Indian nationalism intensifies over Kashmir
From 7 May to 10 May, the working classes of India and Pakistan were held hostage by the Indian and Pakistani states. Artillery, missiles, drones and aircraft killed civilians on both sides. Who knew where it would stop?
India began its strikes claiming it targeted only “terrorist camps” and not military assets, because it did not seek escalation. But as Pakistan downed Indian fighter aircraft and attacked air defences, India did escalate. It attacked Pakistani military infrastructure—one site just 10 kilometres from the capital Islamabad. The attacks and counterattacks threatened to turn into outright war between two nuclear-armed nations: Pakistan boasts low-yield tactical nuclear weapons designed for battlefield use as a credible threat against India’s more capable conventional forces.
An enormous chunk of the world’s population was, for a time, held hostage by not only the generals on both sides but also the ruling politicians, their capitalist backers and the jingoistic media, all united by their lust for money and power. Then suddenly—a ceasefire. The exact role of third parties (especially the US) is still unclear. But according to Sushant Singh, a lecturer at Yale, consulting editor at the Indian news magazine Caravan and a veteran of the Indian army, it seems that outside intervention presented a timely off-ramp for the two militaries.
The ceasefire is a welcome reprieve. Reportedly, neither side was prepared for war or seeking war, and the ceasefire is likely to hold for now. But relations between the two states are qualitatively worse and the stakes considerably higher today than a month ago.
Since the ceasefire, both states have claimed victory and as such vindication of their military positioning and strategy. Some observers are glad: both sides claiming a face-saving victory for the benefit of their domestic constituencies lowers the immediate risk of further military action and strengthens the ceasefire. But the fact that both sides feel vindicated leaves us in a more alarming and dangerous position in the long run.
For Pakistan, the ceasefire reinforces its strategy of using the threat of nuclear weapons to make India relent—if not directly, then by increasing the likelihood of intervention by the US. At the same time, Modi has declared a “new normal” in military policy. He won’t abide “nuclear blackmail”, meaning that Pakistan’s tactical nukes will not deter escalating military attacks. Moreover, the Pakistani state will be held responsible for future terrorist attacks in India (regardless of evidence). Over the past decade, India has made increasingly severe attacks on Pakistan in 2016, 2019 and now 2025, in response to attacks by Kashmiri militants on Indian armed forces or civilians. It is expected that, next time, India will escalate another step.
That may be the new normal in India’s military policy. There also seems to be a new normal in Indian society: a higher intensity of anti-Muslim and anti-Pakistan nationalism and militarism. Modi is in an unfamiliar position of having to defend the ceasefire against voices to his right. These voices argue that he should have kept going and pressed his advantage.
Nationalism has also surged to the left of Modi. Just three days after the 22 April attack in Pahalgam that set off this latest escalation of tensions, all major opposition parties extended full support to the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government to take any action against Pakistan in response. They knew full well that Modi’s response would not be a police investigation to catch the terrorists and try them in court—but some sort of military attack on Pakistan. India’s nationalist roar was green-lit across the spectrum of mainstream politics.
At the centre of the chest beating is the disputed territory of Kashmir. For decades, the Indian-occupied portion of Kashmir has been host to one of the highest concentrations of army troops deployed against a civilian population outside war times. It is a sign of how much the Kashmiri people don’t want to be ruled by the Indian state. India and Pakistan have fought three wars over Kashmir, aside from military actions short of war.
Since India’s independence from Britain in 1947, the primary antagonist in Indian-occupied Kashmir has been the Indian state. Over the decades, there have been periods of relative calm, as well as periods of armed insurgency by Kashmiris and armed occupation by the Indian state. Through it all, the Indian state has refused to hold a referendum to let Kashmiris decide whether to remain within India or to secede.
Kashmir remained underdeveloped and suffered frequent bouts of repression by Indian armed forces shielded by special anti-terror laws that granted them impunity. This situation spurred the formation of separatist militias that undertook armed actions against the Indian army, or terror attacks on civilians.
The most recent bout of repression began in 2019 during Modi’s second term as prime minister. Kashmir used to have a constitutionally enshrined “special status” reflecting the circumstances of its accession to India. At independence in 1947, the Hindu king of this Muslim-majority region had opted to join India and not Pakistan, without any consultation of popular opinion. Modi ended this special status in 2019, a long-desired goal of Hindu nationalists.
To intimidate Kashmiri opposition, Modi arbitrarily placed Kashmiri politicians under house arrest and detained thousands of civilians. Curfews were imposed to stifle protest. There was a crackdown on journalists and a months-long internet and phone blackout. Laws had up until then restricted residency status in the state and the right to buy land to Kashmiris. These laws were revoked to allow increasing settlement by non-Kashmiri Hindus to change its Muslim-majority demography and distinctive culture. In the years since, Modi claimed to have subjugated Kashmir and was touting it as a peaceful tourism hot spot.
Meanwhile, Pakistani nationalists have long seen Kashmir as rightfully theirs and unfairly denied to them in 1947. The dream of integrating Kashmir into Pakistan, or the objective of helping Kashmiri Muslims against a repressive Indian state, has been a key ideological justification for the large military and intelligence budget in the poor and underdeveloped country.
