What Pakistan Costs India

From the blood spilled in Pahalgam in 2025 to the loss of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948, India has been paying the price of Pakistan’s founding idea every single day. And yet, much of that price remains so invisible that even Indians rarely grasp it. The world sees strikes and battles. What it misses is the human cost, the communal tensions, the development drag, and the moral dilemma (of punishing a hydra-headed state and sparing its ‘hostage’ citizens) that India has carried for nearly eight decades.* The first big bill for having Pakistan came early. Just five months after Partition, the man who led India’s peaceful struggle for freedom was assassinated. Not by an enemy across the border, but by a countryman who believed Mahatma Gandhi had betrayed India by being too generous to Pakistan — and to Muslims who ought to have gone to the country ‘created’ for them. Historical accounts now show that Pakistan’s founders feared an influx of all Indian Muslims — and were relieved that it was prevented because Gandhi and other leaders stood by a secular constitution. The futility of the two-nation idea was exposed at birth!* The next bill was already in the making: Kashmir. What began as a princely dilemma — settled by a legal accession — turned into a battlefield by Oct 1947. Since then, it has consumed over thousands of lives, cost lakhs of crores in military deployments, led to exodus of minority Hindus and transformed India’s northern crown into its most militarised, emotionally fatigued region. medium121167674* Then came bigger wars — 1965, 1971, and 1999. Kargil was fought within weeks of Pakistan signing a peace agreement. These wars took thousands of soldiers and civilians. Each came with an opportunity cost in terms of investments in schools, roads, and factories for the sake of tanks, radar, and troop movement. The burden doesn’t end at the border. In 2001, Parliament was attacked. In 2008, Mumbai bled under one of the most devastating terror strikes in modern history. Finally, on April 22, Pahalgam saw the most savagely targeted expression of terror against a religion — almost as if acting on what General Asif Munir had said a few days earlier.Then there are costs much harder to measure.* Every time a general in Rawalpindi or a politician in Islamabad reaffirms the Two-Nation Theory — the idea that Hindus and Muslims are inherently incompatible despite living together for nearly thousand years, most of which are common to Pakistan’s history — it brings India’s 200mn Muslims under a lens of suspicion.They are asked — by a handful of rabid elements — if Pakistan is their spiritual homeland and India merely a place of residence. This, at least on the margins, has shaped elections, ignited tensions, and inflicted humiliation.* Entertainment, sports, and even language have borne the cost of Pakistan’s deeds. India is often urged not to boycott Pakistani artists or sportspersons. That appeal, while morally sound, rings hollow in the face of reality. It is a bitter paradox to cheer a visiting cricketer while mourning citizens killed by groups protected by the same state.Most Indians can — and do — separate the people of Pakistan from their generals. But even people-to-people ties require a minimum of trust. And that trust cannot grow under the shadow of repeated harm. The roguish border state has also meant that peaceful regionalism, one of the greatest engines of prosperity in Europe and Southeast Asia, remains a non-starter in South Asia. medium121167681When, how and can the Pakistani state stop measuring its success by the harm it causes to India? | There has been evidence — not just on social media — that the toxic hallucinogen that its military chiefs have interjected into Pakistan’s memory is wearing thin. On every development indicator on which it was once equal or marginally better than India, Pakistan has slid at an accelerated rate. It’s chasing a mirage of military equality by trading this with the welfare of its people.Long before General Munir, there was Zulfikar Bhutto, who famously declared: “We will eat grass…but we will get our own (atom bomb).” Today, Pakistan may not be eating grass, but it’s not too far from it. It has transitioned from an AAA state — ruled by Allah, army, and America — to an AAC state, with China replacing Uncle Sam as the newest patron.Operation Sindoor should disabuse Pakistan of two notions. One, that it can prevent India from acting against its terror network fearing a nuclear ‘spillover’. Two, that it can claim innocence by pointing at non-state actors harming India. Self-harm cannot be an excuse to harm others — not in perpetuity, not even by a client state. Shorn of the blackmail value of nuclear parity, it may start aiming for the only parity that matters — in prosperity.In 1950s France, Charles de Gaulle confronted national decline with brutal honesty. “I am trying to give France the appearance of a solid, firm, confident and expanding country,” he said. “While it is a worn-out nation…the whole thing is a perpetual illusion.” Pakistan needs leaders with similar clarity — someone honest first to their own people. On its eastern border, it will find a neighbour it couldn’t defeat, a neighbour that needs nothing from it. And a neighbour ready to partner in peace — on its own terms — if Pakistan ever chooses progress over pretence. medium121168149Imran’s Self-Destruction: As Pak PM, Khan could have been a unifier and builder. He chose to be a divider and destroyer medium121168163