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Article below republished from The Wire
How Civil Society Reads India-Pakistan Signals Amid the West Asia War
The myopia of India’s hubristic policy of isolating Pakistan as a pariah ‘terror’ state stands humiliatingly exposed, especially in the face of the neighbour’s ascendancy in the Trump administration’s global calculus, and its growing importance in the diplomatic and collective security structure of the extended region.
By Rita Manchanda
What do civil society peace activists, especially the cross border ‘people to people’ dialogue enthusiasts say about the growing buzz around a senior political ideologue and even a former army chief signaling the possibility of India’s reset of the confrontational face-off in Pakistan-India bilateral relations. The media discourse has been heavy with mixed reactions of the political class and even some encouragement from realist strategists, but what about the cross border civil society networks — the track two, and particularly the people to people track — that supposedly are to break the deadlock in the zero -sum paradigm of the two nuclear armed neighbours?
Movements such as the three decades old Pakistan India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD) have not been idle, waiting for government approvals or the commendation of fundamentalists. On April 18-19, PIPFPD shook off the constraining burden of anti-national labelling, surveillance and militarized nationalist propaganda. The PIPFPD re-energised the Pak-India people to people’s commitment to reject the logic of war, politics of hatred and silencing. After eight years, the urgency of the political moment — of deepening militarisation, authoritarian megalomania, and shrinking democratic spaces — drove the convening of the National Convention of PIPFPD, India chapter in Delhi.
The thematic call of Ishq, Siyasat, Awam (Love, Politics, People): Why Peace Matters, returned the enthusiastic inter-generational assembly once again to a shared historical responsibility as we invoked the memory and spirit of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Sahir Ludhianvi, and Avtar Singh Pash, poets who refused the violence of borders, who spoke against hollow nationalism, and who placed love, dissent, and people at the centre of politics. It was a continuation of the tradition of celebrating voices such as Fahmida Riaz and Amrita Pritam who insisted that the subcontinent’s history cannot be reduced to division, nor its future to hostility.
Diverse struggles
For the hundreds who came – voicing the diverse struggles of farmers, fisherfolks, forest dwellers, workers, artists, academics and lawyers, across fault lines in Manipur, securitized and militarized regions of Chattisgarh and Kashmir, displaced communities and students — peace was not a slogan. It was a political demand rooted in democracy, human rights and justice. Pakistani colleagues disabled from joining by hostile visa regimes, were present in supportive video cameos, excited at the prospect of the return of the multitudinous PIPFPD joint conventions which since the 1990s had enabled ordinary Indians and Pakistanis to travel to each other’s countries and pull down the walls of otherness that divided them. These multifarious contacts were ruptured by the sterile policy of “terror and talks don’t go together” which broke off road, rail and air links, trade and medical tourism, divided families, and stripped diplomatic contacts to bare bones. Toxic propaganda and militarised nationalism triggered escalating military action culminating in Operation Sindoor and the May 2025 war, presently ‘paused’.
The PIPFPD National Convention preceded this recent signalling of support for India -Pakistan people to people contacts. As M. Vijayan, General Secretary of PIPFPD explained.
“PIPFPD is a people to people membership based Forum and does not look at relations from the statist positions of governments, but rather from the prism of people – of fishers who are jailed; of divided peoples of undivided Jammu & Kashmir who have borne the brunt of the violent conflict and wars, of the traders and common people who would stand to gain by opening of borders for travel and trade”.
Within weeks of the PIPFPD assembly’s affirmation of a vision for the future of Southasia that rests on ordinary and diverse people standing at the centre of peace and democracy, there came a surprising convergent call. In an interview to PTI videos, Dattaray Hosbale, the RSS General Secretary exhorted the resumption of people to people contacts, trade and commerce, and issuance of visas and thereby the renewal of diplomatic relations. The senior political ideologue emphasised, “that ultimately the civil society relations (will work). Because we have a cultural relation and we have been one nation”. Did this signal political preparation for a shift in government policy? Was it but another iteration of the RSS ‘s long held view about the peoples’ of the SAARC countries being part of the same cultural family.
From a civil society perspective, not missed was the problematic reference to an undivided subcontinent or the RSS’ vision of akhand bharat (Greater India). The oblique invocation to akhand bharat and the allusion to the artificial partition of the subcontinent is regarded as highly problematic by the peoples of Southasia region, and particularly Pakistan. This probably explains why the Pakistan official spokesperson Tahir Andrabi’s ‘positive’ response focused on the former army chief General Manoj Naravane’s similar observation about the desirability of dialogue and the friendship between the two peoples leading the way.
“Common people live on both sides of the border, with common problems of ‘roti, kapda and makan (food, clothing and shelter). Common man has nothing to do with politics. When there is friendship between the two peoples, there will also be friendship between the two nations,” Naravane told PTI.
Gen. Naravane’s successor, however, struck a predictable belligerent note. Army Chief General Upendra Dwived at an Op Sindoor commemorative event warned Pakistan that if it continues to harbour terrorists and operate against India, then they have to “decide whether they want to be part of geography or history or not.”
Expectedly in a retaliatory slugfest of combativeness Pakistan Defence Minister Khawaja Asif stated that India would be “relegated to history” and its geography “changed” if it attempted any future misadventure against Pakistan.
Winds of change
Such aggressive posturing apart, there are other signs to suggest that the winds of change are blowing. Four track two conversations of influential former diplomats and military men have been held. At various publicly convened book events and seminars, former diplomats and army chiefs have voiced the need for greater flexibility and the desirability of a range of diplomatic tools, including dialogue. It has not been missed that the BJP government’s touted strategic response structure of red lines of ever escalating kinetic action on cross border ‘terror’ has resulted in constraining the government’s actions.
