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India-Pakistan Relations
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PART viii
Bilateral Issues
BK-SAGE-INOGUCHI_V1-190110-Chp48.indd 1019 11/1/19 12:34 PM

48
India–Pakistan Relations
Rohan Mukherjee
Introduction
The India–Pakistan relationship remains one of the most fraught bilateral rivalries
in the contemporary international system. Since 1947, both countries have engaged
in numerous military conflicts and sought to diplomatically outmaneuver each other
in international forums. Armed with nuclear weapons and increasingly sophisti-
cated delivery systems since the late 1990s, both countries have engaged in conflict
behavior at multiple levels ranging from nuclear threats to conventional war and
sub-conventional tactics such as terrorism. To complicate matters, extra-regional
great powers such as the United States, the Soviet Union (during the Cold War), and
China have consistently been involved in the politics of India–Pakistan relations.
While some potential solutions to the rivalry have periodically been tabled, suffi-
cient numbers of spoilers exist on both sides to obviate any possible compromise or
détente. If handled improperly, India–Pakistan relations can have considerably
adverse impacts on stability in Asia and on the global order more broadly.
This chapter provides an overview of the relationship in three parts. First, it
examines the historical roots of the India–Pakistan rivalry, which include identity-
based differences, territorial conflict, external great-power involvement, and domes-
tic politics within both countries. Second, it studies the contemporary dynamics of
the relationship in terms of economic capabilities, military capabilities, and societal
perceptions. Finally, by way of conclusion, it assesses the future trajectory of the
relationship based on contemporary trends. In particular, it asks what conditions
would need to hold in order for peace to break out between India and Pakistan.

1022 The SAGE Handbook of Asian Foreign Policy
The Historical Roots of Rivalry
The causes of the India–Pakistan rivalry can be broadly grouped into four cate-
gories: identity (and ideology), territory, geopolitics, and domestic politics. The
first two causes form the bedrock of the rivalry, while the latter two have ebbed
and flowed in their respective effects, sometimes dampening and sometimes
accentuating the divisions between both countries.
Identity and Ideology

At the base of the India–Pakistan rivalry lies an identity-based ideological con-
struct rooted in the 1930s, while India was still under British colonial rule (and
Pakistan did not yet exist).1 The ‘two-nation theory’, as it was called by its pro-
genitors, argued that religion was the primary basis for nationhood and that
South Asia’s Muslims and Hindus were essentially two different nations living
in one territory. Linguistic and ethnic commonalities between Hindus and
Muslims who had lived together for hundreds of years were viewed as secondary
to this religion-based conception of nationhood. Politically, this ideology found
expression in the stance of the Muslim League, a political party in British India.
Its leaders such as Muhammad Iqbal and Muhammad Ali Jinnah feared that an
independent India under the Hindu-dominated Indian National Congress – the
leading organization in India’s struggle for freedom, led by the likes of Mohandas
Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru – would be inimical to Muslim interests. Their fear
was not religious in the sense of protecting the values and institutions of Islam,
but rather with regard to how social relations would be ordered between Muslims
and non-Muslims in post-independence India. It was ‘a minority community’s
discourse of power’.2 Christophe Jaffrelot argues that the Muslim League
‘openly used Islam’ to legitimate such a discourse.3 In response to the League’s
claims, the Congress emphasized its ideology of civic nationalism, which was
grounded in secularism, with Gandhi saying, ‘To me, Hindus, Muslims, Parsis,
Harijans, are all alike.’4
As the League’s political clout grew among Indian Muslims, the demand for
a separate state for India’s Muslims, first articulated in 1930, became a rally-
ing point. In the League’s Lahore Session of 1940, Jinnah (today considered the
father of Pakistan) famously laid down the central principle of the two-nation
theory. He argued that Islam and Hinduism ‘are not religions in the strict sense
of the word, but are, in fact, different and distinct social orders; and it is a dream
that the Hindus and Muslims can ever evolve a common nationality’.5 The theory
was essentially a religiously grounded ideology in which Jinnah sought legiti-
macy among British India’s Muslims. This ideology resonated with the personal
beliefs of many Muslims but, significantly, not all. Bengali Muslims, for example,
held ethnicity to be as valid an organizing principle as religion. Their reluctant

India–Pakistan Relations 1023
acceptance of Jinnah’s plans would have serious consequences later, in the shape
of East Pakistan’s secession (in 1971) and the creation of Bangladesh.
Muslim leaders in British India thus advocated for the creation of a separate
territorial state – Pakistan – for Indian Muslims. The British government further
complicated matters by consciously exacerbating differences between Hindus
and Muslims in areas such as recruitment for government employment and the
creation of separate electoral constituencies for Muslims.6 The Hindu-dominated
mainstream anti-colonial movement of the Indian National Congress was ini-
tially recalcitrant in the face of Jinnah and his colleague’s demands, thus further
convincing the latter that an independent India would be detrimental to the inter-
ests of South Asia’s Muslims.
All these factors combined to produce the bloodiest period in the history of
India and Pakistan, and one of the largest and most rapid migrations in human
history.7 In what came to be called the Partition of British India, approximately
14.5 million Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs moved across the newly formed borders –
Muslims migrated to Pakistan, Hindus to India, and Sikhs were divided between
Pakistani Punjab and Indian Punjab – amidst widespread rioting, killing, and
looting. The context was the creation of the state of Pakistan, its Western and
Eastern regions geographically separated by another newly created state: India.
Indian leaders roundly rejected the two-nation theory while Pakistani leaders
embraced it, thus sowing the seed of further discord, particularly on the emerging
territorial crisis in Kashmir.
Territory
Today the India–Pakistan conflict has been classified as an ‘enduring rivalry’,
which is defined as a conflict that lasts ‘more than two decades with several mili-
tarized inter-state disputes punctuating the relationship in between’.8 Although
ideology – grounded in religious identity – can explain the roots of Partition to
a great extent, it does not ipso facto explain the persistence of hostilities between
India and Pakistan, particularly when one considers the highly asymmetric
nature of the conflict.9 Although India is by all traditional measures more power-
ful than Pakistan, the latter has gone to great lengths to balance against India by
involving external major powers (mainly the United States and China) and main-
taining an inordinately high defense budget as well as a nuclear arsenal. It is
widely acknowledged that the Kashmir issue is what drives Pakistan’s stance in
this regard, and an understanding of the ideological dimensions of this issue can
explain to some extent the persistence of conflict.
Mridu Rai’s discussion of Kashmir’s history illuminates the problem. She
traces the origins of conflict back to 1846, when the British, in an attempt to
consolidate their hold over the region, installed ‘an “alien” Dogra Hindu ruling
house over Kashmir without consideration for the wishes or interests of the vast
majority of its people’.10 The Dogras came from outside Kashmir and ruled over

