India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar’s recent visit to Islamabad for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) conference, combined with optimistic remarks from former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, has renewed hopes for the normalization of relations between Islamabad and Delhi.

Jaishankar’s visit to Islamabad—the first by an Indian foreign minister in nearly eight years—has raised hopes for renewed engagement between the two countries. Nawaz Sharif’s recent statement expressing hope for improved relations with India and his proposal for Pakistan to sell its surplus, affordable electricity to India has been met with cautious optimism. Normalizing and strengthening relations between Pakistan and India is urgently needed, as their strained ties have severely impacted economic development across South Asia, especially in Pakistan. Regional economies can only truly thrive when robust economic connections and cooperation exist. South Asia remains the world’s least economically integrated region, largely due to the political tensions between India and Pakistan.

Relations between the two nations have been deeply strained since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration in August 2019 revoked the special constitutional status of Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir (IaJ&K). Beyond this, the relationship between these two nuclear-armed South Asian neighbors has long been tense over issues of terrorism, with India alleging Pakistan’s involvement in attacks on Indian soil, such as the 2008 Mumbai attacks. In response, Pakistan has accused India of supporting terrorism within its borders, citing the arrest of Indian naval officer Kulbhushan Yadav in Balochistan, who allegedly admitted to sabotage missions within Pakistan.

The question of how to improve relations between Pakistan and India is challenging. Many believe that as long as India maintains its 2019 decision regarding Kashmir, meaningful progress will be difficult. Modi’s move to revoke Jammu and Kashmir’s special constitutional status continues to overshadow political, economic, and cultural ties between the two nations, casting a shadow of instability over South Asia and fueling the risk of a conventional conflict that could escalate into a nuclear crisis. Consequently, the nearly 1.5 billion people of both countries, many of whom suffer from extreme poverty, hunger, and climate change impacts, remain deprived of crucial opportunities for growth and prosperity.

In 2019, the Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government repealed Article 370 and 35-A, which had granted Jammu and Kashmir a special autonomous status within the Indian Union. This region, which includes the Indian-administered territory of Ladakh, has long been a contentious area between the two archrivals, Pakistan and India.

The Kashmir conflict has remained the central catalyst of the intense rivalry between India and Pakistan. This northwestern Indian and northeastern Pakistani region, the only Muslim-majority area within Hindu-majority India, was controversially merged with India in 1947 by its then Hindu ruler, Maharaja Hari Singh, despite opposition from the people of Kashmir. This decision has fueled decades of tension and conflict between the two countries, which have fought three wars over Kashmir (in 1948, 1965, and 1999 in the Kargil Conflict), keeping relations hostage for over 70 years.

In 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) fulfilled their long-standing electoral pledge to fully integrate Jammu and Kashmir into India, revoking the special status granted to it since 1954 under the Indian Constitution. This status acknowledged the unique demographics of Jammu and Kashmir as a Muslim-majority state within India, a distinction aimed at respecting the region’s cultural and religious composition. Despite this, the people of Kashmir—Muslims and even some Buddhists—have historically resisted inclusion in India, as evidenced by the 1989 uprising that has seen waves of unrest since. Previously, successive Indian governments, including the BJP government of the late 1990s led by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, preserved Kashmir’s autonomy to maintain stability.

However, hopes for a peaceful resolution of the Kashmir issue, often expressed by peace advocates in Pakistan, India, and internationally, were severely damaged by India’s unilateral move to revoke Jammu and Kashmir’s special status. Since August 2019, any attempts at meaningful dialogue have stalled. Even prior to this, India had been reluctant to engage in talks with Pakistan, repeatedly accusing it of supporting terrorism in Kashmir. The Modi government has steadfastly upheld the position that “terror and talks cannot go together,” a stance seen by Pakistan as an attempt to tarnish its image globally and undermine its stance on Kashmir, thereby isolating Pakistan diplomatically.

Pakistan has long argued that enduring peace and stability in South Asia are contingent on addressing core issues, particularly the Kashmir dispute. Although Pakistan has a strong case, legally and morally, for peace talks, India’s diplomatic influence has generally outpaced Pakistan’s efforts to highlight the Kashmir issue and human rights violations against Kashmiris. This diplomatic imbalance is less about the quality of Pakistan’s diplomacy and more about India’s significant economic and political weight on the global stage compared to Pakistan’s.

The decision by PM Modi and the BJP to revoke Kashmir’s special status continues to strain India-Pakistan relations and will likely do so for the foreseeable future. With Delhi unlikely to reverse its 2019 policy, Kashmir remains a potential flashpoint with far-reaching consequences, even risking nuclear conflict with devastating global ramifications. Leaders on both sides must consider innovative approaches to normalize relations, as such reconciliation holds substantial benefits for the people and the economies of both nations.