted before the launch of major projects that can affect the flow of shared waters. India has previously also expressed concern over China not adequately sharing water data from the Brahmaputra with New Delhi.
The fears are real: what if China curtails the flow of water from the Brahmaputra into India? What if it collects water using the giant new dam and then unleashes its fury in one go, flooding parts of India?
These worries have also been strictly theoretical until now. There is no recent example of a country deliberately using control of river water to flood or starve another country.
That will change if India does weaponise the IWT.
While India-China ties are currently on the mend, New Delhi and Beijing view each other as strategic rivals. No one in India’s strategic community harbours any illusions that India and China can be friends anytime in the foreseeable future. That tensions will rise again is a given. What if China then threatens India with a water war? If India has itself stopped Indus waters from reaching Pakistan or has flooded its western neighbour, it will have a much weaker defence in front of the global community when China threatens to do the same.
In 1996, India and Bangladesh had struck an agreement on the sharing of Ganga waters. That treaty is up for renewal in 2026. Given the current tensions between New Delhi and Dhaka, any move by India to block Indus waters from reaching Pakistan will surely spark fears that New Delhi could do something similar to Bangladesh.
Water is not easy to control. Water wars, once started, will be harder to stop.
Charu Sudan Kasturi is a journalist who writes on foreign policy and international relations