a population that was 95 percent Muslim. In order to secure their legitimacy,

they undertook two policies. First, with British support, they removed traditional
Muslim power-holders from local levels. Second, they emphasized their histori-
cal links to the Hindu Rajputs, ‘India’s most ancient sovereigns’.11 As a result,
religion became the basis of state patronage and the Dogra ‘patterns of legiti-
mation … allowed the Hindus of Kashmir [i.e. Kashmiri Pandits, constituting
5 percent of the population] to exclude Muslims in the contest for the symbolic,
political and economic resources of the state’.12
Kashmir’s Muslims began to loathe the religious basis of legitimacy in Kashmir.
A movement arose in ideological opposition to Dogra rule and as the conflict
grew entrenched, religion became its primary axis. As early as 1931, a group of
Muslims attacked Hindus in Srinagar. Soon after, the Kashmiri Pandits began
to feel their numerical minority and reached out to Hindus in the rest of British
India (where they were a majority), thus expanding the scope of the conflict. At
the time of Partition in 1947, Kashmir was envisaged by the Muslim League to be
a part of ‘Pakistan’ (the vital ‘K’ in the acronym created from the colonial prov-
inces of Punjab, Afghania (the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP)), Kashmir,
Sindh, and Balochistan). However, Kashmir’s Hindu ruler Maharaja Hari Singh,
after dallying with the idea of independence, acceded to India under the pressure
of a tribal invasion from the NWFP, followed by irregular Pakistani forces. The
result was a war between India and Pakistan. India’s prime minister, Jawaharlal
Nehru, approached the United Nations Security Council in 1948, which called
for a referendum in Kashmir to decide its fate. The referendum – predicated on a
Pakistani troop withdrawal that never occurred – remains unfulfilled, and today
what used to be the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir is de facto divided
between India and Pakistan, with a sizeable additional tract of land (the Aksai
Chin plateau) under dispute between India and China.
Kashmir remains the crux of the India–Pakistan rivalry because it stands as a
crucial test of the respective states’ claims to legitimacy, which are both grounded
in religious identity (or the eschewal thereof). The incorporation of Kashmir is
vital for Pakistan, which was founded on the very notion that the Muslims of
South Asia can only be secure in a state of their own. As a Muslim-majority
region in a Hindu-majority state, Kashmir stands in stark contradiction to the
two-nation theory, and is hence viewed by Pakistan as unfinished business from
Partition. In the words of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, ‘If a Muslim majority can remain
a party of India, the raison d’etre of Pakistan collapses … Pakistan is incomplete
without Jammu and Kashmir both territorially and ideologically.’13
India, for the same reason, cannot but retain Jammu and Kashmir as an
integral part of its territory. The Indian state was formed on the basis of a
secularist identity, which was seen as the only way of coping with the multi-
ethnic and multi-religious nature of Indian society. The Constitution of India,
in its Preamble, proclaims India to be (among other things) a secular demo-
cratic republic.14 Kashmir therefore stands as an important emblem of India’s

secularist credentials. During the crisis of 1947–48 Nehru repeatedly argued

that ‘in Kashmir there is no communal issue as such’ and that it was a ‘national
issue’ for the Kashmiris, Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs who had joined together
to fight the invaders.15 Yet he also admitted that had the Pakistan-backed inva-
sion succeeded, ‘the results…on the communal and political situation all over
India would have been disastrous’.16 Thus while denying the importance of
religion in the Kashmir conflict, he was acutely aware of the communal (i.e.
religious) implications for India of the loss of Kashmir to Pakistan.
Geopolitics
While religious ideology and territorial conflict constitute the deep causes of the
India–Pakistan rivalry, one can find proximate causes in the geopolitical situation
that the two countries found themselves in immediately after independence, i.e.
at the beginning of the Cold War. Seeking to augment its military inferiority rela-
tive to India, Pakistan wasted little time in becoming a US ally. As early as 1952,
Islamabad was involved in the creation of the Middle East Defense Organization
(MEDO), a short-lived US-backed alliance that laid the groundwork for the 1955
Baghdad Pact. Pakistan’s eagerness to join the Western bloc resulted in a steady
stream of military aid from Washington to Islamabad from the mid 1950s
onward. Although US President Eisenhower had assured Nehru that these arms
would not be used against India, this promise rang hollow in 1965 when Pakistan
attacked India at the Rann of Kutch and in Kashmir, using US-supplied military
hardware.17
India for its part strove to remain non-aligned during the Cold War. In prin-
ciple, this was not a policy of neutrality but rather a ‘dynamic and positive’ policy
of pursuing India’s self-interest in a polarized world.18 According to Nehru, ‘Non-
alignment is freedom of action which is a part of independence … [however] its
application to a particular circumstance, or resolution, is a matter of judgment.’19
In practice, however, India’s judgment appeared to hew closer to the Soviet line,
leading to a growing rift between Delhi and Washington. In the words of one ana-
lyst, the United States viewed non-alignment as ‘little more than a sanctimonious
cloak for interests which contradicted those of the United States’.20 Events came
to a head over the East Pakistan crisis and Bangladesh War of 1971, which saw
the United States and China align with Pakistan against India, which in turn con-
cluded a defensive treaty of friendship with the Soviet Union. Given India’s own
fraught relations with China as well as the divisions between the Soviet Union
and China – which contributed to a United States–China rapprochement bro-
kered by Pakistan in the early 1970s – this period saw India and Pakistan firmly
entrenched on opposing sides of the wider Cold War geopolitical competition.
The subsequent Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s fur-
ther deepened US reliance on Pakistan as the proxy through which to undermine
Soviet designs. Although this reliance subsided with the end of the Cold War, it

was revived following the 9/11 terrorist attacks as Pakistan once again became a
frontline state in a global war prosecuted by the United States.
Data on arms transfers further highlight the role of geopolitics in the India–
Pakistan relationship.21 Between 1954 and 1964 – the period in which Pakistan
joined and deepened its involvement in the US alliance system – Washington
accounted for 71 percent of the total value of arms imported by Islamabad and
only 6 percent of arms imported by Delhi (whose largest supplier at this time was
the UK). The use of US-supplied equipment in Pakistan’s 1965 attack on India
led Washington to impose an arms embargo on South Asia, at which time China
stepped in as Pakistan’s major arms supplier. From 1965 to 1973, the year the
United States gradually began resuming military aid to Pakistan, China provided
59 percent of Pakistan’s arms imports and since then has outstripped all other
suppliers, accounting for 41 percent of Pakistan’s total arms imports from 1950
to 2018 (the United States is the next highest provider, at 23 percent). India for its
part initiated substantial defense imports from the Soviet Union in 1961, and over
the next three decades till the end of the Cold War, the Soviet Union accounted
for 71 percent of India’s arms imports. Since the end of the Cold War – due to
both equipment legacy reasons and positive bilateral relations – Russia has main-
tained this role, accounting for 67 percent of India’s total arms imports between
1991 and 2018.
The impact of geopolitics on India–Pakistan relations has been threefold. First,
external great powers – the United States and China – have made it possible for
Pakistan to overcome its considerable material asymmetry relative to India. Both
the United States and China have contributed substantially to Pakistan’s conven-
tional military capabilities, and China has also assisted Pakistan in becoming a
nuclear weapons state.22 On the Indian side, the Soviet Union and subsequently
Russia have helped Delhi grow and maintain its conventional military arsenal, while
India has mostly developed its nuclear arsenal indigenously, building on early civil-
ian nuclear assistance from Canada, the United States, and France.23 Second, and
relatedly, the proxy war in Afghanistan in the 1980s gave Pakistan access to and
control over large quantities of small arms and large numbers of trained mujahi-
din fighters, many of whom Islamabad redirected to the purpose of fomenting a
widespread militant insurgency in the Indian-administered Kashmir valley in the
1990s. The Indian response has relied overwhelmingly on military options that
carry significant collateral costs in terms of repression and human rights abuses
of the valley’s residents.24 Third, the China–Pakistan ‘all-weather friendship’ has
allowed Beijing to act as an offshore balancer against Indian power and influence in
South Asia and beyond.25 By building up Pakistan’s capabilities and providing dip-
lomatic cover for the Pakistani military and intelligence establishment’s promotion
of terrorism on Indian soil, China is able to sufficiently hobble India’s diplomatic
and power-projection capabilities. In two of the wars fought by India and Pakistan
prior to the development of nuclear weapons in the subcontinent – in 1965 and 1971
respectively – Beijing either explicitly threatened to open a second front with India,

