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Baglihar Dam on the Chenab River, which flows from India-controlled Kashmir into Pakistan. A water war could be catastrophic to the hundreds of millions of people in India and Pakistan who depend on river water. Credit... Amit Gupta/Reuters

NEW DELHI - India vowed Thursday to cut back on water flowing through its rivers to arid Pakistan, a threat it has made before but now seems more determined to carry out in the wake of a suicide bomb attack last week for which India has blamed Pakistan.

Nitin Gadkari, India's transport minister, said in a Twitter message that "Our Govt. has decided to stop our share of water which used to flow to Pakistan. We will divert water from Eastern rivers and supply it to our people in Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab."

Some analysts said this was the strongest threat India has made yet since the attack in which a suicide bomber killed more than 40 Indian troops in the disputed region of Kashmir.

A full-blown water war could be catastrophic to the hundreds of millions of people in India and Pakistan who depend on river water. But this latest threat was not accompanied by details on when or how India might act to divert more water from Pakistan downstream or how large, in reality, such diversions would be.

Under a longstanding treaty governing the use of the Indus River and its tributaries, Pakistan still controls most of the water and India has not challenged that.

India has been struggling to find a way to punish Pakistan for the attack last week. The bomber was a young man who grew up in the India-controlled part of Kashmir. He rammed a car full of explosives into an Indian convoy, ripping apart a bus packed with paramilitary troops.

Jaish-e-Mohammed, a militant group with links to Pakistan, claimed responsibility for the attack, and India accused Pakistan of helping the bomber pull off his deadly mission.

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A suicide bombing last week in southern Kashmir that killed at least 40 Indian soldiers. India has blamed Pakistan for the attack and vowed to retaliate. Credit... Younis Khaliq/Reuters

For decades, Pakistan and India have been locked in a violent dispute over Kashmir, a mountainous territory that both nations claim. Western intelligence officials have said that Pakistani security services allow anti-India militants to operate in Pakistan and that some of these militant groups provide material support and expertise, like bomb-making know-how, to insurgents in the Indian-controlled parts of Kashmir.

But Pakistan no longer runs large militant training camps as it had in the 1990s and early 2000s, these officials said.

Each day since the attack, India and Pakistan have traded barbs, threatened and insulted each other and, at the same time, tried to carefully woo other countries to their sides. India is eager to isolate Pakistan, but Pakistan has powerful friends in China and Saudi Arabia, both major investors.

Though this latest attack seemed to strike a nerve in India, with many people hungry for revenge, India has few good military options. Both India and Pakistan field nuclear arsenals and thousands of troops on the border. Even the most jingoistic members of India's military elite are wary of escalating tensions.

So the Indian government has looked for other ways to hit back or, in the views of some of its critics, appear as though it is hitting back. This is hardly the first time it has threatened to reduce Pakistan's water supply.

In 2016, after militants attacked an Indian Army base near the town of Uri, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said "blood and water can't flow together" and his government threatened to do the same thing. Instead, the Indian military staged what it called surgical strikes against targets just across the border in Pakistan.

This time around, India seems more serious about using water as punishment. Under the Indus Water Treaty, a World Bank-brokered agreement that goes back decades, India and Pakistan divided the rights to the enormous Indus River and its tributaries that wind across the subcontinent.

Both sides have grumbled over certain provisions and both rely heavily on the water flows for hydropower and agriculture.

On Thursday, after Mr. Gadkari's threat to reduce the flow of water from the Indus's eastern tributaries into Pakistan, Indian media reported that officials in that same ministry clarified that this was a longstanding policy.

Mourning one of the police officers killed in the suicide bombing. Credit... Pawan Sharma/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

Even before the attack, Indian officials said that water allocated to India under the treaty was flowing to Pakistan and that it planned to use those flows for new hydropower projects and farms.

