ISLAMABAD: New Delhi has a decades-long pattern of walking away from, modifying, or unilaterally freezing its international obligations whenever global agreements clash with its strategic ambitions.
A Pakistan TV Digital investigation has found that India has bypassed or violated over 100 international commitments.
New Delhi's decision to hold the 65-year-old Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) in abeyance last year has put this pattern back in focus.
The research sorts the violations, suspensions, and delays into three categories: water and border diplomacy, investment and trade treaties, and multilateral frameworks and diplomatic immunities.
Water and borders
India placed the 65-year-old water sharing agreement with Pakistan into "abeyance" on April 23, 2025, following a regional security crisis. The Court of Arbitration at The Hague rejected India's argument for suspension just two months later, and by May 2026, the court had finalized its ruling on water control.
India called that ruling null and void.
This was not the first time India had broken an agreement involving Pakistan.
India had already violated the 1972 Simla Agreement by launching Operation Meghdoot on the Siachen Glacier in 1984, and again when it revoked the special status of Jammu and Kashmir in August 2019. Legal experts cite both as earlier departures from the spirit of the Simla Agreement.
The pattern is not limited to Pakistan.
The 1950 Indo-Nepal Treaty requires bilateral consultations during regional security crises, but New Delhi has repeatedly failed to coordinate with Kathmandu.
Bangladesh faced a similar wait.
Dhaka ratified the 1974 Land Boundary Agreement with India immediately, while India dragged its feet for four decades, citing domestic legal compulsions.
Thousands of residents in border enclaves were left effectively stateless, without basic civil rights, until the agreement was finally implemented in 2015.
Even the 1950 Liaquat-Nehru Pact, meant to protect religious minorities and their property in both countries, went largely unenforced almost as soon as it was signed.
Trade and investment
Between 2016 and 2017, India terminated between 58 and 77 Bilateral Investment Treaties in a single sweep, a move intended to protect the state from international lawsuits filed by foreign companies.
Tax disputes have proven just as contentious. An international tribunal ruled in September 2020 that India's retrospective tax demand on Vodafone violated global fair-treatment principles, a ruling that New Delhi fought to avoid enforcing.
India also withheld a $1.2 billion arbitration award owed to Cairn Energy until the company began pursuing Indian state assets overseas, forcing a settlement in August 2021.
In the long-running Devas-Antrix space sector dispute, international tribunals repeatedly struck down India's domestic fraud rulings, which the government had invoked to refuse to pay arbitration awards.
A World Trade Organization panel ruled against India in October 2019 over its export subsidy programs, finding them inconsistent with global trade rules.
The WTO has since established a new dispute panel to examine India's solar tariffs and domestic content requirements following a challenge from China.
India's agricultural stockholding programs have drawn similar criticism for distorting international crop prices.
Diplomatic immunity and international courts
India stripped American diplomats of long-held privileges in 2013 after an Indian consular official was arrested in New York. The same year, it refused to accord functional immunity to Italian marines during a maritime dispute.
When that crisis escalated, India's Supreme Court banned the Italian Ambassador from leaving the country, a move legal scholars widely called a direct breach of the Vienna Convention.
At the International Court of Justice, India relies on a broad set of legal reservations to limit the court's jurisdiction over it. One such reservation, the so-called Commonwealth Reservation, allowed India to block a case Pakistan brought in 1999 over the shooting down of an unarmed military patrol plane.
India's approach to human rights treaties follows a similar pattern.
The country signed the UN Convention Against Torture in October 1997 but has never ratified it, a delay of nearly three decades. Advocacy groups say this has allowed custodial abuse to continue largely unchecked, shielding domestic security forces from the kind of international accountability that ratification would require.
The article draws on data from Indian and international media reports, as well as research from international think tanks.
