India, Pakistan, Kashmir: How religious nihilism can go nuclear

Not once, not in the past week, nor the last 77 years, have the governments in Islamabad and New Delhi ever bothered to ask Kashmiris themselves if they wish to sacrifice their blood or freedom for a nuclear 'game of chicken'. As India and Pakistan return to frenzied shadow boxing, flirting with armageddon, Kashmir's aspiration for self-determination lies buried beneath their feet. 

The militant attack that massacred 26 tourists in Pahalgam on April 22, almost all of them Indian Hindus, has propelled both onto a wider path of war that feels total and inevitable. Predictably, justice for the victims today feels incidental to the larger spectacle of manufactured jingoism, if Indian and Pakistani statements are anything to go by. 

The clock is ticking. Despite the absence of concrete evidence linking Pakistan to the attack, Indian military action against Pakistan is reportedly "imminent" and is expected within the next 24-36 hours. Narendra Modi has handed the Indian army a carte blanche, or "operational freedom" in warspeak, to strike Pakistan as they see fit. For his part, Shehbaz Sharif has warned that Pakistan will use nuclear weapons if there is a "direct threat to its existence."

Despite the hell-bent fantasies of Islamabad and New Delhi, Kashmir and its people are not a zero-sum game where one side's loss is the other's gain. After three major wars and countless skirmishes over the embattled region, this tried and failed Nash equilibrium offers no solution beyond the bloodletting of Kashmiris and the looming threat of regional, if not global, catastrophe. 

It's telling that neither medias in either country paid much attention to the extrajudicial detention of over 2,000 Kashmiris in Indian-occupied Kashmir since the Pahalgam massacre — a stark reminder that Modi's settler-colonial, Hindutva project in Kashmir is still operating at full throttle, or to the widespread protests against the Pakistani government’s mistreatment of so-called 'Azad Kashmir'. If Kashmir truly is Pakistan’s “jugular vein,” as PM Shehbaz Sharif reiterated, one would expect greater concern for the well-being of its people instead of treating paradise as a pawn for the Punjabi establishment.

Trouble in paradise

"Pakistan's policy in Kashmir has been reduced to bleeding Indians; and India's to bleeding the Kashmiris, and to hit out at Pakistan whenever a wound can be inflicted," wrote the much-missed Pakistani scholar Eqbal Ahmed in Dawn in 2000. His assessment, written after Pakistan’s misadventure in the 1999 Kargil War, was then based on the assumption of a 'stable' stalemate, believing it was "unlikely to be upset in the absence of a conventional India-Pakistan war." But now that the moment has arrived, only the willfully blind can claim surprise.

Twenty-five years on, India rests under the grip of Modi's fascist, Islamophobic BJP government, while Pakistan’s bloated and unaccountable military runs the country with a totalitarian fist. Both, ironically, seem eager to validate Pakistan founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s “two-nation theory” — the idea that Hindus and Muslims in the subcontinent represent fundamentally distinct religious, cultural, and social identities — to justify their respective projects of religious nationalism, instead of embracing the rainbow of Indian civilisation.

Kashmir, the prized child of a violent divorce, remains trapped in the crosshairs of this nuclear-armed tug of war. India’s brutal occupation and ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing continue to torment the people, regardless of the facade of 'normalcy' that the Modi government clings to in the name of tourism revenues. Forced disappearances and killing of Kashmiris by Indian security forces remain a daily occurrence, hauntingly captured by Basharat Peer in Curfewed Night: “Mothers mash the bloodstained apparel of grooms. On stream banks, bridal wear burns to ash, bridesmaids cry, and the Jhelum [River] flows.”

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And yet, save for symbolic gestures at the United Nations and militant meddling, Pakistan has achieved next to nothing to liberate 'its' afflicted. It effectively watched on as Narendra Modi annexed the territory following the revocation of Article 370 in 2019. Instead, support for the cause of Kashmir has become, as Eqbal wrote, "one big pork barrel...for Pakistani carpetbaggers and patronage seekers, religious and secular, parliamentary and private," to curry favour with the electorate.

Crucially, former ISI chief Hamid Gul’s strategy to “bleed India with a thousand cuts” by supporting Kashmiri militant groups has backfired. Rather than fostering support for accession to Pakistan, as intended, the dominant sentiment in Kashmir has shifted toward a desire for outright independence. Meanwhile, Pakistan’s call for a plebiscite in Kashmir has been increasingly marginalised on the international stage, accelerated by the fallout from the 2016 Uri attack and the 2019 Pulwama bombing — both attributed to the Pakistani militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad, and the role Pakistan played in the training of Kashmiris in the late 1980s and 1990s.

Whatever happens, Kashmir pays the price 

As a result, for much of the Indian media, consumed by bloodlust, Pakistan’s actual role in the Pahalgam attack has become almost beside the point; the drive for retribution over the killing of Indians — particularly Indian Hindus — has reached a fever pitch, with military action portrayed as a rightful response to Pakistan’s alleged support for “cross-border terrorism.” One need only watch the incendiary monologues of right-wing anchor Arnab Goswami, whose broadcasts reach an audience of 430 million, to see that judgment has already been passed, with references to Gaza used to fantasise about turning Pakistani cities to rubble.

On the other side, Pakistan holds fast to a long-standing conviction — echoed recently by the Pakistan military spokesperson — that India supports separatist movements within its borders, particularly the Baloch Liberation Army, as evidenced by incidents like the 2025 Jaffar Express hijacking, and has been deepening ties with the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan.

As Kashmiri writer Mirza Waleed writes in The Guardian, the tit-for-tat has now entered uncharted territory: “I will stop your water,” says India. “I will suspend our peace treaty,” Pakistan responds. It all sounds like playground brinkmanship, until you consider the stakes. If India stops Pakistan's water supply, 200 million Pakistanis will be without water, already a severely scarce resource. If Pakistan suspends the Simla Agreement, the fragile Line of Control may turn into a killing field. And once again, it is Kashmir, and perhaps much more, that will bleed.

Much has been written about the tragedy of Kashmir and how this 'paradise on earth' became the world's most militarised war zone. Pathos surrounds it, where an overwhelmingly Muslim population, especially following the exodus of 270,000 Pandits, inhabits the only place in India that produces saffron, a colour deeply symbolic of sacrifice in Hinduism. 

But it is precisely this loaded symbolism that has dragged Kashmir into the nuclear game of mutually assured stupidity between India and Pakistan, two rivals more concerned with ideological one-upmanship than protecting the region they claim to ‘parent.’ And like a child disillusioned by the dysfunction of its guardians, Kashmir’s only escape from this tragic inheritance lies in forging its own path.

Benjamin Ashraf is an Editor at The New Arab. He is also a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Jordan's Center for Strategic Studies.

Follow him on X: @ashrafzeneca

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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff, or the author's employer.