or Indian decision-makers had to factor the likelihood of a second front into their
strategic calculations.26
It should be noted that geopolitics does not always have a negative impact
on India–Pakistan relations. The great powers have on occasion played impor-
tant roles as brokers and potential peacemakers. Examples include the US arms
embargo on India and Pakistan following the war of 1965, the Soviet role in host-
ing peace talks in Tashkent following the 1965 war, and the changed attitude in
both the United States and Chinese establishments toward the Kashmir conflict
following the end of the Cold War. While China appears to have taken a more
even-handed and distant approach to the conflict, frequently reiterating the lat-
ter’s strictly bilateral nature (a stance welcomed by India), the United States has
more actively acted as a broker at critical points such as the 1999 Kargil War,
the 2001 military standoff following a terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament,
and the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai.27 More recently, during the military
crisis that followed a major attack by Pakistan-sponsored terrorists at Pulwama
in Kashmir in February 2019, the United States applied considerable diplomatic
pressure behind the scenes to get Islamabad to back down in the aftermath of
an Indian retaliatory airstrike on a terrorist base in Pakistan.28 Despite these
bright spots, the impact of broader geopolitical factors has been mostly negative,
enabling the Pakistani military to mount a credible balancing strategy against
India’s dominant position in South Asia, thereby prolonging a rivalry that might
not have lasted as long under other circumstances.
Domestic Politics
Geopolitical factors might not have been as damaging were it not for domestic
political considerations on both sides – but especially in Pakistan – that militate
against peaceful solutions to the India–Pakistan rivalry. Given that an existential
difference in religious identity lies at the heart of the conflict, the growth of
religious identity politics in both countries has made peace more elusive. The
ideological sources of government legitimacy in Pakistan and India have over the
years tended to greater religiosity. Pakistan has evolved from a state for Muslims
to an Islamic state, while India’s secular nationalism appears to be declining in
the face of religious polarization and the consequent rise of Hindu nationalism.
In both countries, religious identity has gradually occupied center-stage
in national politics and debates over national identity. In Pakistan, following
Jinnah’s secularist notions of a Pakistan for Muslims and non-Muslims alike,
General Ayub Khan had argued strongly in favor of Islam being a ‘dynamic and
progressive movement’ that had over time been bogged down in dogma by atavis-
tic followers of the faith.29 Zulfikar Ali Bhutto himself was secular and progres-
sive, if strongly nationalist. Following Bhutto, however, General Zia-ul-Haq’s
regime (1978–1988) initiated the ‘Islamization’ of Pakistan, with an alliance
between Islamist parties and the military providing legitimacy to the General’s

dictatorship.30 Post-Zia, although the political parties led by Nawaz Sharif and
Benazir Bhutto strove to provide democratic alternatives to the Pakistani people,
they too (particularly Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party) built alliances with Islamist
forces in Pakistani politics. Ultimately, the rise of the Taliban after 1994 as a potent
fundamentalist force in neighboring Afghanistan and the Pakistani military’s con-
tinued antagonism toward democratic political parties helped preserve the mili-
tary’s alliance with Islamist parties, despite the subsequent military regime under
Pervez Musharraf (2001–08) harkening back to a post-independence style of secu-
larist Islamic rule. The military’s alliance with religious fundamentalists has been
instrumental not just in domestic politics, but also internationally, ‘opening up
new foreign policy possibilities … to deal with developments in Afghanistan and
Kashmir’.31 Since 1989, Pakistan has exploited growing disaffection with Indian
rule among Kashmiri Muslims by providing ideological and material support to
various insurgent groups in Kashmir for a jihad against India.32 In 2002, largely
due to a tacit alliance with the military against the Pakistan Muslim League
(Nawaz) (PML-N) and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), a grand coalition of Islamist
parties – the Mutahhidah Majlis Amal (MMA) – won 11 percent of the seats in
Pakistan’s National Assembly. Although the vote share of such parties has deterio-
rated since then, the presence of fundamentalist forces in Pakistani society and the
military’s recourse to religion as a source of legitimacy remain major obstacles to
the possible emergence of more moderate policies toward India.
In India, religious majoritarianism had existed on the political fringes since the
1920s, when Vinayak Damodar Savarkar coined the term Hindutva (‘Hinduness’).
With its string of national electoral victories in the late 1990s and clear majorities
in the national elections of 2014 and 2019, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – the
only credibly national party in India today – and the network of Hindu organiza-
tions it is affiliated with, collectively known as the Sangh Parivar (‘Family of
Associations’), have brought Savarkar’s Hindutva into the political mainstream.
Of Muslims and Christians, Savarkar wrote in 1923:
For though Hindusthan is to them a Fatherland as to any other Hindu, yet it is not to them
a Holyland too. Their Holyland is far off in Arabia or Palestine. Their mythology and Godmen,
ideas and heroes are not the children of this soil. Consequently their names and their outlook
smack of a foreign origin. Their love is divided.33
Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, another progenitor of the movement and head of

the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) from 1940 till 1973, suggested, ‘all
that is expected of our Muslim and Christian co-citizens is the shedding of the
notions of their being “religious minorities” as also their foreign mental com-
plexion and merging themselves in the common national stream of this soil.’34
His 1966 work, Bunch of Thoughts, contains a chapter titled ‘Internal Threats’
that is devoted to the discussion of Muslims, Christians, and Communists.
The BJP’s path to political power is scattered with various incidents of orga-
nized violence against people and symbols of non-Hindu culture, the most

