Mainstream WeeklyIndia-Pakistan Impasse will ease once the hawks are shown the door
India and Pakistan both just marked their independence days on August 14 and 15. It is a huge tragedy that nearly eight decades after attaining independence, our two neighbouring countries have fraught relations. Soon after an incident of terrorism in April 2025 in Pahalgam, in Kashmir. India immediately pointed fingers at Pakistan-backed individuals as being involved and chose to intervene militarily instead of dialogue. There was a military confrontation with big artillery fire, warplanes and missile strikes in May 2025. This crisis lasted four days, and it took a third-party intervention for a ceasefire, even though the Government of India denies this. The US President Donald Trump, who was in Alaska in a summit meeting with the Russian President Vladimir Putin on Aug 15, once again publicly claimed that he intervened to stop the recent India-Pak conflict. The tensions are such that the 60-year-old Indus water treaty between India and Pakistan is now being held in abeyance unilaterally by India. Hope good sense will prevail and India will agree to stand down. The relations between the two countries are at an all-time low, with limited contacts over the past 10 years. The two nuclear neighbouring countries have had more and more intense conventional military conflicts ever since the Kargil conflict of 1999, and each time it has taken an external intervention by the USA to get them to stand down. Let us hope South Asian neighbours of India and Pakistan will push for detente & peace between India and Pakistan. In the past days, there have been heavy rains and floods in parts of Kashmir in both India and Pakistan, leaving hundreds dead. In situations like this, the two countries should be setting aside animosity and acting like normal neighbours, helping each other with immediate relief.
India under the Prime Ministership of Narendra Modi