Historically, the relationship between India and Pakistan has been mired in conflicts, war, and lack of trust. Pakistan has continued to loom large on India’s horizon despite the growing gap between the two countries. This book examines the nature of the Pakistani state, its internal dynamics, and its impact on India. The text looks at key issues of the India-Pakistan relationship, appraises a range of India’s policy options to address the Pakistan conundrum, and proposes a way forward for India’s Pakistan policy. Drawing on the author’s experience of two diplomatic stints in Pakistan, including as the High Commissioner of India, the book offers a unique insider’s perspective on this critical relationship. A crucial intervention in diplomatic history and the analysis of India’s Pakistan policy, the book will be of as much interest to the general reader as to scholars and researchers of foreign policy, strategic studies, international relations, South Asia studies, diplomacy, and political science.

"Historically, the relationship between India and Pakistan has been mired in conflicts, war, and lack of trust. Pakistan has continued to loom large on India's horizon despite the growing gap between the two countries. This book examines the nature of the Pakistani state, its internal dynamics, and its impact on India. The text looks at key issues of the India-Pakistan relationship, appraises a range of India's policy options to address the Pakistan conundrum, and proposes a way forward for India's Pakistan policy. Drawing on the author's experience of two diplomatic stints in Pakistan, including as the High Commissioner of India, the book offers a unique insider's perspective on this critical relationship. A crucial intervention in diplomatic history and the analysis of India's Pakistan policy, the book will be of as much interest to the general reader as to scholars and researchers of foreign policy, strategic studies, international relations, South Asia studies, diplomacy, and political science"--

The rivalry between India and Pakistan has proven to be one of the world's most intractable international conflicts, ever since 1947 when the British botched their departure from the South Asian subcontinent. And the enmity is likely to continue for another thirty-five years, reaching the century mark. This has critical implications for both countries and the rest of the world. Renowned South Asia expert Stephen P. Cohen explains why he expects this rivalry to continue in this first comprehensive survey of the deep historical, cultural, and strategic differences that underpin the hostility. In recent years the stakes have increased as India and Pakistan have each acquired a hundred or more nuclear weapons, blundered into several serious crises, and become victims of terrorism, some of it from across their borders. America is puzzled by the problem of dealing with a rising India and a struggling Pakistan, and Cohen offers a fresh approach for U.S. policy in dealing with these two powers. Drawing on his rich experience in South Asia to explore the character, depth, and origin of Indian and Pakistani attitudes toward each other, Cohen develops a comprehensive theory of why the dispute between New Delhi and Islamabad is likely to persist. He also describes the terrible cost of this animosity for the citizens of India and Pakistan, including the region's high levels of violence and low level of economic integration. On a more hopeful note, however, he goes on to suggest developments that could ameliorate the tension, including a more active role for the UnitedStates in addressing a range of issues that divide the nations. Kashmir is one of these issues, but as much a consequence as a cause of the rivalry. Can India and Pakistan resolve their many territorial and identity issues? Perhaps the best they can expect in the near term is a limited degree of normalization, including bottom-up ideas generated by the peace and business communities, as wel

Balochistan, Pakistan's largest province, is a complex region fraught with conflict and hostility, ranging from an enduring insurgency and sectarian violence to terror strikes and appalling human rights violations. In his third book on Pakistan, Tilak Devasher analyses why Balochistan is such a festering sore for Pakistan. With his keen understanding of the region, he traces the roots of the deep-seated Baloch alienation to the princely state of Kalat's forced accession to Pakistan in 1948. This alienation has been further solidified by the state's rampant exploitation of the province, leading to massive socio-economic deprivation. Is the Baloch insurgency threatening the integrity of Pakistan? What is the likelihood of an independent Balochistan? Has the situation in the province become irretrievable for Pakistan? Is there a meeting ground between the mutually opposing narratives of the Pakistan state and the Baloch nationalists?Devasher examines these issues with a clear and objective mind backed by meticulous research that goes to the heart of the Baloch conundrum.

Kashmir has been considered one of the longest-running and most intractable conflicts of the modern world. How does one make sense of the issue and look to the future? In The Kashmir Conundrum, former Indian Army chief General N.C. Vij – who himself hails from the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir – gives the complete picture. Starting with a history of Kashmir and its people, he covers the invasion and accession of the kingdom, the wars India and Pakistan have fought, the Pulwama attack of 2019, India's surgical strike at Balakot, and the various formulae that have been tried to settle the issue, right up to the controversial abrogation of the state's special status. In doing so, he draws on his own experience of dealing with the subject closely – as DGMO during the Kargil war; as vice chief of the army during the Parliament attack of 2001; and then as the chief at a time when Pakistan-sponsored infiltration was at its peak. Informed by a field expert's astute perspective, this is a comprehensive and up-to-date account of Kashmir from an army man who has engaged with it at the highest levels.