prominent being the destruction of the Babri mosque at Ayodhya in 1992 by

masses of BJP-led volunteers, followed by the anti-Muslim pogroms in Gujarat in
2002 under the watch of a BJP-led state government. The party has traditionally
taken a strong stand on Kashmir, stretching back to Syama Prasad Mookerjee,
the founder of the BJP’s political predecessor the Jana Sangh, who said in 1952
of the Pakistani invasion of Kashmir, ‘It is a matter for national humiliation …
a part of India is today in the occupation of the enemy and we are peace-lovers,
no doubt. But peace-lovers to what extent?’35 While mainstream political parties
in India have been steadfast in their defense of India’s sovereignty claims over
Kashmir, the religious nationalism underlying the worldview of the BJP and its
political base renders any potential efforts at negotiation and compromise with
Pakistan a fraught and complex exercise.36
Some scholars suggest that religious identity has declined in salience relative
to ‘the imperatives of statecraft’ in the India–Pakistan conflict over Kashmir.37
However, such an argument misses the essence of the overall conflict, which
is rooted in opposing ideas of the role of religion as a legitimating ideology of
nationhood and the state. As long as legitimacy derives from religious identity –
be it related to Islam, Hinduism, or secularism (which in India means state
involvement in all religious life rather than the separation of religion and the
state) – there is every chance that private beliefs will have social externalities and
political ideologies will tend to demonize and vilify the religious ‘other’. The
growth of Hindutva in India and Islamic fundamentalism in Pakistan – while by
no means equivalent phenomena – has engendered a more intransigent mode of
politics that risks polarizing religious groups and rapidly escalating conflict situ-
ations. The recourse to religion as a legitimating instrument in domestic politics
thus is an important obstacle to any resolution of the Kashmir conflict.
Aside from identity politics, another major feature of domestic politics –
regime type – has played an important role in both India and Pakistan. India’s
democracy and Pakistan’s quasi-democracy have in some sense balanced against
each other in maintaining the delicate strategic equilibrium of South Asia. As is
well known, Pakistan has been subject to long periods of military dictatorship,
and even when not officially in power the military remains a dominant force
in politics and society.38 A 2011 Gallup poll found that 86 percent of Pakistani
respondents expressed confidence in their country’s military, compared to
56 percent for the judicial system and 28 percent for the national government.39
India on the other hand has remained democratic with the civilian leadership and
defense bureaucracy firmly in control of the military.40 As a result of the mili-
tary’s dominance in Pakistani politics and society, India–Pakistan relations have
been characterized by repeated instances of Pakistani military adventurism, while
India for various reasons has reacted with restraint. Recent research shows that
Pakistan under civilian rule has initiated more conflicts with India than Pakistan
under military rule, suggesting that Pakistani military leaders are more adventur-
ous in moments when they are not directly accountable to the public.41 For their

part, Indian leaders through the decades – including Nehru in 1948, Lal Bahadur
Shastri at Tashkent in 1965, Indira Gandhi at Simla in 1972, and Manmohan
Singh in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks of 2008 – have repeatedly sought
to restore the status quo after every Pakistani attempt to overthrow it. Similarly,
the so-called surgical strikes by the Indian military on terrorist camps across
the Line of Control in Kashmir in September 2016 did not qualify as a major
military response to Pakistani provocation (in the form of a terrorist attack on
an army base at Uri in Jammu and Kashmir). Available sources suggest that the
operation was finely calibrated to avoid escalation,42 and the Indian government’s
decision not to release any conclusive proof of the strike allowed Islamabad to
save face domestically by denying that it had actually taken place. An exception
to this trend occurred in February 2019, when the Indian government launched
airstrikes against a terrorist training site in Pakistan in response to a major ter-
rorist attack on paramilitary personnel in Indian-administered Kashmir claimed
by the Pakistan-backed group Jaish-e-Mohammed.43 This was the first time that
the Indian air force had struck targets inside Pakistan since the Bangladesh War
of 1971. Nonetheless, India’s use of force in this instance also followed the pat-
tern of the 2016 surgical strikes – the airstrike was calibrated to avoid hitting any
civilian or military targets, and New Delhi declined to publicly provide proof,
thus allowing Islamabad to claim that the Indian air force had missed its target.
While one might expect a democratic polity to be more fractious and unco-
ordinated than an authoritarian polity in its policy toward a rival state, India
has exhibited a more consistent and unitary approach toward Pakistan than the
latter – despite frequently being under unitary leadership – has exhibited toward
India. Pakistan has historically struggled to speak with one voice or to negoti-
ate as a unitary actor with India, particularly because the actions of the former’s
military and intelligence establishments tend to frequently undercut the claims
and promises of its civilian leadership. Given that both militaries descended from
the same organization – the colonial military of British India – the inordinate
influence of the Pakistani military can be explained by at least three factors. First,
India’s first prime minister, Nehru, was returned to power three times, allow-
ing him an unbroken period of rule from 1947 till his death in 1964. While the
specifics of Nehru’s rule can be debated, there is little doubt that India benefited
from this institutional continuity through democratic means under a towering
figure of the Indian nationalist movement. By contrast, Jinnah’s death (due to
illness) in 1948 deprived Pakistan of a single foundational figure who could unite
different factions and maintain political unity in the early stages of nation and
state building. In the event, political instability in Pakistan – especially in the
years following the assassination of its first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan –
opened the door to military rule. Second, and relatedly, Nehru was dogged by
the fear of a military coup in India and took steps to preclude such an outcome.44
By interfering decisively in matters of recruitment, promotion, and leadership
selection, Nehru and his colleagues ensured that the military would not play an

outsized role in India’s democracy. By contrast, in Pakistan the military itself

became the guardian of democracy and nationhood, a trend that was exacerbated
by Pakistan’s comparatively more precarious geo-strategic position relative not
just to India but also to Afghanistan. Finally, the pattern of US financial assis-
tance to India and Pakistan impacted the relative power of the military versus
other actors in both societies. Viewed comparatively as US aid recipients, India
received far more economic aid and Pakistan received far more military aid.
Barring two periods of approximately six years each – after the Bangladesh War,
and during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan – publicly reported US aid to
India for economic development was roughly double that of similarly intended
aid to Pakistan.45 Conversely (as discussed above), with the exception of the
1963–66 period, i.e. immediately after the Sino-Indian War, US military aid to
Pakistan was consistently and substantially greater than US military aid to India.46
Pakistan’s status as a military ally of the United States served to strengthen the
position of the military domestically to the detriment of democratic institutions.
India’s status as a non-aligned recipient of US development aid, combined with
the other factors detailed above, helped India avoid a similar fate.
Contemporary Dynamics
The India–Pakistan rivalry was born out of an identity-based conflict that found
territorial expression over the status of Kashmir. As argued by Monica Duffy
Toft, territorial conflicts are especially intractable because ‘territory is a sine qua
non of the state and can be an irreducible component of ethnic group identity’.47
In this sense, Kashmir occupies a special place in dominant Indian and Pakistani
self-conceptions, making it virtually impossible to forge compromises that might
involve territorial division. Added to the deep causes of identity and territorial
conflict are more proximate factors such as the global politics of great-power
competition, as well as domestic political developments within both countries.
Based on the analysis thus far, this section examines the current state of India–
Pakistan relations along three lines: economic capabilities, military capabilities,
and societal perceptions.
Economic Capabilities
A robust economy experiencing steady growth offers the ideal foundations on
which to build long-term grand strategy predicated on increasing hard power
capabilities and diplomatic leverage in the world’s capitals. Given these strategic
incentives, the relative economic performance of India and Pakistan remains a
salient variable in the India–Pakistan rivalry. The data show that India has done
better on this front than Pakistan. Starting with a ‘pro-business drift’ in the
1980s48 followed by liberalization and deregulation in the early 1990s, the Indian

