Rivers without a Territory: Indus Waters Treaty, 1960 and the Erasure of Kashmir

Abstract

This thesis examines how international law shaped self-determination in South Asia through a history of the Indus Waters Treaty, 1960. While most narratives of 20th century self-determination focus on the postcolonial state navigating a biased global order, I address an important gap in scholarship by centring forgotten peoples within these states whose ambitions for statehood outlasted formal decolonisation. By analysing contested ‘natural resources’ that spill across territorial borders, I probe the governance of resources within and between these new nation-states. Through a rigorous account of the Anglophone diplomatic perspective on the Treaty (1948-1964), I highlight a forgotten history of state-making in South Asia, showing how Kashmir—usually framed through Hindu-Muslim relations—was reduced to a natural resources unit to be managed between India, Pakistan, and the World Bank. Therefore, I puncture narratives which celebrate international law as a functional ‘peace-making’ tool by uncovering stories of those erased by these agreements. However, my PhD demonstrates that elites designing the Treaty were anxious that their carefully constructed political-economic regime could unravel if the Treaty’s erasure of Kashmir was publicly named. Therefore, their use of international law remained fraught and contradictory. On the one hand, the authority and stability of international law was critical to convert the Indus waters into an economic resource whose value was reliably maximised by the postcolonial states of India and Pakistan. On the other hand, the public aspects of international law threatened to destabilise the Indus governance regime by reintroducing the unresolved issue of Kashmiri popular self-determination. Therefore, this case-study demonstrates that while international law played a critical role in sidelining Kashmir from global riparian governance, it was not a seamless or frictionless tool of power.