Brahma Chellaney, a professor at Center for Policy Research in New Delhi and an expert on the India-Pakistan water treaty, said that for years India has struggled to harness waters from the rivers that it controls.

"This statement by the Indian government is an attempt by them to show to the country that the government appears to be doing something," Mr. Chellaney said. "When in actual terms they have done nothing. This is more of a rhetorical statement being used to play to the popular anti-Pakistan sentiment."

Pakistan has yet to officially respond to the water threat. But on Thursday, Pakistan once again denied any role in the suicide bombing, saying it was "not involved in any way, means or form in the said incident."

The statement from the office of Prime Minister Imran Khan added, "India also needs deep introspection" to realize "why people of IOK have lost fear of death."

IOK is shorthand for what Pakistan calls India Occupied Kashmir and the statement was alluding to the legions of young men from villages across India-controlled Kashmir who have joined the militants or taken part in dangerous street demonstrations to protest Indian control. The response to such demonstrations is often heavy handed with Indian security forces firing pellet guns and live ammunition into crowds.

Arif Rafiq, a political analyst at the Middle East Institute in Washington, said India's threats were driven by national elections expected in the coming months.

Mr. Modi's government needs to look tough, he said, and is signaling "that it can leverage its upper riparian location to coerce Pakistan."

"While I don't see any imminent threat to Pakistan," Mr. Rafiq added, "we may be getting a glimpse of the future of conflict in South Asia. The region is water-stressed. Water may be emerging as a weapon of war."

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India Threatens a New Weapon Against Pakistan: Water (Published 2019)

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NEW DELHI - India vowed Thursday to cut back on water flowing through its rivers to arid Pakistan, a threat it has made before but now seems more determined to carry out in the wake of a suicide bomb attack last week for which India has blamed Pakistan.

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Pakistan violated spirit of Indus Waters Treaty by inflicting three wars, thousands of terror attacks: India tells U.N.

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India at UNSC: India exposes Pakistan’s violations of the Indus Waters Treaty at the U.N., highlighting terror attacks and economic sabotage by Islamabad.

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Pakistan says open to water talks with India but insists Indus treaty remains binding

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ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is willing to discuss water-sharing concerns with India, the country’s top legal official said on Thursday, though he maintained the decades-old Indus Waters Treaty remained legally binding on both countries and could not be unilaterally suspended. Attorney General Mansoor Usman Awan shared his country’s perspective with Reuters over the issue in an exclusive interview after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s reiterated his threat to block water flows to Pakistan.

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It is essential to consider diverse perspectives when researching, as potential biases can be introduced through the omission of information, selective word choice, and statistical manipulation. In an article written by Arab News, the author quotes Awan, a Pakistani representative, saying, ​​“Pakistan is willing to talk about or to address anything, any concerns they [the Indians] may have.”(Reuters) This quote suggests that India isn’t willing to address anything; however, this can’t be proven or disproven because the article fails to quote a single Indian representative. This is a perfect example of leaving out information or quotes just to sway the opinion of the reader by not supplying the entire truth. In the article written by The Hindu, which is in favor of India, quotes Mr. Harish calling out Pakistan as “grossly hypocritical” and that “they make no distinction between terrorists and civilians, so therefore have no credentials to speak about protecting civilians”(Gettleman, Jeffrey). This kind of harsh wording so blatantly shows that the perspective is biased towards India and isn’t the neutral source that should be used when learning about an issue. In the same article the Hindu is also using statistics which victimize India and it reads “The Indian envoy underlined that in the last four decades, more than 20,000 Indian lives have been lost in terror attacks, the most recent of which was the dastardly targeted terror attack on tourists in Pahalgam” (Gettleman, Jeffrey). This is also a deathly obvious example of an article failing to be bipartisan. When combining these three methods of omission, word choice, and statistical fishing, we can discover biases in any article. It is incredibly important to consider the perspectives of both sides because biased sources are bound to stretch the truth and omit important details, which may be key to developing an opinion of your own on the topic.