economy has been growing at a rapid clip for over two decades. Between 1991
and 2015, India’s GDP grew at an average annual rate of 6.8 percent, compared
to 4 percent for Pakistan.49 More tellingly, after over three decades of lagging
behind, India’s per capita GDP overtook Pakistan’s in 2009 and the gap has
steadily widened since then.50 The magnitude of this economic transition comes
into focus if we factor in India’s population size of 1.25 billion compared to
Pakistan’s 182 million.51 India’s economy today is almost eight times the size of
Pakistan’s, although its relative size has been larger in the past (going up to more
than an order of magnitude in the early 1960s, for example).52 In terms of the
resources that both countries commit to their respective defenses, Pakistan’s
military expenditure of 3.6 percent of GDP is significantly higher than India’s
2.4 percent, though in absolute terms the Indian defense budget is six times
larger.53 The relative balance of economic capabilities suggests that India has
gradually pulled ahead of Pakistan over the last decade. The impact of this dif-
ference can be seen in military expenditure trends as well. Between 1991 and
2016, India’s military expenditure increased at a compounded annual rate of 4.4
percent, whereas Pakistan’s expenditure increased at 2.5 percent.54 This gap has
narrowed, however, over the last decade, in which the corresponding figures are
3.7 percent and 3.1 percent respectively.55
Pakistan’s relative economic weakness might be compensated for by the
scale of investment involved in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC),
stretching north–south from Kashgar in Xinjiang to Gwadar in Pakistan. An infra-
structure mega project currently worth US$46 billion,56 Chinese companies will
build a network of highways, railways, and pipelines in Pakistan over a period of
15 years, while also overhauling existing infrastructure such as the Karakoram
Highway.57 A major focus of the CPEC is Pakistan’s energy infrastructure, with
Chinese investments pouring into sectors ranging from coal to renewable energy.
Although Pakistan stands to gain substantially from this investment, the latter
has also raised concerns about a potential loss of autonomy for Pakistan as it
more firmly enters China’s economic orbit.58 Moreover, any gains Pakistan might
make from the CPEC will be at least partially offset by the considerable increase
of Japanese investment in India – mostly in infrastructure projects as well – in
the near term. In late 2014, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pledged infrastructure
investments in India worth US$35 billion over five years.59 Since then, much of
this investment has been realized in the energy and manufacturing sectors.
India’s growing economic might suggests the potential for fostering economic
interdependence between India and Pakistan as a way of raising fortunes on both
sides of the border and thereby finding a way out of the conflict spiral in which
both countries periodically find themselves. However, it would appear that the
deep and longstanding sources of conflict between the two countries have been
hostile to the emergence of a meaningful economic relationship. As might be
expected, India–Pakistan economic relations are negligible. Pakistan accounts
for 0.3 percent of India’s total trade, while India accounts for 2.9 percent of

Pakistan’s total trade.60 Although South Asia is one of the most poorly integrated
economic regions in the world,61 this low level of India–Pakistan economic
engagement stands in sharp contrast to India’s substantial trading relationships
with Nepal, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka. As far as economic interdependence goes, the
composition of trade between India and Pakistan reveals a basket of goods that is
easily substitutable by either side. India’s top exports to Pakistan include cotton,
organic chemicals, plastics, fibers, and vegetables.62 Pakistan’s top exports to
India include mineral fuels and oils, fruits and nuts, salt, and cotton.63 Given that
the goods crossing the border in both directions are mostly low-value primary
goods, alternative sources of supply would be readily available in the event of a
bilateral conflict. Thus, in the aftermath of the Uri terrorist attack of September
2016, even though India publicly mulled trade sanctions and economic penalties,
the general consensus in Delhi was that India did not possess significant eco-
nomic levers with which to punish Pakistan.64 The lack of significant trade ties
creates little incentive for peace and also does not provide any instruments with
which one side might coerce the other in a conflict.
Military Capabilities
On paper, India’s military capabilities appear formidable compared to Pakistan’s.
In addition to having a military budget that is six times larger, India has 1.3 mil-
lion active personnel in its military compared to Pakistan’s 644,000.65 However,
in many respects, the two militaries are quite evenly matched. In terms of missiles,
for example, India possesses 54 strategic missiles (most of which are short-range
ballistic missiles, though India is in the process of testing and inducting intermedi-
ate and intercontinental ranges of ballistic missiles), whereas Pakistan possesses
more than 60 strategic missiles, entirely in the medium and short ranges.66
Although India’s 881 combat aircraft significantly outnumber Pakistan’s 450 air-
craft,67 Pakistan has worked hard to close this gap.68 Military planners on both
sides are still prepared for a mostly ground-based war, in which case Pakistan’s
2,561 main battle tanks are likely to be a sufficient match for India’s 2,974 tanks,69
especially given that 15 of the 18 divisions of the Indian army stationed near the
border with Pakistan are infantry divisions (armored divisions are located in cen-
tral India), i.e. intended to defend and hold territory rather than attack or project
force.70 More importantly, whereas Pakistan is relatively unconstrained in its abil-
ity to deploy forces in a manner oriented toward an Indian threat, India is con-
strained by its shared borders with both Pakistan and China to deploy only
approximately half its ground combat forces on the border with Pakistan.71
Naval power is the one domain in which India’s capabilities considerably exceed
Pakistan’s. With 28 principal surface combatants (aircraft carriers, destroyers, and
frigates) and 14 tactical submarines, India is well ahead of Pakistan’s 10 frigates
and 8 tactical submarines.72 However, while sea-based missions might form a
part of a broader conflict, they are unlikely to be at the core of the fight – since

1947, every India–Pakistan conflict has taken place over land, which is why both
countries devote the majority of their military budgets to their respective armies.
Depending on the nature of a battle, air power may also be involved. Ultimately,
as Walter Ladwig has noted, in the two most likely conflict scenarios – a limited
land grab, or airstrikes – India’s numerical advantages are likely to be quickly neu-
tralized by Pakistan due to the terrain on the India–Pakistan border (especially in
Kashmir), the respective deployment patterns of the two armies (discussed above),
and the absence of any strategic surprise aiding an Indian offensive.73
The military balance is further skewed in Pakistan’s favor by the balance
of nuclear forces. According to the Federation of American Scientists, India
possesses approximately 120 nuclear warheads while Pakistan has 130 war-
heads.74 Although these warheads are not maintained in any state of immedi-
ate operational readiness, coupled with medium-range ballistic missiles they act
as a strong deterrent to any escalation of conflict by India. India for its part
has reportedly worked to develop a new doctrine over the last decade known as
Cold Start, designed to radically reduce mobilization time and enable a rapid
and limited armored strike across the border with the objective of holding an
amount of territory small enough not to justify the use of strategic nuclear weap-
ons by Pakistan.75 In order to counter such an offensive, the Pakistani military
has developed tactical nuclear weapons, i.e. short-range ballistic missiles (such
as the 60-km range Nasr) that can deliver miniaturized low-yield warheads. In
this manner, Pakistani strategists have sought to ‘generate risk and instability
at the tactical level in order to enhance stability at the strategic level’.76 In gen-
eral, Pakistan’s nuclear posture has been one of ‘asymmetric escalation’ – as a
means of deterrence, Pakistan threatens the first use of nuclear weapons in any
military conflict with India, whereas the latter maintains a posture of assured
retaliation with an explicit no-first-use policy in place.77 Pakistan’s posture may
have the effect of deterring the deployment of Cold Start among Indian military
planners, but the credibility of the deterrent requires a level of decentralization
in command and control that places Pakistani nuclear assets at some risk.78 On
the whole, it is worth noting that the India–Pakistan rivalry has spurred military
innovations and counter-innovations in response to changing technology, doc-
trine, and tactics on both sides.
Perhaps the most salient aspect of the military balance between the two
countries lies in the realm of sub-conventional strategies, i.e. terrorism spon-
sored by Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies in Kashmir and other
parts of India, most notably Mumbai in 2008. Terrorist violence peaked in
Kashmir in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with 4,507 fatalities in 2001 (24
percent civilian, 13 percent security personnel, and 63 percent terrorist).79 In
2016, this number was down to 267, though high-profile attacks on government
installations continue in states along the border with Pakistan. Recent targets
include a police station in Gurdaspur (Punjab) in July 2015, an air force station
in Pathankot (Punjab) in January 2016, an armed police convoy in Pampore

