ABSTRACT
Introduction For the more than 50 years since partition, relations between India and Pakistan have fluctuated from acrimonious acceptance to vehement conflict, with no sign of a lasting peace. The potentialities of the two neighbouring and fractious countries, both with the capacity of nuclear strike, confronting each other are tremendous. Their rivalry involves a number of issues: the organising ideology of the state, ethnicity, religion, territory, nuclear weapons and the deep national trauma stemming from the tragic separation at the time of their independence in 1947. These issues constitute the incompatibilities between them. Carved out of the common colonial state, the British Raj and sharing the common civilisational outlook, India and Pakistan were born, as it were, fighting each other. The separation has been incomplete, as both countries have fought deadly wars over the possession of Kashmir. Each of them has claimed the territory as an integral part of itself, without which it insists its national foundation would crumble. In this sense, India and Pakistan are like Siamese twins, striving to be separated from each other by inflicting lethal blows. In May 1998, both countries conducted a series of nuclear tests and thus forcefully entered the club of nuclear states. This watershed moment in subcontinental and world history substantively changed the dynamics of the relationship, compounding an already complicated situation. Nobody knows for sure whether they can develop the capacity to effectively manage their nuclear-laden rivalry so that a holocaust might be avoided. As a regional commentator rightfully puts it, ‘India and Pakistan are competing with each other to make South Asia the most dangerous place in the world’.1
