Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Pakistani President Ayub Khan sign the Indus Waters Treaty for the control and management of the Indus, Chenab, Jhelum, Ravi, Sutlej and Beas rivers.

Jawaharlal Nehru was an Indian anti-colonial nationalist, secular humanist, social democrat, lawyer and statesman who was a central figure in India during the middle of the 20th century. Nehru was a principal leader of the Indian nationalist movement in the 1930s and 1940s. Upon India's independence in 1947, he served as the country's first prime minister for 16 years. Nehru promoted parliamentary democracy, secularism, and science and technology during the 1950s, powerfully influencing India's arc as a modern nation. In international affairs, he steered India clear of the two blocs of the Cold War. A well-regarded author, he wrote books such as Letters from a Father to His Daughter (1929), An Autobiography (1936) and The Discovery of India (1946), that have been read around the world.

Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan was a Pakistani military dictator who served as the second president of Pakistan from 1958 until his resignation in 1969. He was the first native commander-in-chief of the Pakistan Army, serving from 1951 to 1958. Ayub Khan's presidency started in 1958 when he overthrew President Iskander Mirza in a coup d'état, and ended in 1969 when he resigned amid mass protests and strikes across the country.

The Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) is a water-distribution treaty between India and Pakistan, mediated by the World Bank, to use the water available in the Indus River and its tributaries. It was signed in Karachi on 19 September 1960 by Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Pakistani president Ayub Khan. On 23 April 2025, following the Pahalgam terrorist attack, the Government of India suspended the treaty, citing national security concerns and alleging Pakistan’s support of state-sponsored terrorism.

The Indus is a transboundary river of Asia and a trans-Himalayan river of South and Central Asia. The 3,180 km (1,980 mi) river rises in mountain springs northeast of Mount Kailash in the Western Tibet region of China, flows northwest through the disputed Kashmir region, first through the Indian-administered Ladakh, and then the Pakistani-administered Gilgit-Baltistan, bends sharply to the left after the Nanga Parbat massif, and flows south-by-southwest through Pakistan, before bifurcating and emptying into the Arabian Sea, its main stem located near the port city of Karachi.