India & Pakistan’s Two Patterns

Achin Vanaik

WE CAN ALL give a sigh of relief that a ceasefire seems to have taken place even if its duration remains uncertain. To intelligently assess the likely future trajectory of India-Pakistan relations, especially concerning the possibility of armed conflict erupting, it is all the more necessary to understand the past pattern and trends of behavior over time that can explain how we have arrived where we are today.

Given the truly unique character of the India-Pakistan imbroglio, two discernible patterns assume particular importance. We need to highlight these because they must constitute the starting point for further exploration.

A Nuclear Pair Unlike Any Other

• In 1998 both countries went openly nuclear after an earlier history of major conventional warfare (not just border skirmishes). This happened three times: in 1948, 1965 and 1971 with only the last ending in a victory for one side, India. No other pair of powers possessing nuclear weapons have had anything like this history of territorial warfare since World War II. That is true whether or not they had acquired nuclear weapons.

For example, the USSR-China conflict was confined to border skirmishes along the Ussuri River but finally resolved peacefully in 2003. Unlike Kashmir, which is a central cause of the conflict between India and Pakistan, the Ussuri dispute was more the reflection of a prior Sino-Soviet conflict. Once that conflict ended, the river dispute was easily resolved.

• No pair of nuclear armed opponent states have had such a decades-long (now running 78 years) continuous hot-cold war that shows no signs of ending.

• No other pair have actually engaged in direct territorial armed conflict over the course of which both sides made preparations for actual nuclear use. Yet this was done by the two South Asian neighbors in 1999 and in the showdown of 2019. In the latter case, following a suicide bombing that killed over 40 Indian paramilitaries in Jammu and Kashmir, the story is recounted by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in his memoir, Never Give an Inch.

• After a bomb attack on the Indian parliament on November 26, 2001 by a Pakistan-based group that killed nine people on the grounds outside the building, there was a seven-month long mass mobilization (December 2001 to June 2002) of over a million armed personnel along both sides of the border before it was called off. Since 1945 there has never been anywhere in peacetime such a large and prolonged confrontation of armed personnel.

Keeping in mind this history of how relations between the two countries have evolved, let us now look at two key patterns. One is fairly consistent, while the other reflects a progressive degeneration particularly since the coming of the Modi regime in 2014.

Two Trends

Since the independence of the two countries, there have been repeatedly third parties (usually but not only the United States) that have played an important, perhaps even a decisive role in ending or stopping further escalation of hostilities.

At the very least such mediation has had a positive and sobering effect on the leaders in both governments. This enabled them to “save face ” because backing down was not seen as caused by the “dominance” of the other side.

In 1948, it was the United Nations that intervened. The 1965 war was ended in January 1966 at Tashkent, where the earlier Line of Control was re-established. In that case Pakistan accepted the USSR as a mediator. Pakistan was shocked that although a member in the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO), the United States issued an arms embargo on both countries even though India was not a U.S. ally at that time.

In 1999 and 2019, when both sides made nuclear preparations, the United States applied pressure behind the scenes. And in the latest post-Pahalgam confrontation, Trump announced on May 10, 2025 that a ceasefire had been reached — before it was announced in New Delhi and Islamabad.

But to believe that such external intervention will always “save the day” is dangerously unrealistic.

Deterrence is not to be understood as the simple registration of the fact that nuclear weapons deter. Yes, they do. But deterrence is something else. It is a theorization, a rationalization, an irrational belief that great fear will ensure that your opponent will always act in the way you want it to. The reality is that you can never fully control the circumstances under which your opponent makes decisions.

The other trend is not so much consistent as degenerative. The Kashmir issue lies at the heart of the India-Pakistan conflict. Until the emergence of the Modi government both states have treated this as a purely bilateral issue.

What the inhabitants of Jammu, Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan(1) want for their political future has never been taken seriously, if at all. There has never been even a non-binding referendum in any section let alone for the whole area, to get to know what the people of that region think. Neither of the two states have ever had any respect for their right to political self-determination.

On the Pakistan side, apart for a brief period after its break-up in 1971-72,(2) the Army has always been the final boss either upfront or behind a civilian regime. This has meant various degrees of freedom, authority and power. The Army has achieved long-run stability in their part of Kashmir through steady repression of activists, students, workers and journalists. They silence people for simply speaking out for rights and justice.

From its inception India’s political trajectory has been different. It was constitutionally founded as a liberal democracy with an asymmetrical federalism, most notably expressed in the autonomous powers legally given to Jammu and Kashmir.

Cumulative erosion of this autonomy, along with a series of rigged regional and local elections, steadily created a wide and deep alienation especially in the Kashmir Valley.(3) This has led to much greater political turbulence and public anger against the center.

Hundreds of thousands of armed personnel (police, paramilitaries, army) have had to be stationed to cope with armed “anti-nationals,” local or foreign. According to official estimates, these numbered a couple of thousand during the peak years of the early 2000s; today only a few hundred remain.

But their recruiting ground both in Pakistan and in Indian-occupied Kashmir is much larger. This is in itself testimony to how serious the degree of popular alienation remains. The troubled waters of Jammu and Kashmir have been domestically created. This allows forces in Pakistan to fish in them for their own nefarious purposes.

India’s Escalation

Bad as all this has been, it is with the arrival of Modi that two crucial changes have taken place. First, he unconstitutionally annulled Article 370. In December 2023 the Supreme Court shamefully justified this abrogation on the basis of the 1957 dissolution of Jammu and Kashmir’s constituent assembly. So Article 370, for Kashmir’s autonomous status, has become a dead letter.

