Indian premier Narendra Modi and FM Subrahmanyam Jaishankar have reportedly responded to Pakistan’s renewed call for dialogue, having written to their respective counterparts Imran Khan and Shah Mehmood Qureshi expressing the intent, a news report said recently. “India is ready to hold talks with Pakistan and other countries in the region for the sake of regional peace and prosperity,” the report added. This peace initiative rightly taken from Islamabad and belatedly responded by New Delhi could nevertheless provide a sustainable basis for the two nuclear neighbours to amicably mend their fences beyond the ghettos of cultural antagonism and geopolitical quest for power dominance. Historically, the Indian perceived hostility towards Pakistan remains a major impediment towards regional peacebuilding. Undeniably, the future of Pakistan-India relations accompanied by a diplomatic dialogue intrinsically depends upon the type of compromise which might be acceptable from both sides. With the stagnant/enduring/everlasting hostile legacy of the past and present Indian Governments, Pakistan, no longer, feels secure with India’s eclipsed secular narrative-being replaced with Hindutva-nurtured nationalism. The latest US report on India’s religious intolerance throws enough light on this. Unfortunately, a euphorically perceived notion that overwhelms New Delhi’s regional thinking holds that India’s clear geopolitical, economic, and military superiority implies that Pakistan could hardly compel it to revise the status quo by force. This hawkish thinking argues that India should not offer any compromises to procure peace because it is already a satisfied predominant regional power. Yet those Indian hawks in the BJP camp have nonetheless ignored the importance of peace notion between India and Pakistan, thereby possibly not realizing the fact that an obdurate Indian strategy of political or diplomatic escapism seems imprudent and impractical in the context of regional peace and stability. Truly, it has been notions of inter-regional peace, the end of antagonism, and the nullity of power-dominance that propel the conviction of promoting an India-Pakistan peace dialogue. Given the pressing exigencies of reconstructing an India-Pakistan peace dialogue entailed by the parameters of constructivism, realism and structuralism, one may rightly argue that there are least four major peace imperatives: the simmering Kashmir Issue, the issue of boundary water distribution, the nuclear armament in South Asia, and the issue of proxy wars in the region. Make no mistake the real power of a nation is vested in its skilled population and strength of its political and democratic institutions. However, its tendency to progress and opulence is insured by its relations with its neighbours First, the Kashmir Issue: Undeniably, nonetheless, India and Pakistan have been locked in a struggle over Kashmir for more than 70 years, and the restive region is back in the current conflict via resurgence of the Kashmiri freedom movement. The Indian security forces have been unjustifiably and trying to treat the Kashmiri people who are being ruthlessly and regularly violated, suppressed and regressed in Kashmir. Without a democratic and statesmanlike resolution of the Kashmir dispute, it is absolutely difficult to imagine any progress on peaceful engagements in the future. Second, the issue of boundary water: The Indus Waters Treaty between India and Pakistan is one of the few examples, of the settlement of a major, international river basin conflict. However, the grievances of contracting parties, lead to the possibility that the present cooperation may turn into future conflict. The dispute between Pakistan and India over water has continued over several decades. Currently, the dispute revolves around the construction of a hydro-electric plant along a tributary of Indus, which is Kishenganga River. Although India is defending its right to construct the dam, Pakistan is raising several issues over the project. Pakistan explains that India is planning to divert the river course and this is bound to have adverse effects on Pakistani who rely on the river. Since 2006, Pakistan has time and again consulted the World Bank on this issue by forming numerous litigation in the court of arbitration. Therefore, to dispel further misunderstanding, it is imperative that both the sides must sit and settle the ongoing water tensions. Third, the Issue of the nuclear arms race in South Asia: The post-1998 vicious nuclear cycle accompanied by an action-reaction trajectory has eminently surfaced in South Asia thereby ensuring security and power accumulation in the region. In situations where security dilemma exists, security is viewed as a zero-sum game, resulting in greater instability as the opponent responds to the resulting reductions in security. There can be no denying the fact that military build-ups and arms races are characteristics of security dilemma- a case richly manifested by the growing arms compaction between India and Pakistan. Veritably, India and Pakistan have conducted numerous missile tests to strengthen their deterrence against each other. India, however, has not named the state but India’s Agani-V ICBM missile with 5000 km. the range is mainly to deter China from any aggressive behaviour towards India. The ongoing puzzle of strategic stability vs instability rests with this vicious nuclear armament cycle in South Asia. And most importantly, for making a better quality of life of the South Asian citizenry, it is urgent that both the sides must reduce their defence expenditures to the utmost. And fourth, the issue of proxy wars in South Asia: “There are two security dilemmas in the region and unfortunately they intersect in Afghanistan today,” Ashley Tellis, a senior fellow at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said. “One is the dilemma between Pakistan and Afghanistan that is independent of India. And of course, there is a second security dilemma, which is between India and Pakistan and the struggle for influence outside in the broader region,” Tellis said. “And Afghanistan has become the arena where that struggle for influence is being manifested most clearly. “In view of journalist and author Steve Coll, “Both sides are trying to use the same proxy violence strategies against one another,” Coll claimed. Nevertheless, in recent years, India’s proxy war trajectory via Baluchistan and Afghanistan has remained an unremitting cause of concern for Pakistan. Objectively immense— and immensely inevitable — changes for the two countries remain rightly involved: realizing that current policies are not only futile but pernicious; facing down the domestic political forces that would seek to exploit new approaches, and throwing away the excruciating legacy of some 70 profoundly divisive years. Make no mistake the real power of a nation is vested in its skilled population and strength of its political and democratic institutions. However, its tendency to progress and opulence is insured by its relations with its neighbours. The only way to prevent this region from the evils of war, illiteracy, poverty, and disease is to hold a reconciliatory dialogue between New Delhi and Islamabad. The writer is an independent ‘IR’ researcher and international law analyst based in Pakistan