India’s Pak strategy needs a 2025 update

In the immediate aftermath of war this summer, India’s establishment, media cells, B-Team media and a co-opted celebrityverse determined on a zero sum approach. Terror means war. Blood means water denial. Collaboration in non-strategic areas means boycott. 

A state as enemy – means its people are enemies. 

This supposedly new non-negotiable has failed to notice an important reality. It’s a different world from 1980. Today’s wars require responses that work in 2025.

Fifty years have passed since Zia’s toxic era. Even if many Pakistanis in 1980 disagreed with Zia’s Islamist project – both the Pakistani state and its people agreed on the Two Nation theory as an article of faith and Kashmir as Pakistan’s jugular vein.  

In 2025 the state and its people may not all be traversing the same path ideologically or even physically – as in Balochistan. 

The government’s relentless depiction of Pakistan as the axis of evil – shaped by this regime’s own ideological convictions, is therefore off-target and inefficient. Every Pakistani is not a jehadi. Nor are they all interested in becoming one. Nor are they all even interested in being anti-Indian. 

It is time this equation is fed into the strategic matrix. This is the why and how. 

From Zia’s deadly Islamist pull in the eighties, Pakistan has lurched from financial bailouts to wild political swings between elected governments and Army dictators, fed its insatiable appetite for radicalism and risk, fought wars, partnered and betrayed its frontline partner America, jailed, exiled, assassinated its leaders, and choked its regional aspirations. 

Not unexpectedly, the endless uncertainty about Pakistan’s future has triggered a deep and sustained questioning of its past especially by those Pakistanis who have grown up in this lurching, aimless era. Trawling through history, science and culture, the questioning has emerged as a full-blown identity crisis through public discussions and debate on social media. Who are we, where do we belong and why did we make the choices we did are some of the questions that have been asked over the last few years. 

There is a desire to understand, not the uni-dimensional Two Nation theory that tells the foundational story – but more complex histories. Over time, this has had the extraordinary effect of a Pakistani discourse actually moving the needle past its Jinnah defined single-lens Muslim identity of 1947 and its toxic offspring – Zia’s Islamist straitjacket of the 1980s. 

Older generations have been key to this gradual process, critically examining their received mythologies. The erudite travel writer and memoirist Salman Rashid questioned Pakistan’s foundational beliefs of Muslim nationhood after a key visit to his family home in Jalandhar where his relatives were killed in 1947 and has openly dismissed its narrative of  ‘superior, martial’ Arab genes, citing DNA studies that establish the majority of Pakistanis and North Indians share the same genes.

Star political scientist Professor Ishtiaque Ahmed overturned several foundational Muslim League myths; like blaming a ‘devious’ Congress for Partition (a narrative the League shares with the BJP and RSS), the genocidal violence of 1947 and the transfer of population. Instead he has held to account an “intransigent” Muslim League for refusing equitable offers from the Congress for a united land and initiating the violence. 

These are astonishing truths that could barely be discussed at left-liberal dominated history seminars even up to 15 years ago without shouting matches. It was simply too incorrect for an Indian historian to say upfront, the Two Nation Theory was a terrible, racist idea because it would be seen as delegitimising a valid Pakistani identity and subsuming it as Indian. Yet these things are currently being said by Pakistanis!

The real game changer however, has been the rise of the millennials, their Gen Z successors and the digital world they inhabit.

By using their mastery over social media to question the choices and ideological beliefs of their ancestors, acquire information that contradicts official narratives and communicate globally, they have been able to condemn jihadists, engage with the other and push modern agendas. Many have one foot in western liberal democracies where sanctuary is a quick flight away. Others are homegrown but live in a borderless digital world that brings information to them in instant and multiple ways. 

The effect is to erode traditional grand narratives like the Two Nation theory handed down to them, and puncture their infallibility.

Remarkably, a critical element of this search for identity has been the overwhelming Indian participation at all levels – as panelists, audiences, trolls and cheerleaders. The India connection is a no-brainer. Over the last two decades, the studying and working together in universities and offices abroad of two, even three Indo-Pak generations, has led to friendships and bonds. 

Where it hasn’t, social media has powerfully brought these generations within touching distance of each other. In effect, the Internet has facilitated a deep dive, visa-less Indo-Pak Citizens’ Dialogue of sorts, carrying on privately, as young-ish Indians and Pakistanis get to know each other in a way that has nothing to do with official positions. 

Significantly, this Pakistani generation’s worldview is critically shaped by the Indian cultural multiverse they so intensely engage with today – via films, OTT, social media and diaspora countries. It has kindled an inter-generational interest in an older, shared past and identities they see in rituals, festivals, language, fashion and music.  

Despite the hardline, jingoistic films that have emerged over the years, their deepest connection is via Bollywood and music; that brings this shared past to their doorstep. 

