India-Pakistan tension and the Subcontinent's challenge

Indian Express

09-05-2025

India has defined how it would respond to cross-border terror attacks emanating from Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). It will hit back. The Indian Air Force accomplished the missions it was tasked to undertake across different targets in Pakistan. In response to the dastardly, tragic and bigoted terror attacks in Pahalgam, India has upped the ante by not only hitting terror camps in PoK but also in Pakistan, and taking a series of non-kinetic measures aimed at exerting pressure on Pakistan. Whether all this will dissuade the Pakistani elites from continuing to pursue the lost cause of claiming all of Kashmir, or of trying to destabilise India's economic growth process, remains to be seen.
While Pakistan has begun its response to the air strikes on May 7, India will counter whatever action it takes. This is now the bottom line, and there is unity on this across the broad political spectrum.
However, it should also be clear to all sides that neither India nor Pakistan can undertake and sustain an all-out military campaign without seriously hurting themselves. The losers in an India-Pakistan war will, in fact, be the people of India and Pakistan. It is now established that India and Pakistan will engage in tit-for-tat hits every time one side suspects the hand of the other. Pakistan has explained away the Pahalgam terror attack by referring to the attack on the Jaffar Express in which 25 men were killed. The response of the international community suggests that few countries are willing to believe the version of only one side. While there have been more takers for the Indian version of events, Pakistan has also been able to find supporters.
The challenge before the two nations, indeed the challenge across the Indian Subcontinent, is for the many nations that have come into being over the past century to find leaderships that can usher in a new era of regional and domestic peace and development across the Subcontinent. Regrettably, there is a short supply of such political leadership in South Asia. The region has been held back since its liberation from colonialism by its internal struggles with its own history, geography and the ghosts of the past.
The South Asian tragedy is the belief among many in most countries of the region that they can somehow hitch their wagon to the rest of the world and pursue development without improving relations with their own neighbours. India's creditable economic performance over the past quarter-century led many to believe that India could continue to rise without settling its disputes with its neighbours. To an extent, that has been possible. However, if India is pulled into a long-drawn war it will be hurt economically.
This may well be the desperate aim of a declining Pakistan. In the past, India-Pakistan wars have been brief, and international efforts ensured early declaration of a ceasefire. In the present global and regional environment, and at this stage in India's rise, it is not clear whether adequate pressure would be and could be exerted by outside powers for a full-scale war to be quickly terminated. It is in the interest of both countries and the region as a whole that the current phase of hostilities does not escalate into a full-scale military conflagration.
Once the dust settles and both countries emerge from the 'fog of war', the political leadership in both countries must take a longer view of what constitutes regional security and defines a regional environment for sustained economic development. Whose interests are served by continued disputes about territory? Who benefits from communal and regional divides within each nation and across the region?
For all the wisdom of grand strategists on both sides of the border, neither side is today able to define a new framework for regional peace and security. The last time an effort was made, howsoever tentative and limited in scope, was in the period 2000-2007 under the leaderships of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Pakistan's President, Pervez Musharraf, went along with their initiative for a while but he was soon ousted. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government have since rejected the so-called 'Manmohan-Musharraf' formula for peace and security.
Today one would be mocked for even mentioning that formula. However, mention it one must. The Indian economy is on the verge of emerging as the fourth-largest economy after the United States, China and Germany. It has just overtaken Japan. Despite all the challenges it faces at home and all the inadequacies of the Indian growth process, India has the opportunity to continue to rise and engage the world on favourable terms.
To imagine that India can do so without securing its own neighbourhood is a fantasy of many contemporary analysts and strategists. What India's neighbours — Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka — are trying to tell India is that they can raise the costs of growth if they are unable to secure any benefits from it. The Indian policy of the last decade, which has come to be identified with the Modi government, of imposing costs on difficult neighbours, may deliver short-term benefits but is imposing costs, too.
The Indian political bravado that we will reclaim PoK helps match the Pakistani rhetoric about getting hold of Kashmir, but neither will ever happen. That was the point of the Simla Agreement, the Lahore Declaration and the Manmohan-Musharraf formula. All the major powers — the US, Russia and China — have backed the idea that the Line of Control is, in fact, the international border. Hotheads in both countries today reject such a solution. However, realists on all sides know that there is no escaping from the reality on the ground and that this reality can only be altered at high cost to all.
The writer is founder-trustee, Centre for Air Power Studies and distinguished fellow, United Service Institution of India