The Pahalgam Attack And The Return Of The India-Pakistan Hyphenation – OpEd

In the long and fraught relationship between India and Pakistan, history is not just a backdrop—it’s an active participant. The recent terrorist attack in Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir, which killed 26 tourists, has once again forced both nations into a familiar cycle of blame, retaliation, and uneasy truce. But this time, something more consequential may have occurred: by rejecting international calls for an independent investigation and launching a swift military response, India may have inadvertently invited the very diplomatic “hyphenation” it has tried to escape for decades.

The Pahalgam attack on April 22, 2025, triggered predictable and understandable outrage across India. Pakistan, while denying any involvement, condemned the violence and proposed a neutral, third-party investigation—an offer supported by nations such as China and Malaysia. India flatly rejected the proposal.

Instead of agreeing to any form of international probe, New Delhi responded with “Operation Sindoor,” a series of targeted airstrikes inside Pakistani territory aimed at what it claimed were terrorist training camps responsible for cross-border violence. Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared the action as a demonstration of India’s “superiority,” stating that while operations had been paused, the threshold for future retaliation had permanently shifted.

The problem with this posture is not that India defended itself—it has every right to respond to terrorism. The issue is how that response plays out diplomatically. India’s refusal of an independent inquiry, coupled with swift military action, has drawn international attention not just to the incident, but to the broader India-Pakistan conflict in ways New Delhi has long tried to avoid. Once again, global powers are nudging both nations to the same table, speaking of “restraint on both sides,” and framing the crisis through the lens of regional stability. This is the very “hyphenation” India has worked for decades to erase.

ndia sees itself as a rising global power—an economic engine, a tech innovator, and a voice on issues ranging from climate change to multilateral reform. Pakistan, in contrast, continues to grapple with economic challenges, political instability, and a military-civil imbalance that undermines its institutions. Yet, every major security incident seems to reset the diplomatic narrative to a Cold War-era formula where India and Pakistan are treated as symmetrical adversaries, frozen in a binary.

The Trump-brokered ceasefire that followed the Pahalgam retaliation added salt to the wound. Though it temporarily lowered tensions, it reinforced the perception—especially in Washington and Beijing—that both countries are equally responsible for maintaining regional peace. Pakistan welcomed the development as a diplomatic victory. Meanwhile, India, having just demonstrated its military resolve, found itself again seated at the same table with a neighbour it believes uses terrorism as statecraft.

Compounding matters, Pakistan responded to India’s strikes with a mix of diplomatic and symbolic escalation: expelling Indian diplomats, a trade ban, and closing its airspace to Indian flights. These moves may have little long-term impact, but they serve a narrative: that of two nations locked in perpetual hostility, unable to disentangle themselves from the trauma of 1947.

This narrative is not only outdated—it is damaging. India’s global ambitions are undercut every time it is pulled back into a bilateral frame with Pakistan. When international observers speak of “India-Pakistan tensions,” they often overlook the deep asymmetry between the two nations’ capabilities, aspirations, and global relevance. Pakistan needs this framing to stay diplomatically relevant. India, on the other hand, suffers every time it is dragged back into it. The Indian Supreme Court’s rejection of a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) seeking a judicial inquiry into the Pahalgam attack added another layer of complexity. While the court stressed national unity and the importance of not demoralising soldiers during a crisis, critics argue that some level of independent scrutiny could have helped India reinforce its credibility. After all, transparency and institutional trust are the hallmarks of the very modern nation-state India aspires to be.

Pakistan, for all its internal weaknesses, has successfully captured global perception. By calling for an independent investigation and denying involvement, it has positioned itself as the victim of unilateral aggression—even as its own track record on militancy remains murky. The issue is that such moves often gain traction in a world more concerned with de-escalation than justice.

The legacy of Partition looms large in all this. India and Pakistan are not simply two sovereign states in disagreement. They are, in many ways, entities still grappling with the unfinished business of their violent creation. Seventy-eight years after independence, they remain tethered not by cooperation, but by conflict. And the world, as evidenced in its response to the Pahalgam crisis, remains all too eager to treat them as two sides of a single coin.

For India, the challenge ahead is not just how to respond to provocation, but how to do so without stepping back into the shadow of a shared history it no longer wishes to inhabit. Strength alone is not strategy. Sometimes, the smartest move for a rising power is to act like one.

• This article was published at The Friday Times