Asif Mahmood
In the ongoing debate over the Indus Waters Treaty, India is frequently described as the upper riparian state. Factually, however, that is not correct. India is not an upper riparian state. If any country in this region truly deserves that description, it is China. Once this misconception is cleared up, the entire debate takes on a different dimension.
Before proceeding, it is important to understand what an upper riparian state actually means. In international law, a riparian state is any country through which an international river flows. If a river originates in a country, that country is the upper riparian. If it flows through a country in the middle of its course, that country is a middle riparian. If the river ultimately passes through a country before emptying into the sea, that country is the lower riparian. This, however, is merely a geographical classification. It has nothing to do with ownership of water. Being an upper riparian does not grant a country absolute control over downstream states. Nor does it deprive downstream countries of their rightful share of the river, leaving them dependent on the goodwill of the upstream state.
This misunderstanding probably arose because water disputes in South Asia have long been viewed through the prism of the Indus Waters Treaty. Since the Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas and Sutlej enter Pakistan after flowing through India, a general impression took hold that India is upstream while Pakistan is downstream. Consequently, India came to be widely regarded as the upper riparian and Pakistan as the lower riparian, and much of the debate has revolved around this assumption.
The story, however, does not begin with India and Pakistan. It begins in Tibet, in its snow-covered mountains, often described as Asia’s Water Tower. After the polar regions, Tibet contains the largest reserve of frozen freshwater on Earth. Dozens of the continent’s major rivers, sustaining nearly two billion people, originate from this vast plateau. Numerous reports by the United Nations, the World Bank and international water experts identify Tibet as Asia’s most important water reservoir.
Anyone seeking to weaponise water in South Asia must reckon with China’s Tibet factor. Ignoring this reality could ultimately expose the weakness of their entire strategy.
Take the Indus River, often described as Pakistan’s lifeline. Its source is not Ladakh, as is commonly believed, but Tibet. The river rises near Mount Kailash, flows first through Chinese-administered Tibet, then enters Ladakh, continues through Gilgit-Baltistan and Pakistan’s plains before emptying into the Arabian Sea. Even if we consider only the Indus, the sequence is unmistakable: the river originates in China, passes through India, and then flows into Pakistan. This single geographical fact dismantles the narrative that casually and exclusively labels India as the upper riparian state.
The same pattern can be seen in the Sutlej. It originates near Lake Rakshastal in Tibet, crosses the Himalayas into India, and eventually enters Pakistan. Here too, China is the upper riparian, India the middle riparian, and Pakistan the lower riparian.
The Brahmaputra follows the same course. It begins in Tibet, where it is known as the Yarlung Tsangpo, enters Arunachal Pradesh, flows through Assam as the Brahmaputra, and finally reaches Bangladesh, where it becomes the Jamuna. Throughout this river system, China is upstream, India lies in the middle, and Bangladesh is downstream.
In other words, the most powerful water state in this region is not India but China.
The waters of these river systems originate in China’s glaciers. India is merely the middle riparian for many of them, while Pakistan and Bangladesh are the downstream states. At most, India may be described as an upper riparian only in relation to Pakistan. In relation to China, however, it is itself a middle riparian state. China lies upstream of India.
This raises a fundamental question. If India believes that its position as an upper riparian entitles it to stop the flow of water to Pakistan, what would the Hindutva government do if China were to invoke the same principle and block the waters flowing into India? If India’s argument is that the waters belong to the upper riparian state, then by the same logic the rivers flowing into India belong to China.
For more than two decades, India has consistently voiced concern over China’s dam-building activities on the Brahmaputra. Its position has been that if China undertakes large-scale water storage projects or alters the river’s natural flow in its upper reaches, the consequences could be severe for northeastern India. On numerous occasions, New Delhi has demanded that China share hydrological data, provide prior notification of major projects, and ensure greater transparency.
The irony is impossible to miss. These are precisely the same principles that Pakistan has long demanded from India. India is unwilling to extend these rights to Pakistan, yet it expects China to honour them. In doing so, India implicitly acknowledges that an upper riparian state does not enjoy absolute or unrestricted authority over an international river.
The principle is simple. If the waters of an international river truly belonged to the upper riparian state, Turkey would have been free to cut off the waters of the Euphrates and the Tigris to Iraq and Syria. Ethiopia could have completely paralysed Egypt by withholding the Nile. China could simply divert the Brahmaputra, and the United States would have no reason to recognise Mexico’s rights over the waters of the Rio Grande. None of this has happened, because over the course of the last century the international community has come to accept a fundamental principle: rivers are not the exclusive property of any one state. They are shared natural resources, and the rights to use them are inseparable from the responsibilities that accompany those rights.
Hindutva has already become a threat to human civilisation and to peace in South Asia. What it has yet to realise, however, is that India itself is not an upper riparian state.
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