Can India and Pakistan overcome their violent history?
India and Pakistan are on the brink of war.
A terrorist attack killed 26 in the beautiful hill station of Pahalgam, Kashmir, on April 22. India blamed Pakistani-trained militants. Early on the morning of May 7, India launched missile attacks on nine sites in Pakistan, calling the strikes 'measured, responsible and designed to be non-escalatory in nature,' which Pakistan called a 'blatant act of war.'
These attacks tear at the intertwined cultural fabric of India and Pakistan and recall their partition in 1947, after the end of British colonial rule.
The personal and the political flow together here. Aarti Menon's father was killed in the April 22 attack and she noted that the terrorists spared her life as she clung to her six-year-old twin sons. Two Muslims named Musafir and Sameer helped her get away. Later, she recalled, 'I have two brothers in Kashmir now. May Allah protect you both.'
The U.S. is trying to reduce tensions. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has spoken to senior officials on both sides, and President Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson affirmed American support for India against terrorism. Later, Trump echoed Western sentiment saying the U.S. is close to India and Pakistan. With typical exaggeration, he also noted India and Pakistan have fought for a thousand years.
India's government linked the April 22 attacks, without conclusive proof, to the Pakistani terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba. Pakistan officially denied support, but militants are often trained in Pakistan. India provided ample proof after the November 2009 Mumbai terror attacks.
Anti-Pakistan fervor has built up in India, and vice versa. India and Pakistan fought wars in 1947, 1965 and 1971 and were involved in armed conflicts in 1999 and 2019.
In 1947, the Maharaja of Muslim-majority Kashmir and Hindu-majority Jammu ceded the territories to India. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru promised a referendum on the status of Kashmir that, stymied with fraught relations and politics, was never held. Article 370 of the Indian Constitution provided special privileges for Jammu and Kashmir until 2019, when the nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi government revoked it.
At a personal level, the story of two Muslims assisting a Hindu woman after a terror attack speaks to the scars that have healed since the partition. The issue resonates with many of us: My father was born in what is now Pakistan and my mother's family fled from a village near Lahore in 1947. They left behind neighbors. One million people were killed during the partition and 15 million were displaced as Muslims left for Pakistan and Hindus and Sikhs came to India. However, post-colonial India had one of the largest Muslim populations in the world, and today 14.2 percent of India's 1.4 billion citizens are Muslim.
My mother recalled the partition vividly. Her family were in a caravan as they tearfully left their village in Pakistan. She and her sisters were dressed as boys because young girls were being raped. They were among those who eventually boarded the infamous trains from Pakistan to India. When they arrived at the house my great-grandparents owned in Indian Punjab, they entered through a courtyard with dead bodies.
A great deal has been written about the trauma of the partition, but much less about the lineage of people like Aarti Menon or like my mother who witness horrific acts of violence but do not blame religion. My family's account of the partition was not unique. Many families saw the outbreaks of violence as historic colonial tragedies, not as inescapable religious hatred. Aarti Menon's Kerala of present and my parents Punjab of the past feature several religious groups living side-by-side in towns and villages. They are neighbors.
It would have been easy for many post-partition Indians to blame Muslims. They largely did not. I grew up in a Sikh family. Many Sikhs were persecuted by Mughal emperors. However, the Sikh scripture is filled with verses from Muslim poets. Sikhs blamed the rulers, not the religion.
After 1947, Mahatma Gandhi and Prime Minister Nehru envisioned a secular and pluralist India for nation-building. One of the most famous Bollywood films remains 'Mughal-e-Azam' or 'The Great Mughal,' offering an allegory about integrating gender and Islam in a secular India.
The secular Indian state is under duress from far-right Hindu nationalists who seek conflict. Significant acts marginalizing the Muslim community include the 1992 demolition of the medieval Babri Masjid and, after a controversial Supreme Court judgment in 2019, the building of a Hindu temple where the mosque once stood. Despite 172 million Muslims in India, the current BJP party-led government's cabinet or parliamentary majority does not include a single Muslim. During the 2024 elections, Modi referred to Indian Muslims as 'infiltrators.'
The geopolitical implications are clear. Terrorist violence destabilizes America's political and commercial tilt toward India, especially as a check against China, with whom India has another historic rivalry. Meanwhile, polls show that Pakistanis favor China over America. The Pakistani military, an important but declining force in domestic politics, would also gain from conflict with India.
With domestic politics exacerbating international tensions, statements like those of Aarti Menon or the stories of millions of post-partition households remind us that the Indus River — whose waters India has threatened to divert, abrogating a 1960 treaty between the two countries — has flowed through these lands for millennia.
The lesson is not that neighbors do not fight, but that at interpersonal levels, people often choose not to fight, even when pressured the other way. Geopolitically, India is well-placed to avoid a war and win international favor. Trump called the May 7 attacks 'a shame' and expressed hope that they end quickly. Let's all hope so.
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