Why India and Pakistan Have Been Fighting for Over 75 Years

When India and Pakistan were born in August 1947, they did not simply emerge as two sovereign nations. They were carved out of the same body—one torn by trauma, division, and over a million lives lost to violence. Families were split across borders that didn’t exist a month before. The Punjab and Bengal burned with fire and blood. And while the newly formed governments in Delhi and Karachi tried to stabilize their newborn states, a third, unresolved story was already unraveling in the mountains of Kashmir.

That unresolved story has become the longest-running conflict in South Asia. It is not just a border dispute. It is a legacy of rushed decisions, strategic errors, betrayal, and an unfinished page of history.
Maharaja Hari Singh, the Hindu ruler of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, found himself at a crossroads during Partition. His state had a majority Muslim population, yet he was under no constitutional obligation to join either India or Pakistan. Like many rulers, he initially chose to stay independent—hoping to maintain Kashmir as a sovereign, neutral kingdom.

But the hope of independence was short-lived.

On October 22, 1947, thousands of tribal raiders from Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province—trained, armed, and sent by Pakistan’s army under Operation Gulmarg—invaded Kashmir. Their objective was to forcibly annex the state before it could accede to India.

The attackers looted, raped, and burned their way through Baramulla, advancing toward Srinagar. Hari Singh fled the capital, and seeing no other option, requested help from India.
India agreed to send military assistance—but only after a legal Instrument of Accession was signed. On October 26, 1947, Hari Singh formally acceded to India, handing over control of defense, foreign affairs, and communications—the same limited powers other princely states had signed over.

On October 27, Indian troops were airlifted to Srinagar and pushed the raiders back. The accession was complete, constitutional, and ratified by India’s Constituent Assembly. But Pakistan refused to recognize it. India, seeking peace, referred the matter to the United Nations in January 1948. The UN Commission for India and Pakistan (UNCIP) proposed a three-step resolution:

Pakistan never withdrew its troops. Instead, it began administering the occupied region as Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) and continued to interfere in Kashmir’s internal affairs.

There is well-documented evidence and credible historical accounts that:

This violated the core principles of a free and fair plebiscite, which was meant to reflect the will of Kashmir’s original residents, not settlers from across the border.

Even beyond Pakistan’s violations, the plebiscite was plagued by practical and moral questions:

Eventually, India concluded that Pakistan’s aggression and sabotage nullified the resolution’s intent.
In 1965, Pakistan launched Operation Gibraltar, infiltrating thousands of disguised soldiers into Indian-administered Kashmir to incite a local rebellion. The assumption was that the Kashmiri people would rise up against India.

They didn’t.

Instead, local Kashmiris alerted Indian authorities. The infiltrators were caught, and India launched a full-scale military response, crossing the international border and advancing toward Lahore and Sialkot.

The war ended in a ceasefire brokered by the Soviet Union through the Tashkent Agreement in January 1966. While both sides returned to pre-war positions, the war was a strategic victory for India, proving that Kashmir would not fall through covert warfare. The Indo-Pak war of 1971 was centered on East Pakistan’s independence struggle, but it permanently altered the India-Pakistan dynamic.

Pakistan’s claim to Kashmir was diplomatically weakened. In 1989, Kashmir witnessed the rise of Pakistan-backed militancy, masked as a local freedom movement. India maintains that:

Pakistani troops again infiltrated Indian territory in Kargil. India launched Operation Vijay and recaptured all positions. The world condemned Pakistan’s betrayal of the Lahore Declaration, signed just months before.

India declared that Kashmir was no longer a “dispute,” but a settled constitutional matter. India and Pakistan have fought multiple wars, signed bilateral agreements, and engaged in periods of both dialogue and confrontation since 1947. Yet the Kashmir dispute remains unresolved, shaped by the legacy of Partition, the decisions of princely rulers, and decades of conflict, mistrust, and differing national narratives.

This enduring tension continues to play out in both diplomacy and on the ground. On April 22, 2025, a terror attack in Pahalgam’s Baisaran Valley claimed the lives of 26 civilians and injured 20 others, targeting tourists in what Indian authorities attributed to militants linked to Pakistan-based groups. In retaliation, India launched Operation Sindoor on May 7, conducting precision airstrikes on nine terror camps across Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), including camps associated with Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed.

Incidents like these reflect how unresolved issues—combined with terrorism, cross-border militancy, and strategic responses—continue to escalate tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbors. A peaceful resolution will depend not only on historical understanding and legal clarity but also on stability, counterterror cooperation, and a renewed commitment to bilateral engagement in a highly volatile region.


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