India’s Pakistan policy has always carried two scripts. One is written for the world, full of restraint, dialogue and civilisational memory. The other is written for domestic consumption, where Pakistan is reduced to a permanent villain and every crisis is converted into a test of nationalist muscle. This has shown both scripts at work again. An Indian army chief speaks of Pakistan choosing between geography and history. Standing on the other end of the spectrum, the general secretary of the ruling BJP’s parent organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, says the doors to dialogue should remain open. Meanwhile, former Indian army chief Gen Manoj Naravane has publicly backed the idea of preserving communication channels and people-to-people engagement.
Islamabad should listen carefully. However, it should also remember the old rule dictating this frosty relationship: India often talks peace when pressure fails to produce obedience.
That Pakistan has emerged from last May’s four-day war with its deterrence intact, its diplomacy active, and its regional relevance exceptionally visible adds to the thickening plot. It is playing a serious role in the US-Iran track, rebuilding Gulf confidence, deepening ties with China, Türkiye and Azerbaijan, and refusing to be boxed into the old caricature of a reckless state waiting for lectures from New Delhi. This irritates India, which cannot just sit back after spending years selling Pakistan as isolated, unstable and globally suspect, and now watch Islamabad being treated as a necessary diplomatic address.
India wants the optics of maturity without surrendering the habits of coercion. After Pahalgam, it moved from accusation to unwarranted strikes on the civilian population in Pakistan without giving the world any credible proof or accepting an impartial investigation. Furthermore, by suspending the Indus Waters Treaty, New Delhi crossed from military signalling into civilisational recklessness. The treaty has survived wars because it was never merely a diplomatic instrument. It is the logic of survival for Pakistan’s farms, food systems, power generation and cities. Pakistan’s response must remain harder than rhetoric and smarter than outrage. It should keep the door open to any sincere Indian overture, as has already been suggested by the Foreign Office, because dialogue is never a favour to Pakistan. It is a necessity for South Asia. Yet talks cannot become a laundering machine for Indian coercion. If New Delhi wants engagement, it must restore treaty obligations, stop threatening a sovereign nuclear neighbour and return to evidence-based diplomacy.
India’s problem is not that Pakistan refuses peace. India’s problem is that Pakistan refuses submission. That distinction must sit at the heart of Islamabad’s policy. Talk, yes. Trade, eventually. But Pakistan should enter any room with its eyes open and its red lines intact. *