I was just a child when I first visited Kashmir on a summer holiday. It was a land so breathtakingly beautiful, so softly surreal, it felt as if I’d crossed into a world where fairytales might just be true.
One afternoon, the mission head of the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) invited our family to lunch. The venue was the garden of what was then called the Oberoi Palace, perched elegantly above the shimmering expanse of Dal Lake. The lake glistened in the sunlight, as still and silent as a held breath.
Midway through lunch, the UN official turned to me with the kind of playful curiosity adults often reserve for children and asked, “Tell me, what’s the place you’ve liked most during your holiday in Kashmir?” I answered without a moment’s hesitation: “Pahalgam”. Not because it looked like something out of a fable, though it easily could have, but because that was where I caught my first trout. I remember standing knee-deep in a freezing, pristine freshwater stream, my small hands nervously gripping a fly-fishing rod, while a local fishing guide held me steady from behind, the way one might brace a young apprentice braving treacherous waters.
Another guide stood right by my side, as added precaution for my age and inexperience. The icy water tugged at my legs, the forest whispered all around us, and when the line finally twitched and sprang to life, I felt a thrill so pure it eclipsed everything else. It was my first unforgettable adventure in the wilderness – and like all firsts, it left a mark that never quite fades.
Decades have passed since that cherished summer, but what I remember most fondly – and most emotionally – is not the childhood adventures or the storybook scenery, but what unfolded when the locals in Pahalgam came to know where we were originally from. At first, our entourage was perceived as American. Our accents, Western clothes, and perhaps the passports we carried – required at checkpoints – seemed to suggest as much, and we were treated with polite, if distant, courtesy. Everything changed though when our accompanying Kashmiri officials began to share that we were of Pakistani origin. That single revelation fundamentally transformed every interaction. The graciousness and civility extended to us deepened into something that felt almost reverential.
At a petrol station just outside town, the attendant’s expression changed the moment he learned from our driver where we hailed from. “Aap Pakistan se hain?” he asked, his voice filled with unmistakable excitement. When my father nodded, the man waved away all mention of payment, touching his heart in a gesture that required no translation. A restaurant owner refused to present bills, brushing aside our protests with warm smiles. “You are our brother”, one elderly man told my father, his weathered face expressing genuine warmth. “Your presence here is payment enough.” At a small roadside shop, the owner prepared steaming cups of kehwa for our family, declining any offer of compensation with gentle insistence. My father, ever discreet, slipped a few rupees onto the counter, only to return later and find them tucked carefully beneath the windscreen wiper of our car.
This wasn't mere generosity or hospitality; it was an expression of something deeper, more profound: an affinity that defies the artificial boundaries drawn by colonial powers, and that no border, however barbed, and no policy, however brutal, has ever been able to erase.
Today, that same Pahalgam – the place where I first fell in love with Kashmir’s unparalleled beauty – has become the site of a heartbreaking and devastating tragedy, and now stands as the flashpoint that threatens to intensify into an extremely dangerous and volatile confrontation between India and Pakistan. What we are witnessing is an escalation that could engulf the entire region in catastrophic conflict.
Reflexively, predictably, and with considerable vitriol, New Delhi pointed fingers at Pakistan – offering no evidence, only bravado. Rather than seek truth or extend empathy, India launched a diplomatic offensive, hoping to marshal condemnation from Western allies. But this time, the echoes did not reverberate. The response from Washington was measured; the silence from key capitals was deafening. New Delhi’s frantic effort to internationalise blame found little traction. The world is not naive; it seems to have grown wary of India’s pattern – accusation without inquiry, escalation without introspection – and recognises that hostilities between two nuclear-armed states can spiral into uncontrollable escalation, with consequences that could extend well beyond the region and defy any effort at containment.
