India-Pakistan relations have entered a phase defined by a volatile mix of active confrontation alternating with constrained hostility. Formal dialogue remains politically untenable in India, public discourse is sharply sceptical of engagement, and Pakistan’s internal political trajectory has moved further toward praetorian dominance. The result is not peace but a suspended hostility in which crises remain possible even when escalation may not be imminent.
The emergence of general Asim Munir as Pakistan’s central power figure has reinforced this dynamic. Pakistan’s military establishment has historically shaped the country’s India policy, but the current consolidation of military authority — combined with persistent ambiguity over militant proxies — has narrowed the political space for meaningful diplomatic engagement. The absence of major terrorist incidents in Kashmir between 2019 (Pulwama) and 2025 (Pahalgam) had encouraged cautious optimism in some quarters. That optimism has now dissipated. In India, there is little appetite for dialogue, and politically the costs of overt engagement remain extremely high.
This constraint-driven environment must shape policy thinking. The central question is no longer how to revive dialogue but how to prevent crises from escalating in the absence of dialogue. Stability in South Asia cannot rely solely on deterrence, nor can it assume periodic diplomatic thaws. It requires mechanisms capable of functioning even amid sustained strategic mistrust.
Recent crises underscore why. India-Pakistan confrontations rarely erupt fully formed. They tend to build incrementally through misread signals, tactical incidents, terrorism, media amplification, and domestic political pressures that compress decision-making timelines. Nuclear deterrence may cap escalation, but it does not prevent the processes that generate it. Indeed, hardened public rhetoric on both sides increasingly shortens the margin for error.
China’s expanding regional footprint adds another layer of complexity. Beijing’s territorial stakes in the broader Kashmir region and its deepening strategic partnership with Pakistan ensure that India-Pakistan tensions are rarely insulated from wider geopolitical competition. The omnipresent architecture of Chinese territorial claims in Ladakh and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir — expressed through infrastructure development, Line of Actual Control transgressions, and strategic presence — has quietly altered the regional balance. This triangular dynamic reinforces the need for disciplined crisis management even when political normalisation remains distant.
Within Kashmir itself, the political landscape remains fluid. Security indicators have improved in some respects since the constitutional changes of 2019, yet questions of political representation, economic recovery, and legitimacy continue to shape local perceptions. These internal dynamics intersect with India-Pakistan relations whether policymakers foreground them diplomatically or not.
Human rights narratives surrounding Kashmir also reflect asymmetries that complicate external perceptions. Much advocacy focuses on Indian State actions because India is the sovereign authority defined by visible institutions, legal processes, and media scrutiny. Non-State actors or developments across the Line of Control are harder to document and less susceptible to reputational pressure. Fear, access constraints, and international advocacy incentives reinforce this pattern. The consequence is not that abuses are unreal, but that the map of advocacy does not always align with the full map of coercion. Selective narratives ultimately weaken credibility and reduce the space for constructive accountability.
Against this complex backdrop, calibrated steadying mechanisms — rather than diplomatic breakthroughs — offer the most realistic path forward. These mechanisms are not about reconciliation or normalisation. They are instruments of risk management designed to keep rivalry bounded.
Water remains a particularly sensitive domain. The Indus Waters Treaty, negotiated in a very different geopolitical era, was once seen as a rare stabilising framework in an otherwise adversarial relationship. Yet the circumstances underpinning it have changed substantially — demographic pressures, energy requirements, climate variability, and persistent interpretative disputes have altered the operational context. For Pakistan, the Indus system remains a so-called “civilisational” lifeline, underpinning agricultural viability and social stability. For India, however, growing strategic mistrust, compounded by genuinely rooted concerns over cross-border terrorism, has increasingly shaped perceptions of the treaty’s constraints. The cumulative impact of such concerns resulted in the Indian side announcing that the treaty will effectively be held in abeyance. This does not diminish the humanitarian centrality of the river system, but it does suggest that what India sees as an unequal agreement framed in 1960 cannot remain static indefinitely.
Equally important are communication guardrails. Informal or backchannel communication has historically played a quiet role in managing India-Pakistan crises. Under present political conditions, such channels are unlikely to lead to formal dialogue. Their value lies instead in providing discreet and candid mechanisms for clarification, signalling, and de-escalation when public diplomacy is politically constrained or operationally too slow. In a relationship where civilian and military decision-making in Pakistan do not always align transparently, such communication can help prevent misinterpretation from hardening into confrontation. Properly understood, backchannels are not instruments of rapprochement but safeguards against inadvertent escalation.
Technical cooperation insulated from political signalling can also contribute modestly to stability. Flood forecasting, environmental monitoring, humanitarian coordination, and carefully structured academic or civil society engagement help preserve analytical continuity even during diplomatic freezes. Such interaction is not a substitute for political dialogue, but it can maintain channels of understanding that become valuable during crises.
None of this implies imminent normalisation. The political mood in India does not support it, Pakistan’s internal power configuration complicates it, and regional geopolitics increasingly constrain it. But rejecting all stabilising mechanisms would not strengthen deterrence. It would increase the risk of miscalculation.
The broader lesson is straightforward. Rivalries between nuclear-armed neighbours cannot be managed solely through deterrence or periodic diplomatic optimism. They require persistent, often quiet guardrails that prevent crises from spiralling. These mechanisms rarely attract public attention precisely because they function best outside political theatre.
India-Pakistan relations may remain adversarial for the foreseeable future. The goal, therefore, is not premature reconciliation but disciplined rivalry — a framework in which competition continues without recurrent crises that destabilise the region and distract both countries from their larger developmental priorities.
Reading the tea leaves suggests that stability is unlikely to arrive through grand diplomatic gestures. More often, it will emerge through calibrated, incremental measures that reduce risk even when trust remains elusive.
Nirupama Rao is a former foreign secretary. The views expressed are personal