This has grown a gradual understanding at various levels, that there is no one else whose culture feels as much like their own. It has mined an actual identity that looks fairly similar to its parent country, neighbour and enemy India. 

A subcontinental belonging finally being acknowledged in a never-seen-before way. 

This has been unseen by older strategic experts and Pakistan watchers. 

Some years ago around the festive season, the biggest trending post on Pakistani social media was ‘Happy Diwali’. An Islamic nation that broke away from its parent country for precisely the privilege of never saying Happy Diwali – seemed to be bizarrely celebrating the diversity they had only seen on screen. Yet besides the odd surprised chuckle in India, it didn’t catch the deeper attention of policy makers.

India’s constitutional promise of equality, religious freedom despite recent times, its early investments in education, its quick dismantling of feudalism and most of all its rapid rise since 1991 – have also drawn deep interest and admiring comparisons with Pakistan’s choices both at Partition and after. 

Two of Pakistan’s well known podcasters – the currently banned The Pakistan Experience’s Shezhad Ghias who has had several discussions on India’s economic policy and infrastructure and Syed Muzammil Shah who has delved into Pakistan’s ideology – have provoked opposition in Pakistan for displaying the intellectual honesty and courage to dissect their country’s past and present. By debating openly, acknowledging inconvenient truths, unraveling Partition in a dogged quest for answers, they have gone far beyond the limits of an ideological state’s narrative. 

Others less intellectual, less known, simply seek out ethnic identities they share across the border along with Indian vloggers and audiences; like a mother-daughter duo who post reaction videos on Indian videos comparing the two countries or the young Punjabi exploring the beauty of abandoned Hindu temples to showcase to his Indian audiences across the border. Indian responses come flooding in and despite trolls, many have communicated with curiosity and eagerness. 

Therefore, the difference between a Pakistani society steeped in Islamist warmongering in 1985 and one peopled by postmodern generations with different concerns of individuality, social connections, global good and even diversity in 2025 is quite clear. 

The post-Partition lonely Wagah candle liberalism was a small, courageous alt-stream that operated within the suffocating confines of Zia’s era. Millennial liberalism is more widespread and bears these shades of a shared subcontinental belonging that never existed earlier. 

Post Sindoor, the crackdown on Pakistani sites has hugely disrupted this engagement and cracked open the divide again. Pakistani Youtubers who almost universally condemned Pahalgam, have taken a direct hit and obviously lost large chunks of their Indian viewership. There is distress, fear, wounded pride and rage. They have expectedly contested Indian claims especially the absurdist hysteria on Indian TV and angrily defended their country’s right to retaliate. Some have fallen back into the weary old rhetoric This has led to Indian counter-arguments, troll sneers and abuse – and hostility on both sides. 

But that is not the point. 

On the day after war broke out in May, a young Pakistani designer spoke searingly of her complicated feelings at being denied the joy of a shared subcontinental belonging. “Because when you are treated like the enemy, joy becomes like a rebellion …. We speak the same language, we feel the same joy. Yet we are told: this joy is not yours”. Trolled in Pakistan, she shut the post down but it echoes the Indians writing to actor Hania Amir whom they regard as ‘theirs;’ promising on her banned Insta handle, “Its ok babe we’ll see your post even from Mars don’t worry.” “Sadqay”, she replies. 

That’s a millennial bond no government can truly break unless it wants to become China. Those who dismiss Diljit Dosanjh’s “music is a unifier” assertion are not plugged into this world and thereby, underestimate this groundswell.

The point is actually this. Pakistan’s jehadi infrastructure and its Army remain intact and dangerous. Many of its young remain vulnerable to radical Islamist thinking. Jyoti Malhotras are a reality. There can be no lowering of guards where it matters. 

Yet, the digital world isn’t going anywhere. 

Punjabi music, Bollywood, Pakistani plays, Instagram and YouTube aren’t switching off. There will be future engagement of all types on both sides despite conflict and future wars. On the Pakistani side a decent cohort has shown a willingness to cautiously explore beyond its national ideology – the absolute key to enmity with India. 

Therefore, alongside the hard military response when required; it is crucial long term, to keep a door open for these potential drivers of incremental changes in Pakistani and Indian landscapes. 

Yet this regime’s single-tone signalling allows no space for this influence to work. By its offensive labeling of madrassachhaps and obsessive gloating about Indian economic might – it pushes fresh thinking across the border back into the old grand narrative of the Two Nation theory that says ‘I told you so’.

In which case, the only outcome will be to switch off these levers of paradigmatic change – a wasted opportunity.  

This is the first of a two-part series on rethinking India's strategy on Pakistan. In the second part, read about how the real war with the neighbour has shifted.

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