This was particularly evidenced in the singular avoidance of ‘Pakistan bashing’ In the response to the November 2025 Red Fort terrorist attack. In the wake of the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack, Narendra Modi, then Chief Minister, had aggressively asserted that “the country needs a government that takes decisive action, not one that watches while terrorists strike at will.” And the political will of his government was demonstrated at Uri in 2016, Pulwama in 2019 and Pahalgam in April 2025, but held back in November 2025
It is possible that there is convergence in the understanding of the ‘political moment’ which propelled PIPFPD to revitalize the Forum, and is nudging the BJP government towards a policy reset? That is, the political, strategic and economic crisis of global geopolitical wars and regional upheaval. The myopia of India’s hubristic policy of isolating Pakistan as a pariah ‘terror’ state in the international system stands humiliatingly exposed, especially in the face of the ascendancy of Pakistan in the Trump administration’s global calculus, and the country growing importance in the diplomatic and collective security structure of the extended region. Also, Pakistan had outstripped India in the race for the ‘victor’s narrative’ on Operation Sindoor.
Further, evidence of the military cooperation of Pakistan and China have consolidated fears of military fusion. India’s troubles over the high cost of its U.S. alignment have prompted ‘realist’ strategists to question whether national interest is being served by undermining ‘strategic autonomy. The government’s flagrant Israel-India axis has marginalized the country internationally, eroding its great power aspirations The bankruptcy of its moral humanitarianism on Gaza and Iran has edged out claims to leadership of the global south and India as the peace ambassador of choice.
While hardliners fear that Pakistan’s elevated international stature will encourage adventurism, the desirability of maintaining that singular eminence could be restraining Islamabad. The turbulent Afghanistan front and internal insurgencies could be further containing. Equally significant is the economic cost of hostility between India and Pakistan, not only in terms of loss in terms of trade and business but also spiralling defence expenditures.
Moreover, as the PIPFPD assembly noted, the crisis of peace in Southasia is inseparable from the crisis of economic justice. The majority of the population in both countries struggles with vulnerability to poverty, with significant sections lacking secure employment, social protection, and access to dignified livelihoods. The global economic crisis of the U.S. war on Iran requires a collaborative regional response not policies that beggar by an arms race or weaponisation of (Indus) waters. India and Pakistan have structural differences that are difficult to resolve, but equally co-existence is an imperative as evinced by the many initiatives of political leaders on both sides towards engagement.
Missed opportunities
Significantly while the strategic-foreign policy establishment is quick to catalogue the many betrayals of such political overtures, left obscured are the missed opportunities to take advantage of possibilities for turning the troubled relationship.
The former high commissioner to Pakistan, TCA Raghavan during a recent panel discussion on India-Pakistan relations, picked out two such moments, On March 9, 2022, India accidentally fired a supersonic, unarmed BrahMos cruise missile that veered into Pakistani territory causing damage to civilian property but resulted in no casualties. The flight path endangered passenger flights and triggered high-level military alerts in both nuclear-armed nations. Pakistan ‘s official response as reported by the BBC was relatively low keyed as expressed in the statement, to “be mindful of the unpleasant consequences of such negligence”.
During the India- China Galwan face off in 2020 there were fears of a two front military threat from eastern and western Ladakh, but China’s ally Pakistan was reticent except for the Foreign Minister’s statement about India’s provocative illegal construction of roads. Moreover, in February 2021 Pakistan and India agreed to a Ceasefire across the disputed border, coinciding within weeks of the beginning of China- India military disengagement in eastern Ladakh. The announcement came on the eve of the anniversary of the Balakot air strikes.
Civil society groups have long shown that borders can divide states, but they cannot divide people. The peoples of the two Punjabs demonstrated this bond of cross border solidarity in July 2025. Floods in East Punjab threatened to devastate vast tracts of land. Disaster was averted because the peoples of West Punjab opened the gates of the Suleman dam and allowed the waters to flow downstream on the Pakistan side. No official appreciation or even note was taken. But the bond of the two peoples was memorialised in the song “SEVA – The Anthem” by Sufi singer Kanwar Grewal. The track celebrates the trans-boundary unity of the peoples of the two Punjabs standing together to preserve homes and avert devastation.
The prospect of an easing of the hostile bureaucratic regimes that divide the people of Pakistan and India and the rest of Southasia is welcome. However,as M Vijayan emphasised, “Any fundamentalist group or leader making statements for peace is more than welcome, but they need to do a lot more to come clear of the violence in their own history for us to stand together. We understand the significance of the RSS General Secretary’s statement welcoming civil society initiatives for peace in this context. But as before, through good and bad times, PIPFPD has continued to reiterate our positions, for peace, democracy, human rights and justice in the sub-continent,” he added.
Rita Manchanda is the co-chair of Pak-India Forum for Peace and Democracy. She is a multi-media journalist, the author of several books, who works with multiple women’s rights, civil society and social justice groups in India, Southasia and internationally. She served as Executive Director of the regional NGO, South Asia Forum for Human Rights, Kathmandu and as a consultant with multilateral agencies and public think tanks, including UN Women, Commonwealth Technical Fund, Centre for Humanitarian Dialogues and SAFERWORLD. This story, originally published in The Wire, is reproduced here with permission.
Note on Southasia as one word: We use ‘Southasia’ as one word, “seeking to restore some of the historical unity of our common living space, without wishing any violence on the existing nation states” – Himal Southasian
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