The Pakistani army and intelligence have supported Kashmiri militant groups with arms and training, and by providing safe havens in Pakistan. They have had some identifiable role in several terrorist attacks in India. This is particularly so since the 1980s, when the US under President Ronald Reagan cosied up to the dictatorship of General Zia, with his program to Islamise the state. The US found the Pakistani military invaluable in arming and training mujaheddin in Afghanistan to undermine its pro-USSR government. Pakistan’s generals are key players in the country’s politics. They made military coups and ruled directly for three long stretches in the 1960s, 1980s and 2000s. Coups aside, politicians are often seen as becoming viable only when they secure support from influential figures in the military.
Today, the real head of state is acknowledged to be General Asim Munir, not Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. Munir is known for pushing Islamism in the army. He was among the crop of officers promoted under Zia in the 1980s. Domestic popular support for the regime of Munir and the generals is not strong. The economy is in dire shape and heavily indebted. Insurgencies in some parts of the country plague the army. There is stronger support for Imran Khan, a cricket celebrity turned conservative populist politician, than for the current rulers. Khan became prime minister in 2018, initially with the support of the military. But he came to be seen as too assertive against the military by 2023, and is now in jail. The fragile hold of the military regime makes jingoism over Kashmir more politically useful.
The trigger for the most recent war scare was the terrorist attack in the Kashmiri town of Pahalgam on 22 April in which 26 civilians were killed—mostly Hindu tourists from outside Kashmir. India immediately blamed Pakistan, though no proof has been offered and the culprits remain at large. The Modi administration immediately launched a jingoist campaign against Pakistan and Muslims generally, amplified by the far right.
The Modi government has suspended the Indus Water Treaty between the two countries, which controls how India could act on three rivers that flow from India to Pakistan. The river flow is vital for the livelihoods of masses of Pakistani farmers, as well as for electricity generation. Pakistan declared that India’s suspension of the treaty could be seen as an act of war.
India has already weaponised the flow of water to minor effect, causing small-scale flooding in Pakistan in late April. But to weaponize this to major effect would take the construction of dams and reservoirs over a decade or more. Indian planners have long identified this measure to assert India’s material interests against Pakistan. As Pakistani journalist Khurram Husain argues in the Dawn newspaper, the Pahalgam attack merely offered the pretext.
India’s action over the river treaty has raised the stakes in the region generally, not just with Pakistan. Kanak Mani Dixit, Nepalese journalist and founder of Himal SouthAsian magazine, interviewed on Indian news platform the Wire, noted that there are many shared river systems between India and Nepal, China, Bangladesh. These are contentious resources given climate change, economic needs and population pressures. As regional tensions evolve over time, these resources are likely to be further weaponised.
In Kashmir, more than 3,000 people have been arbitrarily arrested or detained since the Pahalgam attack. The government demolished the houses of Kashmiris it declared to belong to relatives of terrorists. This is a common form of collective punishment used by BJP politicians against Muslims. Prominent right-wing voices—including a former army general and a former Kashmir police chief—have called for “the Israel playbook” and to turn Kashmir into Gaza.
Rohingya refugees (mostly Muslim) from Myanmar were rounded up in New Delhi, flown to navy ships, beaten and then dropped in the ocean with a life jacket and told to swim to Myanmar. More than 1,000 Bangladeshi residents of India (also mostly Muslim) were rounded up by police in different states, and hundreds have been forced into Bangladesh.
Kashmiri students at universities in several north Indian states have been attacked or threatened and told to leave campus. The attacks were led by the BJP’s student wing, as well as Hindutva vigilante groups (like the Hindu Raksha Dal).
The state of Uttar Pradesh, a stronghold of the far right, has experienced the most anti-Muslim hate incidents since 22 April, according to a report by the Association for Protection of Civil Rights. Authorities there have demolished at least 20 mosques and madrasas. At least one Muslim man has been killed by a Hindu vigilante group.
Hindutva mobs have also led attacks on Muslim-owned shops, mosques and random Kashmiris and Muslims in several other states. Social media handles with big followings among the Hindutva right wing have been full of incitement, death threats and rape threats against Kashmiris, Muslims and anti-war activists.
An example from a state that is not a stronghold of the BJP is West Bengal, which borders Muslim-majority Bangladesh. It was once a bastion of left parties, but for the past decade and a half it has been ruled by Mamata Banerjee’s All India Trinamool Congress Party. Suvendu Adhikari, a BJP politician and leader of the opposition in the state assembly, has threatened that if the BJP wins state elections next year, they’ll throw out elected members of the legislative assembly who are Muslim. When the left organised anti-war protests and rallies in Bengal, they were physically attacked by a BJP mob, while the police refused to intervene.
Banerjee once positioned herself as a secular protector of Muslims, who make up 31 percent of the state’s population. In recent years, though, she has been shoring up her Hindu credentials, doling out patronage to Hindu religious causes. She fears the BJP might consolidate the Hindu vote in Bengal and end her fiefdom.
Indian nationalism is intense across mainstream politics. It is a bad sign for the working classes of the region. The Indian ruling class will likely seek to assert itself more in the region—economically or even militarily. There will likely be more anti-migrant hysteria against Bangladeshis. The situation for Indian Muslims and the left is becoming increasingly perilous. Secular or liberal nationalists might quibble with Modi’s Hindu chauvinism, but that is largely academic. It is Hindu nationalism above all that sets the agenda and makes facts on the ground, and unfortunately, very few are willing to stand up to it.
