India and Pakistan: Two nations, unlike trajectories

Pakistan experts differ on whether it is caught in its current trajectory because of erring individuals or as a result of the process of its birth

There have been four officially confirmed rounds of military attacks, two each by India and Pakistan, into each other’s territory — beginning with India’s strikes on Pakistani terrorist camps in the early hours of May 7 in response to the April 22 terror attack in Pahalgam, Kashmir. Given India’s declaration that it will respond to any attack on its military installations by Pakistan, the cycle could continue. Whether or not it grows into a full-blown military conflict, even without the nuclear angle coming into play, is a question best left unanswered at the moment, without prejudice to either of the possibilities. This disclaimer notwithstanding, there is merit in looking at some key contours of the non-military stakeholders in the two countries that have played a role in shaping the larger mood and psyche in these two countries, which is manifested in the ongoing conflict.  

India’s armed forces are doing what the political establishment, on the cue of almost unanimous and strong popular sentiment, wants them to do (PTI)

Pakistan’s use of terror as an asymmetric war on India is not something new. The approach gained prominence in Kashmir in the 1990s, but dates back further in time, and has occurred in different places. For example, Avinash Paliwal’s 2024 book India’s Near East: A New History documents Pakistan’s support to Naga and Mizo insurgent groups in the 1960s. However, events in the last two decades, beginning with a series of terror attacks in many Indian cities outside Kashmir, and ending in the November 2008 attack in Mumbai created a new kind of popular discontent in India, which resented the lack of a visibly strong response by the (relatively stronger) Indian State to this asymmetric war. 

The BJP, especially under Narendra Modi, exploited this popular anger to garner political support against the Congress. Therefore, when the next round of attacks on military installations took place during the tenure of the Modi government — first in Uri in 2016 and then in Pulwama in 2019 — India launched military attacks inside Pakistani territory to avenge these. The BJP celebrated these actions as politics facilitating strategic prowess. Their utility as deterrent against future attacks notwithstanding, the decision to do so, also made a similar response to future terror attacks the norm for India, not just strategically but also politically. India’s response to Pahalgam — there was complete political and popular unanimity asking for a military response — has only increased the intensity and support of the response, not its nature.  

This is exactly what differentiates India from Pakistan in the current environment. India’s armed forces are only doing what the political establishment, on the cue of almost unanimous and strong popular sentiment, wants them to do. 

On the other hand, it is extremely likely that the Pakistani military top brass’s designs to seek conflict with India are dragging their economically and socially besieged country into an escalatory cycle with India without popular backing. To be sure, experts on Pakistan’s history and politics differ on whether the country is caught in this trajectory because of some person’s actions — political scientist Ayesha Siddiqa’s piece in the Financial Times squarely blames the “bellicose” army chief Asim Munir — or the inevitable result of the process through which Pakistan came into being as a country. Historian Venkat Dhulipala’s piece in the Indian Express, for example, emphasises Munir’s statement describing Pakistan as being only the “second nation-State in history based on the kalima (core Islamic tenets), the first one being Medina, set up by Prophet Muhammad” as a reiteration of Pakistan’s fundamental identity as an Islamic pole of the two-nation theory and suggests (although not explicitly) a permanent adversarial relation between India and Pakistan, irrespective of the changing political or military dynamics in the latter. 

What is (rightly) worrying most of the commentariat that is otherwise supportive of India in its stance against terrorism and even willing to endorse India’s right to take retaliatory action within Pakistani territory are the economic implications of such a confrontation escalating significantly. For example, the May 7 Financial Times editorial was pretty candid in distinguishing between the economic stakes for India and Pakistan should things escalate.  “For India, any conflict would be a severe setback on its path to being one of the world’s leading economic powerhouses. For Pakistan, after years of turmoil, it would derail an incipient recovery; its finance minister was in London on Wednesday to pitch to investors”, it said.  

One can hope that an escalation is averted by strategic calculations supported by favourable optics for the political and security establishments of India-Pakistan or mediated by a major international power such as the US. It is also important to acknowledge that neither country is likely to see a popular democratic opposition against further escalation. 

In Pakistan, the “popular”, whether or not it has been disenfranchised by the military, is a prisoner of its historical creation as an Islamic other to Hindu India. In India, the “popular” is frustrated with the psychological pain the asymmetric war in the form of terror attacks has inflicted, notwithstanding its negligible strategic impact. Capital in Pakistan is likely subservient to the military given the narrow pool of elites the two institutions draw from, and capital in India cannot even imagine to describe popular sentiment for action against Pakistan’s asymmetric war as economically counter-productive.  

To say this is not to endorse wars or spread cynicism but to argue that the rational and the “popular” do not always align in the real world. This is also why politics is best described as the art of the possible. A politician must do what is necessary to preserve his political hegemony, but he will only be considered a statesman by history if this game doesn’t jeopardise or harm the prosperity of the society at large.