The suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty by India in April 2025 is a righteous and long overdue act of sovereignty and a thunderous rebuke to Pakistan’s unrelenting campaign of terrorism that has soaked Indian soil in blood, ever since its formation. For too long, India has shackled itself to a treaty by shackling its own people while rewarding a neighbour that breeds chaos. Water and terror cannot flow together and the people of Jammu and Kashmir, who have suffered the most from Pakistan’s proxy war, have an undeniable right to the waters that course through their land. The suspension of the Indus Water Treaty is not just a diplomatic masterstroke but a moral imperative, unshackling India from a lopsided agreement and paving the way for transformative projects like the Tulbul Navigation Project on Wular Lake. This move is India’s declaration that its resources will serve its people first, not a nation that repays goodwill with violence.

Signed in Karachi on 19 September 1960, by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Pakistani President Ayub Khan, the Indus Water Treaty was sold as a triumph of cooperation, brokered by the World Bank to divide the Indus basin’s six rivers. India got the eastern rivers for unrestricted use, while Pakistan was handed the lion’s share, the western rivers, securing roughly 80% of the basin’s 154.3 million acre-feet of annual water flow. This split, born in the shadow of partition, has proven a straitjacket for India. Pakistan’s agrarian heartland, especially Punjab and Sindh, thrives on these waters, irrigating 80% of its 16 million hectares of farmland. Meanwhile, India, the upper riparian state controlling the rivers’ headwaters, has been hamstrung by the treaty’s draconian rules, unable to fully tap even its meagre 19.48% share due to Pakistan’s relentless objections to projects like Kishanganga, Ratle and the Tulbul Navigation Project. The treaty’s bias of handing Pakistan 80.52% of the waters has choked India’s development, nowhere more painfully than in Jammu and Kashmir.
The Tulbul Project, envisioned in the 1980s, is a glaring casualty of the Indus Water Treaty’s chokehold. Planned as a 440-foot-long barrage across the Jhelum at Wular Lake in Kashmir’s Bandipora district, it aimed to regulate the lake’s water levels, ensuring a 4.5-foot depth in winter for year-round navigation between Sopore and Baramulla. The barrage’s 0.3 million acre-feet of storage would have irrigated 200,000 hectares and generated hundreds of megawatts of hydropower, addressing water and power shortages in the Kashmir Valley. But in 1987, Pakistan cried foul, claiming the project’s modest storage violated the Indus Water Treaty’s cap of 0.4 million acre-feet on western rivers, fearing India could manipulate flows to its Punjab province. Despite India’s assurances that Tulbul was a run-of-the-river project with negligible downstream impact, Pakistan’s refusal to engage constructively forced India to shelve it, robbing Kashmiris of a project that could have transformed their lives.
The Indus Water Treaty’s restrictions have suffocated Jammu and Kashmir’s potential. The Jhelum’s winter flows drop to a trickle of 2,000 cusecs, leaving Wular Lake too shallow for navigation and farmers high and dry. Thousands of Kashmiris rely on the lake for fishing, irrigation and transport, yet the treaty’s limits on storage have blocked India from managing these waters effectively. Pakistan’s objections, weaponising the Indus Water Treaty’s dispute mechanisms, have ensured that Kashmir’s rivers serve its interests while local communities languish. The suspension of the Indus Water Treaty in April 2025, triggered by Pakistan’s refusal to abandon terrorism as evidenced by the Pahalgam attack frees India from this straitjacket. As Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri declared, Pakistan’s “material breach” through terrorism nullifies any obligation to uphold a treaty that undermines India’s sovereignty.
Reviving the Tulbul Project now becomes a beacon of hope for Kashmiris. With the Indus Water Treaty suspended, India can bypass Pakistan’s veto to build the Wular barrage, enabling year round navigation. Controlled water releases would stabilise irrigation for rice, wheat and orchards, boosting yields for farmers who face winter shortages. Small scale hydropower would light up remote areas in Bandipora and Baramulla, where power deficits are a daily struggle. Wular Lake, the “lungs of Kashmir”, supports 30,000 families through fishing, chestnut harvesting and tourism and regulating its levels would preserve its ecosystem and sustain livelihoods. As people of Jammu and Kashmir put it, “Our waters should serve our people first”. The Indus Water Treaty’s suspension is a direct answer to this call, empowering Kashmiris to claim their natural wealth.
The moral case for suspending the IWT is ironclad. Pakistan’s support for terrorism, from the 2016 Uri attack to Pahalgam in 2025, has spilled too much Indian blood to justify rewarding it with water. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s words after the heinous Uri attack that blood and water cannot flow together ring truer today. The treaty’s suspension is a demand for accountability, a refusal to let Pakistan’s Punjab thrive while Kashmir’s fields wither and its people die. India’s move aligns with Article 62 of the Vienna Convention, citing Pakistan’s terrorism as a fundamental change in the circumstances. The World Bank, a toothless signatory and Pakistan’s limited recourse through bodies like the International Court of Justice, where India holds reservations, leaves Islamabad with little leverage. The Indus Water Treaty’s suspension is a measured step. India’s actions are a clarion call: water is for those who respect peace, not those who sponsor slaughter. For Kashmiris, long caught in Pakistan’s crosshairs, the suspension of Indus Water Treaty means economic empowerment, water security and control over their destiny, which is in line with the Prime Minister Modi’s declaration that India’s water will serve India. From the perspective of common Kashmiris, the suspension of the Indus Water Treaty is not just a policy but justice, flowing like the Jhelum to heal a wounded land.