Pakistan's coveted prize is dialogue with India: Delhi must hold firm

That Pakistan has been praised by the international community for its mediation between the United States and Iran is undoubted. That its political and security elite feel that this has placed Pakistan in a better position globally than it has had for many decades is also true. This satisfaction is reflected also by its media.

Yet with all this acclaim and self-congratulation, Pakistan still hankers for what can only be described as the ‘prize’ that it does not have. That ‘prize’ is the opening of a dialogue with India. The Modi government’s approach since 2016 of not opening a full dialogue process with Pakistan until it gives up its use of terrorism has led to its sentiments swinging between anger, anguish and belligerent ‘we don’t care if you don’t wish to engage us’ attitudes. And there is deep concern over India’s decision, after the Pahalgam attack of April 2025, to hold the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) of 1960 in abeyance.

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India’s aim in giving Pakistan around 80 per cent of the waters of the Indus water system in the IWT was to assure it that it had no ill will towards the newly created nation even though the Indian National Congress had initially opposed the partition of India. Implicit in this generosity was a genuine desire to establish good and cooperative neighbourly ties with Pakistan despite its foundational ideology. However, Pakistan did not pay heed to India’s positivity and persisted in its hostile approaches. It assumed that the IWT had ensured that India would never impede the flow of water into Pakistan and that it would also never seek to violate the treaty.

The IWT survived three wars and around three and half decades of Pakistani terrorism in J&K and beyond in India. It still does. What Pakistan did not anticipate was that India would hold it in abeyance. Thereby, it would not abrogate it but ensure that it does not cooperate with Pakistan as mandated in the mechanisms of the IWT. India’s signal to Pakistan is that it must observe the foundational tenet of interstate interaction. That principle is that a state cannot break every assurance it has given for normal behaviour and expect that the impacted state would continue to adhere to what it generously gave to it in the form of an agreement or even a treaty. The international bodies which have advocated that India should not hold the IWT in abeyance have overlooked the basic principle that is the foundation of international conduct. Perhaps they were restrained by their remit and legal jurisdiction. In that case India can simply ignore their views because the logic of the principles of international conduct is in its favour.

The IWT was based on the conditions prevailing in the 1950s. The passage of more than six decades since it was signed has seen enormous climate change, which has negatively impacted the Himalayas, from where the Indus water system originates. There has also been a more than fourfold rise in the population of South Asia. India’s need for water has increased. There is, therefore, a need to have a complete relook at the sharing of waters between the two countries, but a de novo approach that would have to be based on the accumulation of new knowledge about river systems and the ability to predict what the future trends indicate requires Pakistan to show good will towards India by changing its negative and hostile approaches towards India. So long as these continue, it would be pointless for the two countries to go into complex and sensitive discussions on the use of the waters of the Indus River system.

Certainly, the giving up of sponsoring terrorism against India can be a starting point for Pakistan to indicate that it wishes to build normal ties with India. But that can only be a beginning. It has to go beyond to stop painting India as a hegemonic power. It would also have to revisit that aspect of the two-nation theory which holds that Hindus and Muslims are two antagonistic faiths and that the adherents of these religions cannot live in harmony. Indeed, that is the basis of the belief firmly embedded in the thinking of the Pakistan army and large sections of its political class and, therefore, also in sections of its people that India and Pakistan are fated to live in perpetual animosity. Some of its official documents, such as the Abbottabad Commission Report, indicate such thinking. The Abbottabad Commission went into Pakistan’s failure to prevent the US killing of Osama bin Laden in May 2011 in Abbottabad, a cantonment city which houses the Pakistan Military Academy. It will be recalled that Osama bin Laden had lived with his family in a house which was less than a mile from the academy.

The absence of official talks between India and Pakistan has led to great media curiosity about what are called Track 2 dialogues between Indian and Pakistani retired diplomats and civil servants and military officers and activists. Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri has done well to put on record how the Indian government views these Track 2 discussions. Responding to media queries in the Seychelles, Misri said that these were “private events organised by private parties”. This is entirely correct. He also stated that the Indian government does not officially participate, support or involve itself in these events. He went on to say that Indian participants speak for themselves. This too is correct. He then added that India does not have “cognisance” of these events and that they do not hold “much value as far as we are concerned”.

Misri has, in a sense, stated what every Indian participant in these Track 2 dialogues knows. The promoters of these dialogues, which are often institutions in the West, would gain from Misri's comments on the thinking of the Indian government towards these discussions. There is one advantage, though, which these Track 2 events give to Indian participants. They give an indication of the thinking of many Pakistanis who remain influential in their own systems. There is a difference in the Indian and Pakistani systems. The latter contains a far more cohesive fraternity among the serving and retired officials, though even in Pakistan, serving officials, especially military officers, do not take kindly to retired officers who pester them privately with their views.

It may be added that Track 1.5 dialogues and Back Channel talks are on a different footing altogether. But that is another subject.

PM Modi has made it clear that blood and water cannot flow together. This means that Pakistan will have to wait for the “prize” of talks with India for a long time, for there is no indication that it is willing to give up terrorism. Also, on the IWT suspension, the river Pakistan is really concerned about is the Chenab, where India is undertaking projects which actually fall within the remit of the treaty. Thus, the IWT is in abeyance, and it should continue to be so. It has not been abrogated by India.

A last word. Pakistan’s threat that tinkering with the water flows to Pakistan would be an act of war and pose an existential threat to Pakistan should not deter Indian policymakers from continuing with their present policies. Threats have to be stared down and not pandered to.

(The writer is a former Indian diplomat who served as India’s Ambassador to Afghanistan and Myanmar, and as secretary, the Ministry of External Affairs. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)