Paper short abstract:

Conflict and cooperation are rhetorical tropes in discussions of Indus Basin water-sharing in India-Pakistan relations. In order to understand the 1960 Indus Water Treaty’s importance, this paper argues for more nuance in analysing the political possibilities that such rhetoric opens and forecloses.

Paper long abstract:

Sharing water resources in the Indus Basin, split between India and Pakistan in 1947, helped sour relations between these hostile neighbours until the signing of the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty. The Treaty has since garnered a reputation for stability in an otherwise unsteady binational relationship. But did the Treaty represent meaningful cooperation? Literature on transboundary water-sharing focuses on a binary distinction between inter-state cooperation and conflict. This paper moves the debate forwards, critiquing what we these terms mean. The case of the Indus waters dispute negotiations, and the treaty that followed, demonstrates that physical control over water flows was only one aspect of hydropolitics. The way that politicians, engineers and international experts rhetorically framed conflict and cooperation also created and foreclosed possibilities for political action in domestic and international arenas.

This paper is based on material from government, diplomatic and private papers in Indian, Pakistani, US and UK archives. It argues that initial proposals for 'cooperation' between India and Pakistan stimulated negotiations. Then, during the 1950s, Indian and Pakistani representatives increasingly rejected collaborative water resources development, until the 1960 Treaty rested on partitioning the Indus river system between the two countries. But in a final twist, the Treaty appeared in 1960s discourse as a starting point for broader 'cooperation' between India and Pakistan. Understanding the gap between what the Treaty provided for, and the way that policymakers sought to use it to promote certain kinds of international politics, helps us assess an aspect of India-Pakistan relations that remains vital today.