The changing nature of Pakistani leaders’ ideas about India

Pakistan’s former Chief of the Army Staff, General Qamar Javed Bajwa was very fond of repeating two foreign policy themes in his speeches. He repeatedly mentioned two themes in his speeches during his six years tenure. Firstly, he repeatedly offered Peace talks to India. Secondly, he repeatedly vowed to make Pakistan regional connectivity hub. He never attempted to develop these two themes into a grand scheme of things but the connection between the two is obvious. Geographically Pakistan could be described as a land connecting South Asia with Central Asia and South West Asia. Obviously, the dream of making Pakistan a regional connectivity hub cannot be fully realized until India and its growing economy is brought into the picture. In General Bajwa’s thinking, as gleaned from his speeches, Pakistan could be connection the energy rich economies of Central Asia with the growing and fastingly industrializing economies of India and Bangladesh. Obviously Iran and middle eastern countries adjacent to it cannot obviously be ignored in this scheme of things. In some of his speeches General Bajwa didn’t object to the inclusion of India in the concept of making Pakistan a regional connectivity hub. His successor, Field Marshall Asim Munir slightly changed course. He continued to harp on the theme of making Pakistan a regional connectivity hub but clearly excluded India from his plans.
General Bajwa’s act of repeatedly offering peace talks to India made him more akin to former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif who not long before Bajwa’s famous speeches had made his own attempts to normalize relations with India. smallest pretext. As prime minister Nawaz Sharif hosted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Lahore at his private residence. This again rattled his relations with the military establishment, which took it as another attempt by Sharif for a solo flight. In the absence of institutional consensus to back Sharif’s wish to normalise relations with India, hosting the Indian prime minister at his private residence without even senior state functionaries present in meetings between the two premiers raised alarm bells in Rawalpindi. And again, military leaders started to develop doubts about Nawaz Sharif’s intentions. Within two years, he was ousted from power.
Pakistan-India relations are mostly defined by the military content of their relations—the political leaders of the two countries are not on talking terms. Trade relations between the two countries are minimal. Business and commercial collaboration is nonexistent. We barely even play cricket with each other. The Pakistan military is a dominant player in politics, and adversarial relations between the two countries at the military level allow the Pakistani military to dominate the power structure in Pakistan. India is militarily superior and is a threat to Pakistan’s survival, which is the argument that supports continued higher levels of military spending in Pakistan. In India, on the other hand, the military lives under complete civilian supremacy. In the last two decades, India’s economic miracle has allowed the Indian government to spend an exponentially high percentage of its GDP on defence and military without causing any economic and political instability in the society. Pakistan’s high military spending has pushed it close to the brink of financial bankruptcy. The power centres in Pakistan, in this context, exist in a highly insecure environment with the result that they perceive any move on the part of rival power centres that could disturb the precariously held equilibrium to be a threat to their existence or their share within the small and ever-shrinking financial and resource pie. In this context, Nawaz Sharif’s pious wish to normalize relations with India often proves to be a highly de-stabilizing factor in Islamabad’s power politics. May 2025 military conflict between Pakistan and India has transformed the nature of relations between the two countries beyond recognition. Pakistani officials have repeatedly made clear that now they would not beg for talks. Pakistani and Indian military officials have been making threatening statements against each other in the time since the four days conflict that was only averted from becoming a larger war with the diplomatic intervention of Washington.

Pakistani and Indian miltiaries have withdrawn to their peace time locations. The war hysteria seems to have died down. But things can turn hot any moment. Some of the statements of Indian military leaders are particularly provocative. Is war with India in Pakistan’s interest? Can Pakistan afford another war with India? The answer to both these questions is in the negative. Rationality demands that Pakistan should strive to avoid military action with India at all costs. One way is to formulate our India policy in the light of this rational analysis of our situation. The other way is to go with the flow—in response to India’s jingoism and irrational behaviour, we should be equally belligerent in our foreign policy and military attitudes. In that case, we would be fully embracing a reactive policy. The initiative would not be in our hands. Our ultimate objective is to secure Pakistan from external threats. Avoiding conflict and making efforts to avoid conflict is the best way to secure Pakistan from external threats. Jingoism in reaction to the jingoism of the other side will amount to having no policy. Through foreign policy, we engage with other countries. Jingoism is like expressing anger—it’s not a policy. Pakistan’s political and military leaders have on several occasions reached a consensus on the point that avoiding a conflict with India is Pakistan’s prime interest
Avoiding war by adopting particular foreign policy options will surely mean treading the path of rationality through the use of the collective wisdom of society and foreign policy institutions. Jingoism stemming from social attitudes or the proclivities of state institutions will amount to thinking irrationally and surrendering the collective wisdom of society to emotionalism stemming from particular segments of society. This emotionalism patently goes against the security interests of the Pakistani state and society—interests like avoidance of conflict, about which we can reach a consensus through rational debate. In the post-Kargil period, Pakistan’s political and military leaders have on several occasions reached a consensus on the point that avoiding a conflict with India is Pakistan’s prime interest. We only reached this conclusion; we never made an attempt to convert this principle into the central plank of our diplomacy. Perhaps Indian intransigence never allowed enough space for such an activity.
