Since its inception in August 1947, Pakistan’s foreign policy goals have been realising cordial ties with the Islamic world and peaceful relations with its immediate neighbours. However, the 1947-48 war over Jammu and Kashmir encouraged revisionist mindsets in policy terms in both India and Pakistan. Hence, the Liaquat-Nehru Pact (1950) and the Indus Waters Treaty (1960) which a neoliberal can view as evidence of mutual cooperation did not discursively neutralise political and policy antagonism that grew in the post-war period. Ironically, in the post-Indus Waters Treaty period, rather than engaging each other meaningfully in order to foster bilateral ties, the two sides initially tussled at Rann of Kutch and, later, fought another war in 1965. The war lasted for seventeen days. Interestingly, India did not cross into East Pakistan. Moreover, rationality prevailed on both sides in terms of signing a declaration to avoid use of force, and settle disputes through peaceful means in the future. However, the peace gestures largely remained limited to paper and, in reality, India and Pakistan fought another war in 1971 that caused the dismemberment of Pakistan.

After the 1971 debacle, the Bhutto government engaged India diplomatically whereby the two sides signed the Simla Agreement, thus, restoring diplomatic relations. Militarily, however, Pakistan seemed to have revisited its conventional military strategy, thus, paving the way for a clandestine nuclear programme to counter India militarily. Though the two sides did not fight another war in the 1970s, in the following decade the flare-up in Siachen (1984) and Brasstacks exercises (1987) attracted regional and global attention. However, owing to the so-called Cricket Diplomacy where President Ziaul Haq surprised the world by visiting India to watch a cricket match between Pakistan and India at Jaipur in February 1987 conflict management was done candidly.

A decade later, India and Pakistan fought another war in the summer of 1999. Paradoxically, the Kargil war occurred in the wake of the Lahore Declaration signed by the two countries earlier in the year.

The Kargil war also had implications for civil-military relations in Pakistan. Relations between the prime minister and the hief of army staff were deteriorated to the extent that the latter toppled the former’s government in a military coup in October 1999. In the post-coup period, Gen Musharraf travelled to India for the much-hyped Agra Summit in July 2001. There was an attempt to proceed innovatively in order to resolve the lingering issue of Jammu and Kashmir. However, Vajpayee and Musharraf could not overcome the embedded structures of mistrust in both the countries.

In the post-Musharraf period, the normalisation vibes of the Zardari-led government (2008-2013) were subdued in the wake of Mumbai attacks which took India and Pakistan to the brink of another war. However, nuclear deterrence prevailed over conventional war calculus, providing room for foreign powers such as the USA to diplomatically engage the two countries to shun war. Thus, despite pressure from the rightist media and some political parties for “surgical” strikes against Pakistan, the Indian government acted rationally and, the Delhi-Lahore Bus Service resumed. The bus service and a relaxed visa regime had been a confidence-building measure (CBM) taken by the two countries in the wake of the Agra Summit. A bit of bilateral trade was witnessed, too, at the Waghah-Attari border.

Following the 2013 general elections in Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif assumed the office of prime minster for the third time. The prime minister’s younger brother, Shahbaz Sharif, the Punjab chief minister, visited India to watch a kabbadi tournament final between Pakistan and Indian teams in December 2013. A year later, Nawaz Sharif attended the oath-taking ceremony of Narendra Modi whose BJP had defeated the Congress by a huge margin.

Currently, the bilateral relations are at their lowest ebb. There is little bilateral trade happening via Wagha-Attari. Bilateral diplomatic presence is being maintained symbolically.

In domestic politics, Modi’s lead supporter, the RSS, had projected the Indian National Congress as a pro-Muslim party. Operationally, thus, the Indian Muslims were otherised not just electorally but also socio-religiously. In this respect, bitter memories and past grievances grounded in partition and beyond, i.e., the Muslim rule in India, are consistently invoked by the BJP-RSS in order to organizationally and socially expand its outreach to other constituencies in the width and breadth of India. This strategy is paying off; the BJP’s most recent win in UP and other states is a case in point.

Sharif’s India policy was considered problematic on two counts: one, he was now dealing with Modi the populist, not Vajpayee, the poet. The regional and global environment too had changed. Two, the military’s mindset on both sides was hostile to a bilateral opening up. Acting on the RSS script, Modi soon started getting tough with Pakistan. Firing by the two countries’ armies across the Line of Control (LoC) and the Working Boundary became routine with attendant casualties. During his visit to Bangladesh in June 2015, Modi boasted of India’s role in Pakistan’s dismemberment in 1971. The same year, he spoke against China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). In addition, as a counterweight to Pakistan, the Modi government supported the Ghani-Abdullah dispensation in Afghanistan diplomatically and financially. The Taliban takeover in August 2021, has since thwarted the Indian efforts to expand its influence in Afghanistan to Pakistan’s detriment.

In 2016, the Modi government claimed to have carried out a ‘surgical strike’ inside Azad Jammu and Kashmir. However, Pakistan denied such an intrusion. The same year, bilateralrelations deteriorated further in the context of the arrest in Balochistan of an Indian spy, KulbhushanYadhav. Two years later, Indian Air Force violated Pakistan’s airspace. Two of Indian aircraft were shot down in February 2019 and a pilot was captured. He was later handed over to Indian authorities as a gesture of goodwill. A few months later, India unilaterally revoked Articles 370 and 35A of its constitution, thus, incorporating Jammu and Kashmir into Indian Union and removing J&K’s ‘special status’. Pakistan has been highlighting Indian unilateralism diplomatically.

Currently, the bilateral relations are at their lowest ebb. There is little bilateral trade happening via Wagha-Attari. Bilateral diplomatic presence is being maintained symbolically. The high commissioners are called in, on an almost regular basis, on both sides to appraise on critical matters. As far as regional cooperation is concerned, the SAARC meetings have been fruitless. The two countries have been trying to counter each other’s influence in Afghanistan. Pakistan has hosted another session of the OIC to discuss at length the situation in Afghanistan. India, for its part, is engaging the Central Asian states to form a sub-regional bloc as a counterweight to Pakistan. Militarily, each side is busy modernising its weapon systems. India is getting military hardware from both the USA and Russia. Pakistan is increasingly relying on Chinese military technology and hardware. The Military Balance 2022 has documented such trends in India and Pakistan quite comprehensibly.

India and Pakistan appear to be treading the path set 75 years ago. There is clear path dependency in terms of mutual misgivings, political foul play, bureaucratic binaries and societal disconnects on both sides of the boarder. Importantly, these factors and forces have been, discursively and operationally, embedded into the very structure of states and societies not only in sub-continent but also in other parts of South Asia, to the extent that any meaningful change, for example, in bilateral relations is hard to imagine. What is easier to expect is bigotry, derailment and war-mongering. The other day, an Indian missile landed into Pakistani territory. No loss of life was reported. It maybe a small event that can have a big impact militarily since the two states mistrust each other and view each other in conflictual terms. It is in the interest of both India and Pakistan to carry on with the established hotline in order to report such matters immediately and address related concerns objectively. The world is already witnessing a war in Ukraine; it cannot afford to see another one between two nuclear powers.

The writer has a PhD in political science from   Heidelberg University and a post-doc from   UC-Berkeley. He is a DAAD, FDDI and   Fulbright   fellow.Currently, he is an  associate professor at the Department of Social   Sciences, Iqra University, Islamabad. He tweets @ejazbhatty