New Delhi keeps the Indus treaty suspended and casts the water shift as a gain for farmers
New Delhi says its suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty remains unchanged despite Pakistan's warning. President Murmu presents the move as redirecting water that previously crossed the border to Indian farmers.
Geopolitics··Evening
Jaiswal: no change in thinking on the Indus treaty
India's foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal told Friday's weekly briefing there is no change in the way we think on the Indus Waters Treaty. The question followed Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's warning that any attempt to block his country's water would draw a decisive response. Jaiswal's quoted line was short and plain: there is no change in the way we think. India has held the treaty, signed in 1960 with World Bank mediation, in abeyance since the April 2025 Pahalgam attack, in which 26 civilians were killed. Indian government sources told Outlook India the treaty will not function again in its present form, that any future arrangement would have to be built in a different form, and that it would depend on Pakistan permanently ending cross-border terrorism. New Delhi says it is not currently considering immediate withdrawal but retains the right to terminate an international agreement it judges contrary to its national interest. The treaty gives India the eastern rivers and allocates the western rivers primarily to Pakistan, while permitting India specified run-of-river hydropower projects on the western rivers. Official language therefore keeps the suspension in place, defers immediate exit, and ties any return to operation to hard conditions.[1]
Murmu defends the suspension as a farmer and national-interest gain
Indian President Droupadi Murmu addressed the nation on Friday evening, on the eve of Independence Day. She described the suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty with a country that harbours terrorism as a decisive step in the national interest, particularly for farmers. In the same address Murmu said Operation Sindoor had demonstrated the Indian armed forces' capability for precision strikes against terror networks, and she commended personnel of the three services, the armed police forces and the police for their dedication to duty. The speech also marked Partition Horrors Remembrance Day, observed on 14 August, and described the integration of more than 550 princely states after independence as an extraordinary challenge. The presidential narrative pulls the suspension out of a technical water-law file and ties it to security and farm language. The foreign ministry's cold one-line freeze and the president's farmer and national-interest framing land on the same day: one locks the diplomatic posture, the other sets how the suspension is sold at home.[2]
Suspension holds; any return to operation is tightly conditioned
Read together, the two statements clarify New Delhi's line: the treaty stays suspended, it will not function again in its present form, and any future arrangement is tied to Pakistan permanently ending cross-border terrorism. Immediate withdrawal is not currently on the table; the right to terminate an agreement judged contrary to the national interest is retained. Sharif's warning of a decisive response to any water cut is met on that ground: India says its thinking is unchanged, while Pakistan has marked water as a red line. Jaiswal also answered Norway's foreign minister raising Jammu and Kashmir during a visit to Islamabad by saying the whole of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh is an integral and inalienable part of India and that what should concern the international community is what is happening in the part of Kashmir Pakistan holds. The water file is therefore stitched to Kashmir and security language as well. Murmu's farmer-gain emphasis and Jaiswal's one-line freeze turn the suspension into a lasting tool for both domestic politics and bilateral tension; reopening is tied not yet to a calendar but to a lasting break in Islamabad's terrorism file.[1], [2]
