‘Pakistan eroded India's faith bit by bit’: Indian envoy defends putting Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance

India’s Ambassador to the United States, Vinay Mohan Kwatra, has strongly defended the decision of putting the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) in abeyance, saying that Pakistan eroded India’s faith bit by bit and ‘destroyed’ the spirit of the agreement long before India took the step.

In an opinion piece in the US-based weekly magazine Newsweek, Kwatra wrote that the treaty was founded on “goodwill and friendship” as mentioned in its preamble, but Pakistan continuously kept dismantling those principles through its actions.

‘IWT abeyance merely acknowledges what Pak already destroyed’

“Pakistan spent half a century dismantling that goodwill and friendship. The abeyance merely acknowledges what Pakistan’s conduct had already destroyed,” Kwatra said.

The ambassador’s remarks came weeks after Pakistan reportedly organised a conference in Islamabad to protest India’s decision to suspend the treaty.

Referring to the event, Kwatra wrote, “At that gathering, a former foreign minister threatened war against India if Pakistan’s demands on the Indus River system go unmet.”

He pointed out that threatening war against India has become a standard tactic of Islamabad to attention distract from its internal problems.

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‘New Delhi honoured the treaty for decades despite imbalance’

The envoy recalled that the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty divided the six rivers of the Indus basin between the two countries, giving India control over the three eastern rivers and Pakistan control over the three western rivers.

He said though the arrangement gave Pakistan access to nearly 80 per cent of the basin’s waters and limited India’s share to just 20 per cent, New Delhi still honoured the agreement for decades despite the imbalance.

Kwatra further highlighted that Pakistan repeatedly blocked India’s attempts to modernise or renegotiate the treaty to reflect technological changes and allow greater hydropower development.

“Bit by bit, Pakistan eroded India’s faith that it could exercise its rights under the treaty, or hope for a better one suited to today’s realities,” he wrote.

Moreover, repeated attacks on Indian project sites, including the 2012 terrorist attack on the Tulbul Navigation Project, prevented India from exercising its rights under the treaty, he added.

The ambassador recalled Pakistan’s persistent hostility as it launched wars against India in 1965, 1971 and in 1999; and promoted cross-border terrorism leading to an attack on India’s Parliament in 2001, Mumbai terror carnage in 2008, Uri and Pathankot attacks in 2016, the Pulwama attack in 2019 and the Pahalgam attack in 2025.

“Over 40,000 civilians in India have been killed in India due to Pakistan’s persistent terror campaign,” he asserted.

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‘Pak’s water shortages result of its poor management’

Replying to recurrent calls for dialogue between India and Pakistan, Kwatra said past experience showed such engagement had failed to produce results.

“Those advocating talks between India and Pakistan have not taken note of the history of these talks in the past or they must believe that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is not insanity.”

“Prime Minister Narendra Modi has clearly voiced India’s stand today, ‘Terror and talks cannot go together... Terror and trade cannot go together…. Water and blood cannot flow together.’,” he said.

The ambassador also rejected Islamabad’s allegations that India was acting as a “water aggressor” and said Pakistan’s water shortages are a result of its poor domestic management and not India’s actions.

“Only around 40 per cent of the water Pakistan receives reaches its farms, while more than 30 per cent is lost in transit and the remainder flows unused into the sea,” he specified.

New Delhi decided to hold the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance a day after the April 22, 2025 terror attack in Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir, in which Pakistan-origin terrorists killed 26 civilians, including 25 Indians and one Nepalese citizen. The attack was linked to the designated terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba.

The terrorists were later killed by Indian security forces in an operation.