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Gettleman, Jeffrey. "Nytimes.com." The New York Times - Breaking News, US News, World News and Videos, 21 Feb. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/world/asia/india-pakistan-water-kashmir.html. Accessed 3 June 2025.

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"Pakistan Violated Spirit of Indus Waters Treaty by Inflicting Three Wars, Thousands of Terror Attacks: India Tells U.N." The Hindu, 24 May 2025, www.thehindu.com/news/national/pakistan-violated-spirit-of-indus-waters-treaty-by-inflicting-three-wars-thousands-of-terror-attacks-india-tells-un/article69613260.ece. Accessed 3 June 2025.

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Reuters. "Pakistan Says Open to Water Talks with India but Insists Indus Treaty Remains Binding." Arab News, 22 May 2025, www.arabnews.com/node/2601783/pakistan.

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There is no bias because it includes quotes of both sides and explains both sides of the issue without having the issue of leaving things out. There is no bias because the headline is mostly neutral. There is no bias because there are images of both sides suffering, as well as the top image being entirely neutral on the issue. The language used to describe both countries and their actions seems relatively objective on the issue, avoiding emotionally charged or biased terms in one way or another. Lastly, the document uses sources of quotes from both sides of the issue to stay fair.

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They blatantly leave out that India has also killed many Pakistani people and leave out the aspects of this treaty that favor India and create a power imbalance. This headline makes Pakistan look terrible and India look like a complete victim to Pakistan’s violence and blatant rule-breaking. Lots of word choices which are biased towards India and make it look like the bigger and smarter country, and Pakistan is playing cheap in this treaty. They use quotes from the UN conference of Indian representatives, which make the Indian side look much better. Lastly, they use the stat of 20,000 Indians being killed due to Pakistani attacks, which makes Pakistan look much worse than India.

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They blatantly skip out on some aspects of India’s perspective. The headline seems biased due to the fact that it makes Pakistan seem more open to talk, while India seems harsher and closed off.  Most word choices make India seem big and ominous, like the choice to refer to India as the nuclear-armed neighbor, which, in my opinion, was done for no other reason than to create a sense of fear. They used quotes directly from an interview with a Pakistani official. They have also used quotes from an Indian representative; however, it isn’t stated where these quotes are from. This lack of representation on India’s part suggests that this source is biased towards Pakistan. And finally, they used two data sets of terrorist attacks that India carried out, including the number of people dead, which makes India look worse.

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A person interested in trying to find out what is going on in this dispute without having a biased view. The reporting primarily focuses on the statements and actions of both governments, without explicitly favoring one side's narrative. The New York Times is an American-based newspaper, which means many of its readers will also be American. On top of this, many scholars look to the NYT for unbiased papers on these kinds of issues so they can be better educated without the need to sift through bias.

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The potential audience is mostly Indians, as well as Hundi people who side with India in the case of this conflict, as well as in most political disputes. The Hindu, being based out of central India, means it is bound to have Indian biased viewers due to the close proximity. On top of this, the newspaper is called "The Hindu," which likely means Hindu believers read it.

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The people of the Middle East, Saudi Arabia in particular. However, this article is meant to be read by anyone who has ties to Pakistan and sides with them on this conflict, which does include most Muslims. We can make this assumption due to Arab news being based in Saudi Arabia and being named "The Arab"

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There is no central argument one way or another as to which side of the conflict is right or wrong. It is generally informative as to what each side believes is right and informs us about the past and how it has been built upon and led to where they are now, and why they are having this proxy water war.

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This article argues that India is taking precautionary measures due to Pakistan’s repeated violence and cruelty, which have gone against the Indus Water Treaty and the moral values of the Indian government.

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This article argues that Pakistan is willing to talk about the water treaty and come to peace and equal terms on the framework of this treaty, however, India is being stubborn and unable to communicate with or budge on any aspects of the treaty.