India & Pakistan

Story hook

It is 23 January 2025. The Court of Arbitration at The Hague, constituted under the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) 1960, delivers its "competence award" — declaring itself competent to adjudicate Pakistan's objections to the Kishenganga (330 MW) and Ratle (850 MW) hydroelectric projects. India boycotts the proceedings. New Delhi argues that under the treaty's own graded dispute resolution mechanism (Article IX), this question belonged with the Neutral Expert, not a parallel arbitration. Just two days later, India issues a formal notice to Pakistan seeking renegotiation of the treaty — for the second time inside two years.

Rewind to 22 April 2025. The hill town of Pahalgam in South Kashmir wakes to a massacre — 26 tourists mowed down in a meadow. The Resistance Front (TRF) — a proxy of the Lashkar-e-Taiba — claims responsibility. Within 72 hours New Delhi announces the treaty is "in abeyance". The water-sharing arrangement that survived three wars (1965, 1971, 1999) is finally on ice.

Across the 740-km Line of Control the ceasefire of 25 February 2021 — re-affirmed by the DGMOs — still mostly holds, but Operation Sindoor (May 2025), India's punitive strikes inside Pakistani territory after Pahalgam, has rewritten the doctrine: India will now treat cross-border terror as an act of war. For UPSC, the India–Pakistan file is the chapter where law (IWT, Shimla, Simla Agreement), security (LoC, IB, AGPL), and diplomacy (SAARC paralysis) collide.

Why this matters for UPSC

India–Pakistan is the single most frequent GS-II IR theme. Mains questions appear almost every cycle — usually on the IWT, terror infrastructure, Kashmir, or the diplomatic toolkit. Prelims has tested Shimla 1972, IWT rivers, Tashkent, Lahore Declaration and SAARC summits. Interview boards love this file because it forces candidates to balance national security with strategic restraint.