Every few years, another appeal urges India and Pakistan to bury the past and embrace the future. This week, it came in the form of an open letter signed by 117 eminent citizens from both countries, calling on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistani counterpart, Shehbaz Sharif, to restore dialogue, reopen diplomatic channels, revive confidence-building measures and resume discussions on all outstanding issues, including Jammu and Kashmir.
It is difficult to quarrel with the aspiration. Peace is better than conflict. Trade is preferable to isolation. Easier travel, cultural exchanges and religious pilgrimages are hardly controversial goals.
The difficulty lies elsewhere.
The letter assumes that the enduring hostility between India and Pakistan is primarily a failure of political will—that if only the two prime ministers chose dialogue over confrontation, the subcontinent might finally escape a cycle that has endured for nearly eight decades.
History suggests otherwise.
The proposals contained in the letter are not novel. Restoring High Commissioners, reopening transport links, facilitating visas and pursuing comprehensive dialogue have all featured in earlier attempts to improve relations. Different governments in New Delhi have experimented with precisely these measures, hoping that sustained engagement would gradually reduce mistrust.
Narendra Modi’s government did not begin by rejecting that approach.
Soon after taking office in 2014, Modi invited Pakistan’s then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to his swearing-in ceremony. The following year, he made an unscheduled visit to Lahore to meet Sharif, an unusual diplomatic gesture between two countries whose relationship has rarely allowed room for political symbolism.
The opening, however, proved short-lived.
Within days of the Lahore visit came the Pathankot terror attack. Uri followed in 2016. Pulwama came in 2019. Whatever diplomatic momentum existed was overtaken by terrorism. The recurring pattern was difficult to ignore: political outreach repeatedly collided with violent setbacks that made normalisation increasingly difficult to sustain.
That experience explains why India’s position has remained broadly consistent. New Delhi has maintained that dialogue cannot progress meaningfully while cross-border terrorism continues. One may debate how that principle has been implemented, but the underlying concern has remained remarkably constant across successive governments.
The military responses that followed major terrorist attacks—the surgical strikes after Uri, the Balakot airstrike after Pulwama and, more recently, Operation Sindoor—were presented by India as retaliatory actions rather than attempts to initiate conflict. They reflected a broader belief that diplomacy and security cannot be treated as entirely separate questions.
This is where the latest appeal leaves its most important question unanswered.
Even if Shehbaz Sharif wishes to pursue a sustained peace process, does Pakistan’s civilian leadership possess the authority to guarantee the conditions under which such a process can survive?
Pakistan’s political history offers reasons for scepticism. While elected governments formally conduct foreign policy, decisions relating to India and national security have long been shaped by the military establishment in Rawalpindi. Civilian leaders have often had to operate within strategic boundaries over which they exercise only limited influence.
That institutional reality matters because peace agreements are only as durable as the ability of both sides to uphold them.
The challenge becomes even greater when Pakistan’s military leadership itself appears committed to an ideological vision that leaves little room for rapprochement. Army Chief General Asim Munir has repeatedly emphasised Pakistan’s Islamic identity and described Muslims and Hindus as distinct civilisational communities. Such rhetoric has been interpreted by many observers as reinforcing, rather than softening, the ideological foundations of Pakistan’s approach towards India. It offers little indication that the security establishment is preparing to dismantle the militant networks that have repeatedly disrupted diplomatic engagement.
The organisers of the letter insist that their appeal is not an endorsement of any political position. That may well reflect their intention. Yet every proposal they advance—from restoring dialogue to reopening cross-border links—ultimately depends on one prerequisite: confidence.
Confidence, however, cannot be legislated into existence.
India and Pakistan have spent decades producing declarations, joint statements, roadmaps and confidence-building measures. They have reopened bus services, expanded trade, restored diplomatic representation and initiated comprehensive dialogues more than once. None of these efforts failed because diplomacy itself was misguided. They failed because acts of terrorism repeatedly destroyed the political trust on which diplomacy depends.
That is the paradox at the heart of the latest appeal.
Its recommendations are neither unreasonable nor unprecedented. They are, in many respects, desirable. But they presume conditions that do not presently exist. Asking two prime ministers to restore normalcy is one thing; ensuring that normalcy survives is quite another.
Until the infrastructure of cross-border terrorism ceases to shape the relationship, India-Pakistan peace will remain constrained by realities that neither Narendra Modi nor Shehbaz Sharif can resolve through dialogue alone.
Open letters may articulate the aspirations of ordinary people. History suggests that peace between India and Pakistan ultimately depends not on the willingness of two civilian leaders to talk, but on whether the conditions exist for those conversations to endure.
