NEW DELHI: From around the early 1990s, when Pakistan was unabashedly exporting terrorism into India, a few realists in the Indian establishment advanced the argument that India needed to use the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) to punish Pakistan, writes noted Pakistan watcher journalist Sushant Sareen.
He writes that the successive governments in New Delhi balked at the idea of exercising this ‘nuclear’ option. Pusillanimity aside, the decision not to use the treaty as a leverage was also guided by the traditional caution that has been the hallmark of India’s ‘grand strategy’ or lack of it.
To the extent that at the time, India was susceptible and vulnerable to external pressure from Western countries that seemed to indulge Pakistan and turn a blind eye to its deviant behaviour, the decision to err on the side of caution could be justified, Sareen observed.
Over the last decade or so, not only has the cup of India’s patience with Pakistani terrorism run over, but she has gained considerable economic and diplomatic heft and is more assertive on the global stage.
Add to this a government in Delhi that is not risk-averse and has shed the diffidence and hesitation that afflicted its predecessors. After the 2019 Pulwama attack, the Indian establishment toyed with the idea of suspending the IWT. But the decision took a back seat because the government decided to prioritise constitutional reforms in Jammu and Kashmir.
The process of chipping away at the treaty did commence. Six years later, Pakistan presented another opportunity after it unleashed its jihadist proxies aligned to Pakistan-based terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba to carry out a massacre in Pahalgam. The Pahalgam outrage was the tipping point for India to finally do what Pakistan never imagined she would do – place the treaty in ‘abeyance’.
