Often enough, the enemy is your best teacher. He not only gives you a reality check on how to deal with him, but also cleans the cobwebs (or, if you will, misconceptions and wrong assumptions) in your head. Through his actions, words and statements, even TV programmes, the enemy makes you realise the need to discard the shibboleths and slogans that guide your policy.

One such moment of epiphany came after watching a Pakistani talk show in which one of the anchors never stops reminding his viewers that he has done nothing but journalism for the last 40 years—all the time behaving as though he did everyone a favour by becoming a journalist in the first place. The programme was enlightening. The anchor was indulging in the usual Pakistani rant on Kashmir but was also peddling the standard Pakistani fake narrative against India. But while the anchor was painting India in lurid colours, his audience was calling up and talking about high power bills, government policies that were creating greater economic distress and other such existential problems. They didn’t give a damn about Kashmir. In the end, the anchor glibly shifted to talking about Imran Khan’s begging bowl diplomacy and tour to UAE and Saudi Arabia. Kashmir was sidelined.

The reason for mentioning this otherwise quite forgettable TV talk show is that it should tell people in India to re-examine some of the assumptions and policy paradigms they have been fed for decades. For instance, there are any number of people in India—politicians (from both the Right and Left), bureaucrats, diplomats, journalists, academicians, think-tankers, analysts, businessmen, you name it—who subscribe to nonsensical and trite clichés: we are the same people; India and Pakistan are “estranged cousins”; the average Pakistani doesn’t see India as an enemy; we can choose/change friends but can’t choose/change neighbours; normalisation with Pakistan is important for the growth of the Indian economy; India will never be able to take a seat at the global high table until it resolves its problems with Pakistan; and finally, the most egregious of them all: a strong, stable, prosperous Pakistan “that focuses on exporting garments rather than jihad” (as is claimed by a recent commentary in a US think tank) is in India’s best interest.

For decades now, this last bit about a “strong, stable, prosperous” Pakistan has been repeated ad nauseam by Indian officials. This would have been justified if Pakistan was a normal country. But given the reality of Pakistan, this can or should be nothing more than a pious sentiment which no serious Indian—certainly not anyone involved in defending and protecting India from Pakistan’s unremitting hostility—can ever subscribe to. In other words, no one with a modicum of sense can ever take the spiel of “strong, stable, prosperous Pakistan” seriously, much less make policy around it. The reason is simple. Whenever Pakistan is strong, stable and prosperous, it becomes a bigger threat to Indian security than when it is weak, unstable and hovering on the verge of bankruptcy. In the former case, Pakistan feels emboldened to indulge in adventurism against India. In the latter case, Pakistan is just so embroiled in its own internal squabbles and existential problems, that its ability to finger India is quite limited. After all, how do you fight with an empty stomach and a hollowed out treasury? “Eating grass” is a good rhetoric but hardly practical if you have neither the stomach nor the taste for grass.

Therefore, India’s interests are best served by a weak, unstable and penurious Pakistan. If Pakistan continues to muddle along, even survive, in such a state, India can live with it. If, however, Pakistan cannot sustain such a drift indefinitely and implodes, then no tears need be shed over its fate. It’s not India’s responsibility to save Pakistan from itself, much less provide Pakistan the means to survive. What people in India need to understand is that coexisting with an unrestructured, unreconstructed and unreformed Pakistan is not possible for any length of time. In fact, this is again something India needs to learn from Pakistan. The forked tongue with which Pakistanis speak doesn’t really hide the fact that it is deeply ingrained in the Pakistani consciousness that they must destroy India in order to survive. Since they still don’t have the ability to do this openly, they seek to undermine India through other means: snatch Jammu and Kashmir which, they believe, will lead to the unravelling of India; damage the Indian economy through terrorism; instigate and incite Indian Muslims to rebel against the Indian state.

There is absolutely no empirical evidence that the average Pakistani doesn’t bear hostility towards India. Even when Pakistan was not exporting jihad but garments, it was hardly well-disposed towards India. Before jihadism and Islamism became the defining character of the Pakistani state and society, the people of Pakistan weren’t exactly filled with love and affection for Indians. After the Islamist bug caught their fancy, the sentiment on India is even more negative. Some people might hide it, but hatred for India in general and Hindus in particular is now deeply ingrained in the Pakistani psyche. If anything, this is the success of the Pakistani state’s indoctrination of its people.

From singers to cricketers, actors to politicians, soldiers to bureaucrats, journalists to academic—there are any number of instances where people who pretend to be liberal, secular and friendly towards India, spout venom against India in unguarded moments. They might come to India to rake in the moolah, but that doesn’t change their hatred for India. After seven decades, the simple fact of the matter is that we are no longer the same people—if ever we were—nor are we estranged cousins. That India has a neighbour from hell is an unfortunate reality. But this need not be forever. While physical geography doesn’t change, political geography does. The neighbour of today need not necessarily be the neighbour of tomorrow.

India neither needs Pakistan for its economic growth nor is Pakistan’s endorsement necessary for India sitting at the global high table. Pakistan is a marginal player in India’s economic calculus. India’s growth potential is not restricted or constrained by strained relations with Pakistan. If anything is preventing India’s economic take-off, it is our own muddled policy-making and governance failures. Pakistan is incidental and irrelevant to this dynamic. As for requiring Pakistan’s endorsement or backing, this is a bait best avoided. For one, Pakistan which always seeks parity with India will never endorse India for anything. For another, if the cost of Pakistan’s endorsement is the vivisection of India, then this is a price India will never be ready to pay. Finally, it was only after Pakistan’s comprehensive defeat in 1971 that India was seen as the paramount power in South Asia, even by Pakistan’s biggest supporters. More than Pakistan’s endorsement, it was Pakistan’s defeat that increased India’s strategic and political relevance. The other factor which raised India’s international profile was its economy, in which Pakistan has no contribution.

India needs to relook and re-examine all its assumptions and presumptions on Pakistan and alter its policy accordingly. Empiricism and realism, and not emotion or nostalgia, should guide India’s Pakistan policy. Anyone who thinks that if only Pakistan shuts the jihad factory and concentrates on garment factories, the dynamic between India and Pakistan will change, doesn’t understand the first thing about Pakistan. Giving up its jihadist addiction is only a necessary first step for any possible normalisation between India and Pakistan. But unless Pakistan learns to accept the reality of India, and is ready to coexist with India without seeking its dismemberment or its reduction, it would be foolish of India to expect any good coming out of Pakistan.

Until that time, a stable, strong and prosperous Pakistan will be the biggest threat to India.