(Jammu and Kashmir) in June 2016, the army division headquarters in Uri
(Jammu and Kashmir) in September 2016, an army camp in Baramulla (Jammu
and Kashmir) in October 2016, an army base in Nagrota (Jammu and Kashmir)
in November 2016, an army camp in Sunjuwan (Jammu and Kashmir) in
February 2018, and a convoy of paramilitary personnel at Pulwama (Jammu
and Kashmir) in February 2019.
The Uri attack resulted in the deaths of 19 soldiers and under domestic pres-
sure to respond, the Indian government ordered a so-called surgical strike on
terrorist camps in Pakistan-administered Kashmir across the Line of Control.
The strike was carefully calibrated and the Indian government refused to
release conclusive proof of it, thus allowing the Pakistani government to deny
it had taken place. This move thus placated domestic audiences on both sides
while serving as a signal from one establishment to the other that future terror-
ist attacks of this scale would meet with retaliation. That retaliation came in
February 2019 in response to the death of 40 paramilitary soldiers in a terrorist
attack at Pulwama. India responded with an airstrike that was again calibrated,
but potentially more escalatory given the location of the target inside Pakistan
(as opposed to Pakistan-administered Kashmir in 2016). Both the 2016 surgical
strike and the 2019 airstrike were markedly different from India’s restrained
response to the 2008 Mumbai attacks – which took many more lives – and
indeed from India’s general restraint toward Pakistan’s military adventurism.
In this manner, the strikes raised the bar for Indian retaliation to future attacks,
and thereby reduced the room for any further escalation that the government
is likely to have on this front when the next major terrorist attack takes place.
Despite these developments, it remains clear that the Pakistani military relies
on terrorism as a means of sowing discord in India’s domestic politics (between
Hindus and Muslims) and of keeping Delhi’s resources tied down in fighting
terrorism in its homeland. In this manner, too, Pakistan is able to somewhat
reverse the natural tilt in the military balance toward India through the use of
asymmetrical strategies.
Societal Perceptions
Despite frequent calls by NGO activists and celebrities in both countries for
more amicable bilateral relations, public perceptions in Pakistan and India
remain overwhelmingly negative toward each other. In 2011, for example, a Pew
survey found that only 14 percent of Pakistanis had a favorable opinion of India,
whereas 75 percent had an unfavorable opinion.80 Pakistanis also considered
India a significantly greater threat than the Taliban or Al Qaeda. On the Indian
side, 65 percent of those surveyed held an unfavorable opinion of Pakistan, and
14 percent held a favorable opinion.81 Nonetheless, large majorities in both
countries supported improved relations with the other side, thought that increased
trade between them was a good thing, and supported further bilateral talks.

On Kashmir, 80 percent of Pakistanis thought it was very important to resolve

the issue in order for bilateral relations to improve. The corresponding figure for
Indians was 66 percent.82 A 2016 Pew survey in India showed that Indian views
of Pakistan had become more negative, with 73 percent now reporting an unfa-
vorable opinion while the share of those favorable remained at 14 percent.83 This
level of mutual public animosity can partly explain why both governments face
immense pressure to react to provocations from each other, particularly the
Indian government which is frequently faced with terrorist attacks on its soil
orchestrated by the Pakistani security establishment. Public animosity can also
explain the popularity of the military in Pakistani society (see above) – when
citizens view their neighboring country as a threat greater than the terrorists and
fundamentalists operating within their own country, it stands to reason that the
military will be looked upon as the foremost guarantor of national security.
Concluding Observations
The history and contemporary dynamics of India–Pakistan relations suggest

three inter-related conclusions with regard to the potential for peace between the
two countries. First, the deep causes of the rivalry are rooted in identity and ter-
ritory. These are emotionally charged constructs that will not be amenable to
economic inducements or military force. Thus, there can be no grand economic
bargain or purchase of territory to solve the Kashmir crisis. Nor can war (even
if it does not escalate to nuclear war) guarantee successful conquest for either
side, particularly given that the aspirations of the Kashmiri people themselves –
many of whom reportedly prefer independence to either Pakistani or Indian
control – are a major factor.84 The resolution of the conflict will require emo-
tional sacrifices on both sides, and perhaps a redefinition of national identities.
For this to happen, both countries need to be in a position to gradually shift to
new bases of identity, perhaps Pakistan toward the identity of a major Islamic
democracy and India toward the identity of a regional hegemon and provider of
public goods.
Second, geopolitics and domestic politics are proximate and hence more mal-
leable influences on the India–Pakistan relationship. Although the rivalry is rooted
in deeply held beliefs, a de facto distribution of territory does exist, and a politi-
cal compromise along these lines undertaken by domestically powerful leaders on
either side may hold. It is worth noting that India and Pakistan came closest to a
resolution of the Kashmir issue – which was not very close at all – under the mili-
tary dictatorship of Pervez Musharraf. A similarly powerful leader in Pakistan’s
future, coupled with a majority government under a leader such as Narendra Modi
in India, might facilitate the beginnings of a settlement. The role of outside
great powers is also crucial in this regard: so long as the United States relies on

the Pakistani military to fight its wars and China acts as an offshore balancer in
South Asia, the likelihood of peace will remain low.
Finally, the contemporary balance of economic and military capabilities sug-
gests that there is no quick and low-cost way out of this rivalry. Mutual deterrence
at the strategic level is likely to hold, despite short-term instability. This insta-
bility is likely to come from cross-border terrorism sponsored by Pakistan, and
increasingly from Indian retaliation either by way of military strikes or sub-con-
ventional tactics designed to destabilize Pakistan (in Balochistan, for example).
The reality of the conventional and nuclear balance is likely to keep leaders on
both sides within limits, though peace is least likely to come from business-as-
usual approaches by both governments. As stated above, strong political leader-
ship on both sides is likely to be the key to internalizing the identity-related costs
of territorial compromise.
A sliver of a silver lining lies in the fact that only 66 percent of Indians thought
the resolution of Kashmir to be necessary for peace. This could be the result
of India’s size and multicultural social fabric, where far-flung ethnic groups
find it difficult to empathize with territorial concerns in remote corners of the
nation. But perhaps more likely this has to do with attitudinal changes brought
about by economic growth, whereby more ‘postmaterial’ values might replace
narrow concerns over territory.85 Perhaps a time may come in the future when
Indians will view the costs of maintaining control over Kashmir as greater than
the benefits, and this might open the door to territorial compromise. Similarly,
if the CPEC were to genuinely herald an era of broad-based economic growth
in Pakistan, societal attitudes toward Kashmir might subsequently soften. Until
such time, however, the India–Pakistan rivalry will persist as it has over the last
seven decades.
Notes
1 Stanley Wolpert. 1984. Jinnah of Pakistan. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 123.
2 Vali Nasr. 2005. ‘National Identities and the India–Pakistan Conflict’, in T.V. Paul (ed.), The India–
Pakistan Conflict: An Enduring Rivalry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 180.
3 Christophe Jaffrelot (ed.). 2002. Pakistan: Nationalism without a Nation? New York: Palgrave, p. 13.
4 A. Moin Zaidi, Shaheda Gufran Zaidi. 1976. The Encyclopaedia of Indian National Congress, Vol. 12,
1919–1946: A Fight to the Finish. S. Chand, p. 335.
5 Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Address by Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah at Lahore Session of Muslim
League, March, 1940. Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of Pakistan, 1983.
6 Ramachandra Guha. 2007. India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy. London:
Macmillan, p. 27.
7 Prashant Bharadwaj, Asim Khwaja, and Atif Mian. 2008 (Aug 30). ‘The Big March: Migratory Flows
after the Partition of India’. Economic & Political Weekly, 43:35, pp. 39–49.
8 T.V. Paul. 2005. ‘Causes of the India–Pakistan Enduring Rivalry’, in T.V. Paul (ed.), The India–Pakistan
Conflict: An Enduring Rivalry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 3.

