LAST month, 117 prominent activists and former officials from India and Pakistan wrote an open letter to Narendra Modi and Shehbaz Sharif calling on the two prime ministers to resume engagement as both countries faced shared economic, security and environmental challenges that needed urgent attention.

The letter is unlikely to have any effect. The India-initiated absence of a dialogue is not just a consequence of the conflicted India-Pakistan relationship. It is a policy by itself underscoring India’s negative posture towards Islamabad that betrays no hint of a change.

Even if the dialogue did take place it might change little. Historically, whether or not India and Pakistan were talking, their relationship showed little variation, as if it had been inoculated against friendship since infancy. Yet the relationship is not doomed forever; its failure is less due to the complexity of issues than to the policy choices by the two sides, especially India.

Modi’s hard line on Pakistan is not exceptional. That has been the default position of most Indian leaders. Yet, there are aspects that are new. Traditionally, India has had a foreign policy and a Pakistan policy. Since 2014, when he became PM, Modi’s Pakistan policy has had no precedent in hostility, intransigence and intolerance.

Even if there was a dialogue, it may change little.

In many ways, the policy is a re-enactment of the pre-1947 Indian National Congress and Muslim League tensions — now injecting the RSS view of Muslims, Pakistan and Kashmir. The Kashmiri resistance and jihadist currents flowing across the region following the two Afghan wars have made their own contribution to the problems in the relationship. They have played right into the hands of the Hindu nationalist agenda that underpins Modi’s mindset and populism.

Populism thrives on grievance and fear. Populists invariably create an enemy, especially a historical one, and nourish their followers’ nostalgia for the past and yearning for some strongman to ensure justice and retribution for them.

Marketing-savvy and skilled in the use of digital tools, Modi has knitted together real-life issues like terrorism and security and magnified their impact on the public mind by linking them to Indians’ historical memories of communal mistrust and animosity. The way Modi has played terrorist attacks since Pathankot in 2016 has triggered an enormous emotional response from Indian citizens, hardening existing public attitudes towards Pakistan. He derives his political mileage from it.

Not talking to it is also consistent with India’s unsuccessful attempts to project a malign image abroad of Pakistan. In some ways, it is derivative of India’s traditional policy of treating its South Asian neighbours as ‘satellite’ states not worthy of an equitable share in any agreement with India. It wants to impose its hegemony but cannot, at least not on Pakistan. By refusing to talk, India can keep up an illusion of hegemony.

It is embarrassing to be an unconvincing regional power to whom Pakistan had the so-called pretensions to speak as an ‘equal’. India is unable to impose its will on a smaller neighbour not only diplomatically but, as proven by Operation Sindoor, militarily as well. How can it stand up to China? The absence of dialogue masks this inconvenient truth and keeps the West’s bets on it alive.

The absence of dialogue sidelines Pakistan and helps Modi create new ground realities in occupied Kashmir, something he is doing on the water issue too. India is using the Indus Waters Treaty not just as a leverage on other points of conflict between the two countries but also as a cover to possibly violate the IWT and create new facts on the ground. It also gives India’s leadership and diplomats an opportunity to make baseless allegations as evident in a recent Newsweek op-ed by India’s ambassador to the US, in which he blamed Pakistan for India’s suspension of the treaty.

Finally, the relationship operates in a tense regional security environment whose parameters now extend to the Middle East, especially after the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement and burgeoning India-Israel relations. And it beats to the rhythm of a competitive geopolitics focused on the rivalry between the US and China that loom large on the foreign policy canvas of both India and Pakistan. This enlarges the scope of the India-Pakistan conflict, and in the broader context of a rising world disorder makes the issues of war and peace between the two still harder to resolve.

Much more needs to change on both sides for a dialogue to succeed — especially on India’s part as it was the latter country that cut off dialogue. Without such a change, it would be a dialogue to nowhere, yet again.

The writer, a former ambassador, is adjunct professor, Georgetown University.

Published in Dawn, August 12th, 2026