Sixty-Six Years On, J&K Reclaims Its Rivers : The Indus Betrayal

Brig Dr Vijay Sagar Dheman (Retd)

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For sixty-six years, the Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab have carried the hopes of Jammu and Kashmir toward lands owned by others. On 19 September 1960 in Karachi, Jawaharlal Nehru and President Ayub Khan signed a treaty that decided this fate. As it turns sixty-six on 19 September 2026, for the first time in a while, that date feels like a moment of pause. For most of India, this is a notable diplomatic milestone. For a region whose rivers were bargained away without ever really being heard, it finally feels like their voice might be coming through at last.

The 1960 settlement gave Pakistan the three western rivers, which carry roughly four times the water of the three eastern rivers left to India. India paid Pakistan about sixty-two million pounds, close to two and a half billion dollars today, to help build replacement canals, and accepted detailed limits on anything it might build on its own rivers. History does not usually call that kind of concession goodwill. It calls it the price of losing, at the table, what should never have been on it.

Jammu and Kashmir has faced the toughest challenges. It holds an estimated 20,000 megawatts of hydropower, enough to brighten up entire cities, yet most of it remains untouched because Pakistan fought off nearly every dam project. Projects like Baglihar, Kishenganga, Ratle, and Pakal Dul faced years of objections, even as villages waited patiently for power that never arrived. The Tulbul project on the Wular Lake has been awaiting development since 1984. Pakistani pressure also led India to lower the Salal dam by ten metres and seal its gates, a practical compromise given the geography of the Chenab valley. Over the past forty years, salal and Baglihar dams were never desilted, quietly losing storage capacity that could have irrigated farms and illuminated homes.

The reckoning started on 22 April 2025, when terrorists tragically killed 26 civilians, many of whom were tourists, at Pahalgam. The following day, India's Cabinet Committee on Security decided to put the Treaty on hold. Weeks later, after Operation Sindoor targeted terror infrastructure across the border, Prime Minister Modi addressed the nation, emphasising that blood and water cannot flow together. For the first time since 1960, India began treating its rivers as its own, symbolising a renewed sense of resilience and determination.

The changes happening on the ground are already clear to see. Salal and Baglihar have been flushed and desilted for the first time, marking a significant step. India no longer seeks Islamabad's permission to open or close even a single gate- small actions with huge significance after sixty-six years. Projects like Pakal Dul, India's first storage project on a western river, along with Ratle, Kiru, Kwar, and the 1,856-megawatt Sawalkote project are now moving forward quickly, with electricity expected between 2026 and 2028. There's also a proposal for a 113-kilometre canal to carry excess water to Punjab and Haryana, helping irrigate four to five lakh hectares of land. For the first time in decades, the Chenab Valley is being shaped around what Jammu and Kashmir truly needs, rather than what Islamabad might tolerate.

Islamabad regards the abeyance as invalid, and on August 31, 2026, a Hague tribunal agreed, ruling that the Treaty is fully binding and rejecting all of India's objections. India was justified in disagreeing with that decision. According to Article IX of the Treaty, technical questions are to be referred to a Neutral Expert, with full arbitration reserved for genuine disputes. Pakistan pursued both paths on Kishenganga and Ratle steps India had warned against before the abeyance was declared- which is why New Delhi considers the tribunal as improperly formed and its ruling as something it does not accept. Remember, abeyance is not the same as termination, which requires both sides' agreement under Article XII (4). Instead, it's a suspension permitted by the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, justified by material breach and significant change of circumstances, as upheld by the International Court of Justice. After decades of exporting terror and suspending its own treaty with India shortly after Pahalgam, Pakistan isn't in a position to lecture others on the importance of honouring agreements.

All of this comes with a price. Millions of Pakistanis in Punjab and Sindh rely on these rivers, and the pause is meant to be a temporary measure, not a permanent strike. the Treaty will be restored once Pakistan clearly ceases supporting terrorism. Until that happens, New Delhi won't continue subsidising, at Jammu and Kashmir's cost, a neighbour that has not kept its side of the agreement.

Sixty-six years after Karachi, the rivers that were signed away are finally being read on Jammu and Kashmir's terms. The dams are being desilted, the canals are being planned, the lights are coming on in villages that waited two generations for them. This is not revenge. It is what should have been written into the treaty the day the ink dried in 1960: that Kashmir's water belongs to Kashmir first.

(The writer is a retired Indian Army Brigadier, Vice Chancellor, Guru Kashi University, and Convener, International Institute of J&K Studies and Analysis, Jammu.)