9 Ibid., p. 5.
10 Mridu Rai. 2004. Hindu Rulers, Muslim Subjects: Islam, Rights, and the History of Kashmir. Princ-
eton: Princeton University Press, p. 4.
11 Ibid., p. 293.
12 Ibid., p. 14.
13 Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. 1969. The Myth of Independence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969,
p. 180, quoted in Arvin Bahl. 2007. From Jinnah to Jihad: Pakistan’s Kashmir Quest and the Limits
of Realism. New Delhi: Atlantic, p. 41.
14 The word ‘secular’ was added to the Preamble in 1976 at Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s initiative,
along with ‘socialist’.
15 Jawaharlal Nehru. ‘Facts Relating to Kashmir’. A statement made at a Press Conference, New
Delhi, January 2, 1948, from Independence and After, A Collection of the More Important Speeches
of Jawaharlal Nehru from September 1946 to May 1949 (Government of India, 1949). This was
directly opposed to Pakistan’s contention that Indian intervention had put Kashmiri Muslims in
grave danger.
16 Jawaharlal Nehru. ‘Kashmir has Gone Through Fire’. A statement made in the Constituent Assembly
(Legislative), New Delhi, November 25, 1947, Ibid. Emphasis added.
17 J.N. Dixit. 2003. India’s Foreign Policy 1947–2003. New Delhi: Picus Books.
18 A. Appadorai and M.S. Rajan. 1985. India’s Foreign Policy and Relations. New Delhi: South Asian
Publishers.
19 Quoted in M.A. Zafar Shah. 1983. India and the Superpowers. New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House,
p. 9.
20 Pratap Bhanu Mehta. ‘“Natural Allies” at Odds’. Seminar, 545, January 2005. http://www.india-
seminar.com/2005/545/545%20pratap%20bhanu%20mehta1.htm
21 All calculations are made from the Arms Transfer Database of the Stockholm International Peace
Research Institute (SIPRI): https://www.sipri.org/databases/armstransfers
22 Shirley A. Kan. 2015 (Jan 5). ‘China and Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction and Missiles:
Policy Issues’. Congressional Research Service, Report No. RL31555.
23 Jayita Sarkar. 2015. ‘The Making of a Non-Aligned Nuclear Power: India’s Proliferation Drift, 1964–
8’. The International History Review, 37:5, pp. 933–950.
24 See Human Rights Watch. 1994 (Sep). ‘Arms and Abuses in Indian Punjab and Kashmir’. https://
www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/INDIA949.PDF
25 Press Trust of India. 2015 (Jan 26). ‘Pakistan is Our All-weather Friend: China’. The Hindu.
26 During the Bangladesh War, the fear of a second front with China led Indian leaders to put off any
planned military missions until the winter, when the mountain passes in the Himalayas dividing
India and China would be snowed over. See Sukhwant Singh. 2013. India’s Wars Since Independence.
Atlanta: Lancer.
27 On the US diplomatic role during the Kargil War, see Strobe Talbott. 2004. Engaging India: Diplomacy,
Democracy and the Bomb. Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution Press, pp. 154–169.
28 Ashley J. Tellis. 2019 (Mar). ‘A Smoldering Volcano: Pakistan and Terrorism after Balakot’. The
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. https://carnegieendowment.org/2019/03/14/
smoldering-volcano-pakistan-and-terrorism-after-balakot-pub-78593
29 M. Ayub Khan. Speeches and Statements. Vol. 1, Karachi, 1961, pp. 110–111, quoted in Ian
Talbot. 2005. ‘Understanding Religious Violence in Contemporary Pakistan: Themes and Theories’,
in Ravinder Kaur (ed.), Religion, Violence and Political Mobilisation in South Asia. New Delhi:
Sage Publications, p. 149.
30 Vali Nasr. 2008. ‘Pakistan after Islamization: Mainstream and Militant Islamism in a Changing
State’, in John L. Esposito, John O. Voll, Osman Bakar (eds.), Asian Islam in the 21st Century. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, pp. 31–48.
31 Ibid, p. 32.

32 Among these is the Lashkar-e-Toiba, which is widely believed to be responsible for the attack on
the Indian Parliament in December 2001, and the Mumbai attacks in November 2008.
33 V.D. Savarkar, Hindutva (Veer Savarkar Prakashan [1923] 1989), p. 113, quoted in Chetan Bhatt (ed.).
2001. Hindu Nationalism: Origins, Ideologies and Modern Myths. Oxford: Berg Publishers, p. 98.
34 M.S. Golwalkar. 1966. Bunch of Thoughts. Sahitya Sindhu Prakashana, http://www.hindubooks.
org/bot/
35 Syama Prasad Mookerjee. ‘Text of the speech made by Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, M.P. and
President of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh in Lok Sabha on 7th August 1952 during a debate on “The
Kashmir Issue”’. http://www.drsyamaprasadmookerjee.org/speaches10.html
36 Having said this, it is important to note that given his image as a foreign policy hawk who can be
tough on Pakistan, India’s current Prime Minister Narendra Modi might be well placed to initiate
a rapprochement with Islamabad, much as the Republican President Nixon was able to develop
friendly ties with communist China in the early 1970s.
37 Sumit Ganguly. 2002. ‘The Islamic Dimensions of the Kashmir Insurgency’, in Jaffrelot, Pakistan:
Nationalism without a Nation?, p. 182.
38 Aqil Shah. 2014. The Army and Democracy: Military Politics in Pakistan. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press.
39 Nicole Naurath and Julie Ray. 2011 (Jul 29). ‘Pakistanis Still Rate Military Tops Among National
Institutions’. Gallup, http://www.gallup.com/poll/148709/Pakistanis-Rate-Military-Tops-Among-
National-Institutions.aspx
40 Steven I. Wilkinson. 2015. Army and Nation: The Military and Indian Democracy since Independence.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
41 Madhavi Devasher. 2015. ‘Accountability and Conflict Behavior in Pakistan’. Paper presented at the
annual South Asia Conference, Madison, Wisconsin, October 2015.
42 Vipin Narang. 2016 (Oct 4). ‘The lines that have been crossed’. The Hindu.
43 Ashley J. Tellis. 2019 (Mar 14). ‘A Smoldering Volcano: Pakistan and Terrorism after Balakot’. Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace.
44 Manoj Joshi. 2016 (Jul 18). ‘Military has Remained Steadfast in its Commitment to Democracy’. The
Hindustan Times. See also Wilkinson, Army and Nation.
45 Calculated from the US Overseas Loans and Grants (Greenbook). Accessed at https://www.usaid.
gov/data/dataset/49c01560-6cd7-4bbc-bfef-7a1991867633. It must be observed that although
gross economic aid to India was higher in these periods, per capita economic aid has been consis-
tently higher to Pakistan since 1952. This is not, however, considered a reliable metric given India’s
inordinately large population, which would make any foreign aid commitment look insufficient.
46 Calculated from the SIPRI Arms Transfer Database. See n. 21 above.
47 Monica Duffy Toft. 2003. The Geography of Ethnic Violence: Identity, Interests, and the Indivisibility
of Territory. Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 2.
48 See Atul Kohli. 2004. State-Directed Development: Political Power and Industrialization in the
Global Periphery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 257–288.
49 Calculated from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators: http://data.worldbank.org/data-
catalog/world-development-indicators
50 Ibid.
51 Both figures from World Bank data for 2013.
52 Calculated from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators.
53 International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). 2016. ‘Chapter Ten: Country Comparisons –
Commitments, Force Levels and Economics’. The Military Balance, 116:1, p. 486.
54 Calculated from the Military Expenditure Database of the Stockholm International Peace Research
Institute (SIPRI): https://www.sipri.org/databases/milex. Figures for Pakistan for 1991–2006 and
2011 are SIPRI estimates.
55 Ibid.