Hindutva is not simply a political ideology it is also an obscurantist view of Indian history. Colonial historiography portrays Hindus as a docile race (Hindus are not a race, by the way) in Indian history. In contrast, Muslims are portrayed as warriors and barbarians and Hindus as effeminate. Since the 1999 Kargil conflict, Indian Hindu extremist groups have had the golden opportunity to mobilise Hindu public opinion against Muslims and Pakistan. One after the other, opportunities were hurled at them. In 2002, there was an attack on the Indian Parliament, which was traced back to militant groups based in Pakistan. Pakistan officials portrayed the Kargil intrusions as the handiwork of Muslim militant groups based in Pakistan. In India, Kargil was portrayed as a challenge to Indian society, which Hindu extremist groups were already portraying as suffering from an effeminate syndrome, as it had been painted in colonial histories of India.
The Mumbai attack was another event in this sequence of terrorism, where, in the perception of Hindu extremist groups, the manliness of Hindu society was challenged. This was a classic case of the recycling of colonial historiography: Islamic militancy was associated with the warrior nature of Muslims, and Hindu society as a victim of terrorism and therefore effeminate. There are Indian strategic experts who, during this time, were writing entire books on the role of military thought and tradition in ancient Hindu society. These authors started to dispel the colonial impression that Indian society was devoid of military traditions and thought. At the same time, Bollywood developed a special interest in producing films about Hindu warriors from the Maratha military class of the early modern period, which played a crucial role in the collapse of Mughal imperial structures in India. The rise of Hindu militancy and its impact on Indian society didn’t go unnoticed in the wider world. American authors like the late Stephen Cohen described the BJP, India’s incumbent ruling party, as a natural house of India’s military assertiveness. The import of the latest military technology, military tensions, terror attacks on Indian territory, and Hindu extremist groups peddling a particular view of history all collectively came together to produce war hysteria in Indian society. Indians started to see in their powerful military a reflection of their newfound manliness.
The question for Pakistani society is whether to copy the Indian model of popular public opinion mobilisation. This would be like reproducing more of the same from our past decades. We have been victims of our own manliness—masculinity, militancy, and martyrdom have given us one nightmare after another. From 2007 till 2018, we faced the paragon of manliness and masculinity: the suicide bomber. He bombed our cities, killed our children, and attempted to destroy our civic life. For Indians, war may be something glamorous. For us, war is a nightmare from which we have still not fully recovered. From 2007 till 2018, we have seen war in our cities and towns. It is not at all glamorous. What the Indian state did after the Kargil conflict to mobilise its public opinion and to create war hysteria was something our state had already done with its society in the 1980s and ’90s, during and immediately after the Afghan War, when the Kashmir uprising was heating up. We are still repeating what our state did with our society in terms of building structures of militancy in support of the Afghan and Kashmir freedom struggle.
What to do with the Modi phenomenon and war hysteria in Indian society? First, we need to be clear that creating counter war hysteria in Pakistan would be very destructive. First, it will prove too costly for our plans to revive the country’s economy. Second, war hysteria will generate compulsions for Pakistani decision-makers. It means that Pakistan’s decision-makers’ space to make rational decisions would be severely restricted by public opinion. At one time during the four-day Pakistan–India war, it appeared that the Indian Prime Minister was a hostage to his hysterical populace. In fact, he faced scathing criticism back home when he agreed to a ceasefire on the coaxing of the American President. Nobody was interested in the strategic compulsions which forced him to agree to a ceasefire with Pakistan. War hysteria in Pakistani society will restrict the strategic space for Pakistani decision-makers to deal with the military and strategic threat emanating from India. We have to keep in mind that the options to which Pakistani public opinion—or Indian public opinion, for that matter—will agree, will not allow strategic flexibility to Pakistani decision-makers, which is the need of the hour to manage our relations with India.