As of May 7, that spiral is no longer hypothetical. What it could not justify with evidence, India now seeks to enforce through military adventurism. What it could not win on principle, it now attempts to impose through provocation. In a flagrant act of pusillanimous aggression, Indian airstrikes targeted civilian areas deep inside Pakistan in the dead of night. At least 26 lost their lives; 46 others were injured. The distinction between terror and state violence collapses when both target the innocent. What separates militants who murder tourists beneath tranquil skies from a republic that hides behind sovereignty while raining death upon defenceless families?
These strikes follow a now-familiar script: a crisis is manufactured, blame is assigned without investigation, and military theatrics are deployed to distract from internal fractures. Wars, however, are not a controlled experiment or one-act plays – and the universe does not forget the one who draws first blood. What India has begun with reckless arrogance, Pakistan will end with resolute clarity – on terms of its own choosing.
As a prelude to what may yet follow, the Pakistan Air Force shot down five Indian fighter jets, including advanced Rafales, Sukhois and a MiG-29, without suffering a single loss of its own. It was a devastating assertion of aerial supremacy, exposing India’s domestically mythologised military might as highly embellished with Bollywood-inspired bravado.
Earlier, on May 3, Pakistan had announced the successful training launch of the Abdali Weapon System, a 450 km-range, surface-to-surface missile equipped with advanced manoeuvrability and precision guidance. While the exact timing of the launch remains undisclosed, its message was unmistakably timed and unequivocally clear: deterrence is intact, and Pakistan’s strategic forces remain alert, assured, and prepared – not to provoke, but to prevent. Ironically, that moment was steeped in historical resonance.
More than two centuries ago, it was not Abdali’s sword that humbled the Maratha Confederacy, but their own arrogance that force alone could guarantee supremacy. In 1761, at the Battle of Panipat, the Marathas fell not for lack of courage, but for lack of vision. Today, the lesson returns with eerie familiarity: escalation invites consequence and history – while often lenient towards the restrained – rarely spares the proud.
Delhi’s current regime, intoxicated by majoritarian triumphalism and emboldened by impunity, has embraced a posture of defiance. It brands compromise as weakness, dialogue as surrender and restraint as betrayal. But the world must now start to question the sustainability of this approach. While India's massive consumer market and low-cost labour present obvious commercial opportunities, its leadership's willingness to treat war as a political instrument rather than a last resort raises serious questions about its suitability as an investment destination.
Can a nation governed by a supremacist ideology truly be a trustworthy partner for peace or profit? What rational investor should commit capital to a nation whose government routinely escalates tensions to shore up domestic political support? Would it be pragmatic to establish critical supply chains in a country perpetually teetering on conflict’s edge? The costs of India's belligerence may prove far more substantial than its strategists have calculated.
If New Delhi continues to suppress rather than engage, confront rather than reconcile, then the future it is building will be not one of prosperity, but of permanent siege. India’s tactics – whether through demographic engineering, brutal crackdowns or unprovoked aggression – are not signs of strength but symptoms of fear. You cannot hope to mend the fault lines within your own borders by igniting fires beyond them. You cannot imprison an idea, nor vanquish a people’s collective will through coercion or calculated subjugation. The human spirit, like the Lidder River in Pahalgam, finds a way to flow around the rocks placed in its path.
Until both nations confront the root of the Kashmir dispute with honesty and urgency, India and Pakistan will remain trapped in a tit-for-tat cycle – each response provoking the next, each retaliation calcifying the impasse. Progress will remain hostage to provocation and peace a casualty of pride.
Let India take note of the world’s quiet withdrawal of endorsement, and let it learn from Panipat that foresight ultimately triumphs over fury. Kashmir must be resolved – not as a concession to Pakistan, but as an obligation to the region and its people. No nation can truly rise while stepping over the wounded soul of its own conscience, and India cannot attain the prosperous future to which it so deeply aspires while evading the reckoning it so urgently requires.
The writer is an entrepreneur living in the United States and the United Kingdom. He can be reached at: saraya.yale.edu