Water and blood cannot flow together, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in his first message to the nation after Operation Sindoor, India’s counterstrike in retaliation for the Pahalgam terror attack. The water and blood reference was a clear message to Pakistan that while India may have agreed to a ceasefire, it has no plans to lift the hold on the Indus Waters Treaty that it imposed a day after the heinous attack in which 25 tourists and a Kashmiri man were murdered in cold blood.

“Terror and talk cannot take place together. Terror and trade cannot take place together. And, water and blood also cannot flow together,” Prime Minister Modi said in his message to the nation during which he warned Pakistan that India has only paused its action and its next move will depend on Pakistan’s actions.

Stressing that Operation Sindoor had rewritten the rules of India’s response to terror, the Prime Minister said the country would respond to terror on its terms and that any form of nuclear blackmail — Islamabad’s oft-used trick — won’t be tolerated.