56 BBC News. 2015 (Apr 20). ‘China’s Xi Jinping Agrees $46bn Superhighway to Pakistan’. http://
www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-32377088
57 Times News Network. 2016 (Sep 13). ‘CPEC: Why Pakistan Views Corridor to China as a “Game-
changer”’. The Economic Times.
58 Syed Irfan Raza. 2016 (Oct 18). ‘“CPEC Could Become Another East India Company”’. Dawn.
59 Times News Network. 2014 (Sep 2). ‘Japan Promises Narendra Modi $35 Billion Inflows, But Holds
Out on Nuclear Deal’. The Times of India.
60 Calculated from the United Nations COMTRADE database: https://comtrade.un.org/data/
61 Manik Suri and Devesh Kapur. 2013. ‘Geoeconomics vs. Geopolitics: Implications for Asia’, in Inder-
jit Kaur and Nirvikar Singh (eds.), Oxford Handbook of the Economics of the Pacific Rim. London:
Oxford University Press, pp. 290–313.
62 As listed in the UN COMTRADE database.
63 Ibid.
64 Mayank Jain. 2016 (Sep 27). ‘Should India Snap Trade with Pakistan?’. Scroll.in; Amiti Sen. 2016
(Sep 20). ‘India May Not Impose Complete Ban on Trade with Pakistan’. The Hindu Business Line.
65 International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). 2016. ‘Chapter Six: Asia’. The Military Balance,
116:1, pp. 250–255, 279–282. In both countries, the army accounts for roughly 85 percent of
active-duty personnel.
66 Ibid.
67 Ibid.
68 Walter C. Ladwig III. 2015. ‘Indian Military Modernization and Conventional Deterrence in South
Asia’. Journal of Strategic Studies, 38:5, pp. 752–755.
69 IISS, ‘Chapter Six: Asia’, pp. 251, 280.
70 Ibid., p. 755.
71 Ibid.
72 Ibid., pp. 252, 281.
73 Ladwig, ‘Indian Military Modernization’.
74 Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris. 2017. ‘Status of World Nuclear Forces’. Federation of
American Scientists, https://fas.org/issues/nuclear-weapons/status-world-nuclear-forces/
75 Walter C. Ladwig III. 2007. ‘A Cold Start for Hot Wars? The Indian Army’s New Limited War Doc-
trine’. International Security, 32:3, pp. 158–190.
76 Mansoor Ahmed. 2016 (Jun 30). ‘Pakistan’s Tactical Nuclear Weapons and Their Impact on Sta-
bility’. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, http://carnegieendowment.org/2016/06/30/
pakistan-s-tactical-nuclear-weapons-and-their-impact-on-stability-pub-63911
77 Vipin Narang. 2009. ‘Posturing for Peace? Pakistan’s Nuclear Postures and South Asian Stability’.
International Security, 34:3, pp. 38–78.
78 Ibid.
79 South Asia Terrorism Portal. 2017. ‘Fatalities in Terrorist Violence 1988–2017’. http://www.satp.
org/satporgtp/countries/india/states/jandk/data_sheets/annual_casualties.htm
80 Pew Research Center. 2011 (Jun 21). ‘How Pakistanis and Indians View Each Other’. http://www.
pewglobal.org/2011/06/21/chapter-6-how-pakistanis-and-indians-view-each-other/
81 Ibid.
82 Ibid.
83 Bruce Stokes. 2016 (Sep 19). ‘How Indians See Their Place in the World’. Pew Research Center.
http://www.pewglobal.org/2016/09/19/3-how-indians-see-their-place-in-the-world/
84 Alastair Lawson. 2010 (May 27). ‘“First” Kashmir Survey Produces “Startling” Results’. BBC News,
http://www.bbc.com/news/10161171
85 See Ronald Inglehart. 1997. Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic, and Politi-
cal Change in 43 Societies. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Brief Bibliography
Bahl, Arvin. 2007. From Jinnah to Jihad: Pakistan’s Kashmir Quest and the Limits of Realism. New Delhi:
Atlantic Publishers.
Cohen, Stephen P. 2013. Shooting for a Century: The India–Pakistan Conundrum. Washington, DC: The
Brookings Institution Press.
Ganguly, Sumit. 2016. Deadly Impasse: Indo–Pakistani Relations at the Dawn of a New Century.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kaur, Ravinder (ed.). 2005. Religion, Violence and Political Mobilisation in South Asia. New Delhi: Sage
Publications.
Ladwig III, Walter C. 2015. ‘Indian Military Modernization and Conventional Deterrence in South Asia’.
Journal of Strategic Studies, 38:5, pp. 729–772.
Narang, Vipin. 2009. ‘Posturing for Peace? Pakistan’s Nuclear Postures and South Asian Stability’.
International Security, 34:3, pp. 38–78.
Paul, T.V. (ed.). 2005. The India–Pakistan Conflict: An Enduring Rivalry. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Rai, Mridu. 2004. Hindu Rulers, Muslim Subjects: Islam, Rights, and the History of Kashmir. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Shah, Aqil. 2014. The Army and Democracy: Military Politics in Pakistan. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press.
Wilkinson, Steven I. 2015. Army and Nation: The Military and Indian Democracy since Independence.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
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Chapter · January 2019

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The Historical Roots of Rivalry

Identity and Ideology

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a population that was 95 percent Muslim. In order to secure their legitimacy,

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secularist credentials. During the crisis of 1947–48 Nehru repeatedly argued

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Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, another progenitor of the movement and head of

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prominent being the destruction of the Babri mosque at Ayodhya in 1992 by

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outsized role in India’s democracy. By contrast, in Pakistan the military itself

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On Kashmir, 80 percent of Pakistanis thought it was very important to resolve

The history and contemporary dynamics of India–Pakistan relations suggest

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