Editor’s note: This piece went to press on 6 May 2025, hours before India conducted several airstrikes on Pakistan, which Pakistan officials say killed more than two dozen people, including children. In the course of the strike, at least two Indian aircraft were reportedly downed by Pakistan. India’s strike follows a terrorist attack that killed 26 tourists in the India-administrated region of Kashmir on 22 April. Pakistan has denied responsibility for the attack. The following piece recounts the history of the conflict and why India’s choice of retaliation was not only a strategic one but a question of identity.
The killing of 26 tourists in Pahalgam, Kashmir, on 22 April is a forceful reminder that while the US-led global war on terror may have ended, regimes of terror have not. In a beautiful picnic spot, to which tourism had only recently returned, non-Muslim visitors were singled out before being shot to death by armed gunmen.
In official statements in the immediate aftermath of the attack, Pakistan, India’s hostile neighbour, denied any responsibility. Yet for many Indians, and especially the Indian government, this was seen as another bloody moment in a long history of violence from Pakistan.
India’s history of terrorist attacks has predated that of the West by decades, and it seems, with the attack in Kashmir, also outlasted it. For nearly 50 years third-party warfare with Pakistan, which has served as the nursery for terror combatants, has left an indelible mark on India. The formation of Bangladesh in 1971 transformed the region as the new nation broke away from Pakistan in what was effectively the rejection of the partition of India in 1947. Bangladesh’s liberation movement and eventual statehood were enabled by military support from India, which prompted Pakistan’s leader, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, to announce in 1972 that his official policy would from that point on be the bleeding of India “by a thousand cuts”.
With the rise of militant Islam in the 1980s, which coincided with the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, Pakistan’s military-led political establishment set in motion Bhutto’s mission. The partitioned state of Punjab faced a brutal insurgency and counterinsurgency for more than a decade that effectively stalled the once prosperous province of India. That pattern was immediately replicated in Kashmir. It was, however, the mass bombing of India’s financial capital, Mumbai, then known as Bombay, in 1993 that powerfully demonstrated that terror was not restricted to the border provinces alone.
In 2001 the West, too, became a victim of international terrorism with the 11 September attacks. As the subsequent global war on terror continued, India faced escalating attacks, targeting the country’s parliament, its financial capital and even the Institute of Science in Bangalore, each with devastating death tolls. After the 2008 bombing of Mumbai and the days-long siege in two luxury hotels and a synagogue, India showed notable restraint. The lack of retaliation under the liberal prime minister Manmohan Singh gave India a new international status as a peace-orientated rising power.
Since the recent terror attack in Kashmir, the din of war cries from establishment voices on either side of the India-Pakistan border has merged with those from social media agitators. At the time of writing, India is preparing its western border states, cities and villages with rehearsals for blackouts and air-raids. Soon after the attack, it suspended the shared water treaty on the Indus River in a bid to cut off this essential supply of water to Pakistan.
Yet a near consensus has emerged internationally that India, perhaps as the bigger nation, ought to de-escalate tensions. The UN Security Council’s statement issued immediately after the attack condemned the brutal violence, but stopped short of naming a perpetrator and urged: “Now is the time for maximum restraint and stepping back from the brink.” The European Union followed suit, pressing India’s external affairs minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, to de-escalate.
The international response to the Kashmir attack is frustrating for India’s political and diplomatic establishment. In recent years, India’s foreign policy, under the influence of Jaishankar, has been focused primarily beyond its bordering nations. India’s long-held credo of strategic autonomy has increasingly competed with its new doctrine of multilateralism – though the latter has involved a strong dose of transactionalism. Until now, this has ensured India managed to avoid picking sides in ongoing conflicts – most notably the war in Ukraine that is being waged by India’s long-standing ally, Russia. Meanwhile, India’s relations with the US have deepened, during both the Biden and Trump administrations. Narendra Modi was one of the first leaders to visit the White House after Trump’s re-election.
The West has generally viewed India as a welcome counterbalance to the growing influence of China. The significant scale of India’s population – it is both young and the largest in the world – and its potential as a new source for assembling and manufacturing goods have boosted its status as a rising power. New strategic alliances – particularly the Quad grouping of the US, Japan, Australia and India – suggest an emerging world order that is no longer adequately represented in the architecture of global governance, notably the UN, that has been primarily defined by the bygone era of the Cold War.
India has been more preoccupied with this global reordering than with its immediate neighbours, whether Pakistan, Sri Lanka or even Bangladesh. Though the two share a longer border, India has only fitfully engaged with China following a war in 1962 that left India humiliated and, more recently in 2020, an outbreak of combat in the Himalayas with both countries claiming control, but not victory. Recent relations with China have been, at best, frosty.
The recent terror attack in Kashmir has forced international attention back on to India’s volatile neighbourhood at a moment when, like many big economies, it is negotiating tariffs with the White House. Modi’s options are now limited. In the absence of international condemnation, India has been left to its own devices, which now threaten to become militaristic and war-like. Russia, in an unprecedented move, has allied with Pakistan, which in turn has strong ties with China. At home, Modi’s base is seeking revenge.
There are many in India’s influential strategic circles who now insist the country should mimic Israel’s war in Gaza and retaliate by launching a full-scale assault on Pakistan. Given the growing global appetite for war, whether it is in Ukraine, Gaza or Sudan, to say nothing of flashpoints such as Taiwan, the need for restraint is as great as it is fragile.
In the recent past, India’s global reputation has benefited from its refusal to engage in violent retaliation. Today, it is no longer clear whether a peace forged by restraint will be rewarded. The choice that now faces India is not only a strategic one but a question of identity. Whatever it decides, it will have global consequences.
Shruti Kapila is author of “Violent Fraternity: Indian Political Thought in the Global Age” (Princeton University Press)
[See also: The war to end all peace]
Content from our partners
Related
This article appears in the 07 May 2025 issue of the New Statesman, The Peace Delusion