In the latest edition of Hindustan Times’ Point Blank, Executive Editor Shishir Gupta sits down with anchor Ayesha Verma to analyze reports of fresh back-channel contacts between India and Pakistan and the escalating dispute over the Indus Water Treaty.
At first glance, the story sounds familiar: non-official meetings in neutral locations, Western officials in attendance, and a flurry of media speculation about “track 2 diplomacy” to ease tensions. two nuclear-armed neighbors.
Gupta’s assessment is clear: much of what has appeared in the media is, in his view, a Pakistani disinformation campaign designed to project the existence of a back channel that does not in fact exist.
Two meetings were held, one in Colombo and the other in Bangkok, but significantly “no serving Indian officer was present” at either of them. Retired Indian intelligence and foreign service officers and a former army chief were present, but they were speaking in their personal capacity, not carrying messages from New Delhi.
Inside the Colombo and Bangkok meetings
Gupta says that due to the ongoing Gulf War, the International Institute for Strategic Studies shifted one of its forums to Colombo and the gathering acquired a unique identity. India-Pakistan taste. On the Indian side, the participants were retired officials, including a former intelligence officer and several diplomats who handled the Pakistan-Iran-Afghanistan desk in the Ministry of External Affairs along with a retired army chief.
The Pakistani contingent looked completely different.
This also includes:
- A serving Pakistani diplomat handling South Asia.
- Three military officers attached to Inter-Services Intelligence.
- An officer related to Afghanistan.
Gupta says a US State Department official, Paul Kapoor, likely joined the group for dinner, and four UK officials and four US officials more widely were present at the forum.
In his view, this raises an obvious question. What were US and UK officials actually doing in a dialogue focused on the Gulf War agenda but consisting of three India-Pakistan modules: water, escalation and crisis management?
The second meeting in Bangkok brought together four Indians: two strategy writers known for their Western leanings, and two former PIA-desk officers who had served as ambassadors to Pakistan. The fact that the colloquium was funded by the University of Ottawa is a fact Gupta finds puzzling: “One cannot understand why the University of Ottawa would be interested in India-Pakistan relations.”
In some reporting the two meetings were labeled “Track 1.5” or “Track 2”, but Gupta says this is misleading. There was no official Indian presence. The retired participants were “only supporting their own views” and “certainly have no access to what’s going on in the government”. Under normal Chatham House rules, such discussions remain confidential. Yet, this time, details leaked, leading to speculation that Islamabad was keen to sell the impression of a functioning back channel.
As Gupta succinctly puts it, “As far as India is concerned, India has nothing to do with these dialogues,” and the government’s policy line remains untouched by an informal conversation shop with “some good food and some good wine.”
Indus Water Treaty: From technical agreement to flashpoint
If the Colombo and Bangkok meetings were largely dramatic, the controversy around indus water treaty What is not? Gupta links the current tensions to the Pahalgam terror attack – described as a “genocide” – after which India suspended the Indus Water Treaty, signed in 1960 under the auspices of the World Bank.
Since then, Pakistan has tried to create an international narrative that India is “weaponizing water” against it. The country believes that it has gained new credibility on international forums after trying to broker an agreement between Iran and the US amid the ongoing war in the Gulf.
Gupta points out that US President Donald Trump has repeatedly spoken of Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, as a close friend – which reinforces Islamabad’s perception that “it has the West on its side.”
In this context, Pakistan is trying to “put international pressure on India” so that New Delhi backs out of suspending the treaty. However, what is more shocking is the ideological turn Pakistan is exploring:
Under the 1949 Geneva Conventions, warring states must not target each other’s critical civilian infrastructure, including dams. Pakistan is now arguing that since India is allegedly weaponizing water by suspending the treaty, it is within its rights to attack Indian dams in a worst-case scenario. Gupta warned that this rescheduling turns the Indus Waters Treaty into a “new flashpoint”.
At one time, Kashmir was the primary disputed territory; Now, the treaty is being positioned as a new center of conflict and a means of internationalizing Kashmir by linking river rights to territorial disputes.
An unbalanced treaty and a “moral compass” problem
Gupta’s criticism of the Indus Water Treaty is historical and structural. Negotiated in the 1960s when Jawaharlal Nehru held the Department of External Affairs, and RK Nehru and Subimal Dutt were successive foreign secretaries, he argues that the agreement is a “complete reversal” and heavily imbalanced in Pakistan’s favour.
Main points of his criticism
- About 80% of the waters were allocated to Pakistan, leaving about 20% of the eastern rivers with India.
- India paid Pakistan about £52 million to build dams along the Line of Control and the international border.
Gupta comments, “First, you give them more water. Second, you give them money to build dams, which they hardly need.”
He argues that this pattern has repeated itself:
- Following the 1960 treaty, Pakistan handed over the Shaksgam Valley to China in 1963.
- There were wars in 1965 and 1971 and later conflicts like Kargil.
- In 1978, India blocked the sluice gate of Salal Dam in Kishtwar, but later “hit” it again in Kashmir and elsewhere.
For Gupta, this reflects a deeper problem: a “strange moral compass” and a poor “enemy location radar” that has led the Indian political leadership to over-accommodate Pakistan despite repeated security setbacks.
He says that the present government has tried to break this tradition. Since coming to power in 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has expressed two clear lines:
“Terrorism and talks cannot go together.”
“Terror and water also do not go together.”
India’s position is that normalization is possible only if Pakistan stops using terror – or “jihad” – as a tool against India. Until then, the postponement of the IWT and the broader hardening of India’s stance will continue.
Pakistan’s compulsions and talk of war
In the concluding part of the conversation, Gupta is asked a pointed question: Can Pakistan really go to war with India over the Indus Water Treaty? Pakistani leaders have issued “incendiary statements” about teaching India a lesson and bombing dams, and have taken their campaign to forums such as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the United Nations, and Western capitals.
Gupta’s answer is clear. Pakistan “cannot afford to go to war against India” and would “lose very badly” if it tried. He listed Pakistan’s internal and external constraints:
The Pakistan-Afghanistan border is “on fire”, with recent Pakistani actions provoking Afghan retaliation. There is a full-scale insurgency in Balochistan, which prevents effective operation of the Gwadar port. Pakistan is facing unrest in Sindh and the threat of Pakistani Taliban operating in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
According to Gupta, Pakistan “cannot even afford to take on the Taliban in Kabul, leave alone a war with India.” This makes his rhetoric about the bombing of Indian dams more a tool of pressure and narrative-building than a credible war strategy. He insists, “The real solution clearly lies in only one thing: stop terrorism, start dialogue.”
back channel vs red lines
Overall, the leaked IISS communications and the Indus water dispute highlight a familiar paradox in India-Pakistan relations. Informal talks between retired officials, academics and Western diplomats continue in hotels and conference rooms from Colombo to Bangkok and will likely continue under various labels from “Track 2” to “Track 1.5”.
Yet, as Gupta emphasizes, none of this changes New Delhi’s basic red line: there is no official back channel running with Pakistan. The Indian government has “no role” in the recent negotiations. Normalization depends on Pakistan giving up terrorism as a statecraft.
For now, the Indus River has joined Kashmir as a central pressure point in a relationship defined by asymmetric risks, competing narratives and a narrow space for compromise.
Whether the quiet talks in Colombo or Bangkok will ever develop into something more concrete will depend less on Western convenience and more on whether Islamabad is willing to address “the fundamental issue behind terrorism” to which Gupta returns again and again: the use of terror and jihad as instruments of policy.
