How ‘blood and water cannot flow together’ became a political and diplomatic doctrine

The Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) of 1960 survived three full-scale wars between India and Pakistan—the 1965 war, the 1971 war, and the 1999 Kargil conflict, as well as major diplomatic crises, including the 2001 Indian Parliament attack and the 2008 Mumbai bombings. For over five decades, the Permanent Indus Commission met annually, exchanging hydrological data even when diplomatic communication between the countries was limited. Then, on 27 September 2016, cooperative mechanisms under the IWT were suspended for the first time. The rupture was driven less by hydrology or engineering constraints alone, and more by politics and rhetoric.

Nine days earlier, on 18 September 2016, militants attacked an Indian Army base at Uri in Jammu and Kashmir, resulting in 19 fatalities. The Indian government linked the attack to a Pakistan-based militant group. At a government review meeting in New Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated that “blood and water cannot flow together,” linking water cooperation to the broader security environment. On the same day, India announced it would not convene the next annual meeting of the Permanent Indus Commission until Pakistan ended support for cross-border terrorism.

This statement, while metaphorical, altered the relationship between water management and security. It did not threaten abrogation, announce a legal position, or outline immediate action. Its significance lay in signalling that water would henceforth be tied to political and security considerations. Pakistan depends primarily on the three western rivers of the Indus Basin—the Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab—which were allocated to it under the Treaty. India has limited infrastructure to block or divert these rivers. Statements by the Indian Prime Minister Modi and, later, the Indian Union Minister, Nitin Gadkari, referring to stopping water to Pakistan, largely concerned the eastern rivers (Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej) that India already utilises domestically. Technically, there was no new water to withhold; politically, however, the statements generated concern in Pakistan. Yet the Treaty’s legal architecture provides important constraints on such possibilities, requiring disputes to proceed through established mechanisms involving the Permanent Indus Commission, Neutral Expert review, and arbitration procedures, with the World Bank playing a facilitating role.

Pakistan’s public and political response was immediate. Addressing the National Assembly, Sartaj Aziz, Adviser to the PM Nawaz Sharif on Foreign Affairs, stated that any attempt to revoke the Treaty could be regarded as an “act of war.” This position was subsequently reinforced through a unanimously adopted parliamentary resolution. Pakistani leaders portrayed India’s actions as a potential instrument of water coercion and stressed that any unilateral measures would be challenged legally.

The doctrine quickly became a tool in India’s domestic political arena. Two months after the 2016 meeting, in November 2016, PM Modi, campaigning in Punjab six weeks before state assembly elections, promised that “every drop of this water will be stopped and given to the farmers of Punjab.” The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) – Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) alliance was in power in Punjab during that time. Though the alliance ultimately lost the election, competing parties adopted similar positions, making water rights a recurring theme in state-level electoral politics. In subsequent years, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) also maintained that no water from Punjab should be diverted to Haryana. Such statements show how water-related issues increasingly became part of domestic political contestation, extending beyond India-Pakistan relations to inter-state debates within India.

In February 2019, after the Pulwama bombing, Gadkari reiterated that “not a single drop of water will be allowed to go to Pakistan,” signalling resolve amid domestic electoral and public pressure. These statements followed a pattern: a security event occurs, elections approach, and water-related rhetoric intensifies.

Pakistan’s domestic response and counter-rhetoric

Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari issued a direct threat to India after New Delhi suspended the Indus Waters Treaty in response to the Pahalgam terror attack that killed 26 civilians. In a provocative speech at a public rally in Sukkur, Bhutto-Zardari said, “I want to tell India that the Indus is ours and will remain ours. Either our water will flow through it, or their blood will.”

Between 2022 and 2024, as disputes over the Kishanganga and Ratle dams were referred to international arbitration, Pakistani political rhetoric increasingly framed India’s dam construction as a threat to Pakistan’s water security and as a form of water weaponisation.

This mirrored earlier rhetoric in India, where political actors similarly portrayed the other side as an aggressor in order to mobilize domestic political support.19 Pakistan also emphasised legal recourse, stating that any unilateral action violates the Treaty and is subject to international adjudication.

Cumulative effects of rhetoric

By 2025, after a militant attack in Pahalgam, India effectively placed the Treaty in abeyance, echoing the original 2016 phrasing: “terror and talks cannot happen; water and blood cannot flow together.” Pakistan responded that this constituted an “act of war,” constrained by the prior unanimous parliamentary resolution.

The significance of this development lay not only in its immediate impact on India-Pakistan relations, but also in the broader questions it raised about the future of the Treaty. As political rhetoric increasingly translated into policy decisions, concerns emerged regarding the consequences of such a shift, extending beyond the bilateral relationship to the future of the Treaty itself.

Commentators interpreted this shift in different ways. Former diplomat Syed Akbaruddin argued that the Treaty’s durability should be viewed in the context of India’s long record of upholding it despite wars, terrorist attacks, and prolonged political tensions. From this perspective, the growing linkage between water cooperation and security reflected accumulated frustrations that had become increasingly difficult to separate from the Treaty’s operation. Regardless of interpretation, repeated rhetorical signalling on both sides contributed to a political environment in which compromise became increasingly difficult.

Conclusion

The significance of “blood and water cannot flow together” lies not in the statement itself, but in what followed. Invoked after the Uri attack and recurring after Pulwama and Pahalgam, each a distinct act of cross-border terrorism, the phrase evolved from a crisis response into a recurring reference point in India-Pakistan relations, gathering weight with each repetition rather than fading after the crisis that produced it. Similar rhetoric later emerged in Pakistan, indicating how water increasingly came to occupy a more prominent place in political and diplomatic contestation, with each side’s language reinforcing the other’s over time. As this rhetoric becomes more embedded on both sides, it raises a structural question for the Treaty’s future: whether the technical, depoliticised cooperation that sustained it for over six decades can be restored once water has been so closely tied to security in the public discourse.