Lashkar-e-Taiba is among the most powerful militants groups in South Asia and increasingly viewed as a global terrorist threat on par with al-Qaeda. Considered Pakistan's most powerful proxy against India, the group gained public prominence after its deadly ten-person suicide assault on Mumbai in November 2008. By the time the last Lashkar terrorist was dead after nearly 60 hours, it appeared the world was facing a new menace. Boasting transnational networks stretching across several continents, there has been serious debate since 9/11 of whether Lashkar is an al-Qaeda affiliate. The deliberate targeting of Westerners and Jews during the Mumbai attacks raised questions about whether Lashkar was moving deeper into al-Qaeda's orbit and perhaps on a trajectory to displace Osama bin Laden's network as the next major global jihadi threat. Lashkar's expansion has serious security implications for India, Pakistan, Europe and the United States and its activities threaten to damage US-Pakistan relations. Despite growing calls for action, Pakistan is yet to take any serious steps toward dismantling Lashkar for fear of drawing it further into the insurgency raging there and because of its continued utility against India. More than a militant outfit, Lashkar also controls a vast infrastructure that delivers necessary social services to the Pakistani populace, making it all the more difficult to dismantle. Storming the World Stage traces the evolution of Lashkar-e-Taiba over more than two decades to illustrate how the group grew so powerful and to assess the threat it poses to India, the West and to Pakistan itself. The first English-language book ever written about Lashkar, it draws on in-depth field research, including interviews with senior Lashkar leaders, rank-and-file members, and officials of the Pakistani security services--some of who have helped nurture the group over the years.

Using a constructivist model, this study brings nuclear arms control and disarmament back into the debates on the future of Indo-Pakistani relations. Constructivism recognizes the independent impact of international norms, such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Norm (NNPN), on India and Pakistan’s nuclear behavior. Even though the NNPN does not legally bind them, it is reinforced at the global level, and may lead the South Asian rivals to move in the direction of nuclear arms control and disarmament, thus reducing the costs, dangers, and risks of an eternal strategic rivalry. After examining the main tenets of constructivism in international relations, the works delves into the proliferation debate, discussing nuclear reversal and U.S. policy toward the subcontinent since the G. W. Bush administration. It looks at the prospects for nuclear arms control and disarmament in South Asia after the U.S.-India nuclear deal of 2008, and the nuclear abolitionist wave during the first Obama administration. It concludes with the contribution of social constructivism to understanding how changes in the India-Pakistan nuclear status quo can happen.

The Mumbai blasts of 1993, the attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001, Mumbai 26/11—cross-border terrorism has continued unabated. What can India do to motivate Pakistan to do more to prevent such attacks? In the nuclear times that we live in, where a military counter-attack could escalate to destruction beyond imagination, overt warfare is clearly not an option. But since outright peace-making seems similarly infeasible, what combination of coercive pressure and bargaining could lead to peace? The authors provide, for the first time, a comprehensive assessment of the violent and non-violent options available to India for compelling Pakistan to take concrete steps towards curbing terrorism originating in its homeland. They draw on extensive interviews with senior Indian and Pakistani officials, in service and retired, to explore the challenges involved in compellence and to show how non-violent coercion combined with clarity on the economic, social and reputational costs of terrorism can better motivate Pakistan to pacify groups involved in cross-border terrorism. Not War, Not Peace? goes beyond the much discussed theories of nuclear deterrence and counterterrorism strategy to explore a new approach to resolving old conflicts.

The book is based on archival material accessed for the first time from the Nehru Papers and the archives of the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India. It provides readers with a new perspective on a great many significant issues of the sub-continent's India–Pakistan discourse. The Partition was an opportunity for the two nations to go their own ways and build egalitarian societies, complementing each other. Unfortunately, unable to transcend old animosities, Pakistan added new ones to construct the bogey of Indian hegemony. This was diametrically opposed to India's determination to steer clear of the past and pursue a positive policy towards Pakistan, since it shared centuries of historical, economic, social and cultural ties with its people. For India, the separation was like a family dividing its assets by mutual agreement of its members and living peacefully thereafter. For Pakistan, however, the separation was akin to a permanent breakup of a family, which was accompanied by the nursing of grievances and the harbouring of adversarial feelings. It is this mental make-up dictating the Indo–Pakistan narrative in the years following the Partition, which the book succinctly captures.

When India and Pakistan held nuclear tests in 1998, they restarted the clock on an intense competition that had begun with Partition. Nuclear weapons restored strategic parity, erasing the advantage of India's much larger military. But the shield offered by nuclear weapons also encouraged a reckless reliance by Pakistan on militant proxies even as jihadis spun out of control within and beyond its borders. In the years that followed, Pakistan would lose decisively to India, sacrificing its own domestic stability in a failed attempt to assert its claim to Kashmir and influence events in Afghanistan.Defeat is an Orphan tracks the defining episodes in the relationship between India and Pakistan from 1998, from bitter conflict in the mountains to military confrontation in the plains, from the hijacking of an Indian airliner to the Mumbai attacks. It is a frank history of an enduringly bitter relationship, set against the background of Islamist militancy in Pakistan and India's economic leap forward.