Do And/or Die
The India-Pakistan tensions are the latest flare-up in a long-standing rivalry etched and rooted deep in the pages of history; with regard to ideology, identity, and geopolitics, it lingers and grows like the oak tree, sustaining itself through its tendrils of hate. The current conflict is evidently not an isolated event but a sad culmination of the greatest folly of mankind — the folly of misdirected hatred.
A commonly ignored truth, poignant and painful, is that we are constant victims of perpetuated propaganda and will continue to remain the same because the dull masses make for an obedient mass. At the very top of India lies Kashmir, the land of the apples, the handicrafts, and the lush pashmina, the land of a mosaic of diverse populations, and it is also living proof of this fact. Reports and eyewitness accounts suggest that, although the common Indian would not know this, many residents of the state prefer to side with Pakistan over India, despite what the government would like the folk to believe. Who can blame them? What, with their dignity being taken away at every turn, staying and rotting in a bitter, cold land and alienated by the very people that insist on holding them captive? Neither on this side nor on the other, forever condemned to a state of limbo.
The Kashmir dispute is the first and foremost reason for the ongoing tensions between the two countries, from the age of the forefathers to that of the present. The conflict over Jammu and Kashmir began in 1947 during Partition. Although the princely state acceded to India, Pakistan claims it should have been part of its territory due to its Muslim majority. The region has sparked around three wars since then (1947–48, 1965, and 1999) and multiple skirmishes, leading to the Line of Control but no final settlement. The revocation of Article 370 was the last straw for Pakistan, as India revoked the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, provoking outrage in Pakistan and increasing domestic unrest in the Valley.
Other factors are, of course, ideological and religious misconceptions and violence. Pakistan was formed as a homeland for Muslims, and Kashmir, being Muslim-majority, is seen as unfinished business of Partition by extremists in Pakistan. Hindu-Muslim tensions have flared in India in recent years, and Pakistan uses these events to justify its support for the Kashmiri cause.
It’s important to note that proxy groups utilized by the Pakistani authorities, like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, allegedly supported by its military, have kept the region volatile. India has therefore accused Pakistan of “state-sponsored terrorism” and adopted a series of doctrinal shifts since 2016, including surgical strikes and the Balakot airstrike in 2019, to retaliate militarily.
The trigger event, the catalyst for the ongoing tensions that once only simmered but now scorches, was the April 2025 Pahalgam attack, which killed 26 people during a Hindu pilgrimage. India blamed Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed. The attack was seen as crossing a red line (a line both countries have crossed in the past), prompting Operation Sindoor, a targeted Indian airstrike campaign inside Pakistan-administered territory.
In a major escalation, India unilaterally suspended the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) and blocked the Chenab River’s flow to Pakistan. The IWT, brokered by the World Bank in 1960, had survived previous conflicts and was a symbol of cooperation. Pakistan called this a casus belli (act of war).
And war is indeed what seems to be the ultimatum offered to us by these powerful men, who control the bloodied tapestry, the red threads of fate, the threads that bind us, now slowly unraveling, to reveal to us the larger picture.
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India’s ‘preemptive doctrine’ now includes cross-border precision strikes. The current Modi-led government, under pressure from domestic constituencies and an assertive nationalist base, has moved away from restraint. With internal political instability and economic fragility, Pakistan has relied on conventional threats and internationalizing the crisis via diplomacy. However, its military continues to shape foreign policy, especially on Kashmir.
The U.S. brokered a temporary ceasefire in May 2025. President Trump falsely claimed credit, but India remains wary of outside involvement, especially from powers sympathetic to Pakistan.
If history has taught us anything, it is that no one wins a war. Some people survive it, and the others are left to collect its shattered remains. War is a rich man’s game, one that must be avoided for the sake of the future as well as the present, by taking past context into account. The recent tensions with Pakistan undoubtedly threaten civilian lives on both sides due to border shelling and drone strikes. The fear of escalation to nuclear conflict remains rampant, as both countries possess over 100 nuclear warheads, and that is an outdated figure. Pakistan, especially, faces acute water shortages that affect agriculture and hydropower due to India’s suspension of the IWT, adding to its economic fragility.
Not to mention China, which has stakes in Pakistan through CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor) and has offered diplomatic backing to Islamabad. The Gulf states too, traditionally neutral, urged de-escalation, fearing oil price spikes and regional instability.
A worst-case scenario would involve full-scale conflict, possibly drawing in allies or triggering a nuclear exchange, especially if red lines, such as attacks on civilian infrastructure or water systems, are crossed again. In the end, the stupidity of war is displayed for us all to witness.
Are we not the slowest of all species, to never learn from the past, and to never have learned that in war it’s not just the losing party that loses, but us too? We all lose. We lose lives, hopes, dignity, compassion, and humanity.
It’s important to keep in mind that both sides of a war think that they are fighting for the right cause. No side is pure evil or pure good; that is just the propaganda used by them to get us, the masses, riled up.
War creates three armies: an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves. The crippled are the war veterans and army nurses who come home psychologically and physiologically broken. The mourners are the families of the deceased soldiers and nurses, and the thieves are the politicians and profiteers who started the war in the first place.
This will undoubtedly anger the Hindu nationalists who truly believe that war is the solution; perhaps Pakistan is in the wrong or maybe India is in the wrong, but it doesn’t matter. In the end, what use is a war?
This applies not only to the India-Pakistan conflict but also to the Sudanese civil war, the Ethiopian civil conflict, the Myanmar unrest, the Russia-Ukraine war, the Israel-Palestine massacre, and the ongoing North Korea-South Korea tensions.
One can only hope that the true victims of war — the veterans, the civilians, the poor, and the needy — come out unscathed, for one more page further and we might land ourselves in a dystopian chapter.