Modi has made it clear to everyone that the demands of Hindutva(4) override the Constitution with the people of Jammu and Kashmir — the principal sufferers. Furthermore, unlike his political predecessors there is now a complete end to any question of serious discussion let alone negotiations with Pakistan on this core issue.

Secondly, there is a major shift in how the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government will militarily deal with cross-border incursions and attacks.

In 2016 after the Uri episode when a cross-border combat group attacked an Indian army camp in Jammu and Kashmir, New Delhi responded by sending its own armed group to attack a Pakistani army camp. Termed a “surgical strike,” this was more than the usual border skirmish. As an official military response to action by a non-state actor, this act was a violation of international law. The attack was something of a red line, and Indian authorities were careful to use the term “anticipatory self-defense” rather than “pre-emptive self-defense.” The latter term comes closer to allowable under laws defining war between states; it would not have withstood international scrutiny.

In February 2019 a suicide bomb attack by a local Kashmiri youth trained and armed by the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) across the border killed over 40 paramilitary soldiers. This time the Indian government went one step further.

Air battles between the two countries broke out along the border, while an air bombing deep in Pakistani territory at an alleged JeM camp was carried out successfully. This was the first time that one nuclear power had carried out a bombing campaign deep into the territory of another nuclear power — and in response to the actions of a non-state actor.

Making this spiral of military action-reaction even worse, the Modi government has announced that any such terror attack as just happened in Pahalgam will be considered an “act of war.” This is wrong not only in international law but if adhered to, will significantly increase the likelihood and danger of a large-scale, even full-scale, conventional war. With a concomitantly much higher scale of civilian casualties — and employing state terror on both sides — there are still greater chances of crossing the nuclear Rubicon.

What makes the situation even more perilous is the way in which communal and nationalist jingoism is being whipped up by “strategic experts” and the media in both countries. Sections of the Indian media have approvingly referred to Israel’s response to the October 7th Hamas attack.

This implied endorsement of the genocidal path taken by the Netanyahu governments is morally and politically shocking. Both Hamas and The Resistance Front have carried out terror attacks that must be unequivocally condemned. But in their refusal to call the brutal assault in Gaza terrorism, the Indian government and its “lapdog” media are contributing to Israel’s terrorist campaign.

Why the Danger

Do not blow matters out of all proportion. The response to a non-state terror attack (militarily a low-intensity action) must not resort to an undeclared war between two states with a possible escalation to genocide.

Go after the culprits; make transparent the evidence you have for who you think the perpetrators are; demand international support for an investigation in which the home country for the suspected terrorists must provide full support for the investigation.

If the Pakistan government, for example, does not comply, then distinguish it from the Pakistan public and seek punitive action of a diplomatic-political and material-economic kind that hurts the government and not the population.

Let us be clear, the Pakistani state does sponsor terrorist acts by non-state groups. But this is still different from terror acts executed by the apparatuses of the state itself. Sponsorship means that even as there is serious support by the state apparatuses for such groups, they have a significant degree of autonomy in deciding when, where or they have a significant degree of autonomy in deciding when, where or how they should carry out particular acts.”

In the case of Pakistan these groups are almost all Islamists, meaning that particular interpretations of religious doctrines and beliefs are central to their ideological and motivational make-up. Among these can be a sense of willingly becoming martyrs through death, and beliefs in the ultimate victory of their cause through the grace of the Almighty.

The point here is simple. Do not assume that the Pakistan government can categorically assure that there will be no cross-border terror attacks in the future even if they do their very best. There can well be another or even other such attacks in the future.

What then is New Delhi going to do? Should it resort to a large-scale war mobilizing arms against Pakistan? The imbalance in terms of military strength means that though there is no certainty, the likelihood is greater that India can make significant territorial advances in Pakistan rather than the reverse.

Pakistan has already made its strategic red lines public. if Indian forces advance beyond what Pakistan, not India, thinks is too far then Pakistan will consider the use of tactical nuclear weapons on its own territory. In turn, India has made it clear that any nuclear attack on its forces, no matter where it takes place, would lead to the use of its own nuclear weapons.

Of course, these doomsday scenarios are speculative. In this nuclear age it is extraordinary that we have on both sides decision-makers and -shapers who talk about how evil the other side is. They speak about how we can and should teach the other side military lessons of some kind or other.

This is the time, more than ever, for the voices of sanity to call for an end to religious chauvinism and hubristic nationalism. Instead, we need to institutionalize an enduring process of dialogue and negotiations between India and Pakistan. And above all, we need to listen to the people of Jammu, Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan.

Notes

1. This is the area that made up the old princely state before its 1948 territorial division.
   back to text
2. The 1971-72 India-Pakistan War ended with the surrender of Pakistani troops in East Pakistan and the subsequent birth of Bangladesh as an independent country.
   back to text
3. The Kashmir Valley, in Indian-administered Kashmir, is surrounded by the Himalayas.
   back to text
4. Hindutva is a right-wing ethno-nationalist political ideology that defines the cultural identity of India as Hindu and wants India to be an overtly Hindu nation-state. It is most closely associated with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the ruling party. See my book The Rise of Hindu Authoritarianism: Secular Claims, Communal Realities (Verso, 2017).
   back to text

July-August 2025, ATC 237