Kashmir Crisis EXPLAINED: Everybody Is LYING! | Jyotishman Mudiar

## What's happening in India-Pakistan right now? The immediate reality is one of obscured facts and amplified certainties. A brutal terror attack that killed 26 people has catalyzed a familiar cycle: competing national narratives, mutual accusations, and a rapidly rising tempo of nationalist rhetoric. From the video conversation, the clearest takeaway is that what passes for “news” on either side of the border often functions more like political theatre—each side constructing a story that fits domestic imperatives and strategic habits rather than a single, verifiable chronology of events. On the Indian side, the attack has been framed as an externally directed atrocity—engineered by militants operating from across the Pakistani border, and in some accounts, backed or tolerated by elements within Pakistan’s establishment. On the Pakistani side, the counter-narrative is that there is no conclusive evidence tying any Pakistani actor to the crime; some commentators even suggest the possibility of a false-flag operation designed to rally domestic support in India ahead of elections. Both versions cannot be simultaneously true in full, and both versions are amplified by media ecosystems that serve internal politics as much as public information. This fog of competing claims is aggravated by a long-established double standard in elite discourses. Each state treats similar forms of resistance or militancy within its own borders through a nationalizing lens: when a movement in Kashmir pushes against Indian control, Indian elites label it terrorism and call for security responses, while Pakistani elites often frame Kashmiri grievances as legitimate resistance. Conversely, when insurgencies arise in Pakistan’s Balochistan or Pashtun areas, Pakistani institutions call them terror threats, even as some Indian commentators view them through the lens of strategic opportunity. That mutual inconsistency is not just rhetorical; it shapes policy choices and creates an environment in which every atrocity becomes a pretext for escalation. The consequence is dangerous: the immediate tragedy is real, but the political aftermath risks being disproportionate. Once leaderships commit publicly to punitive measures or military responses, domestic pressures make backtracking politically costly. The result is a precarious escalation dynamic with very high stakes. ## Will the UN help calm down the situation? The United Nations and other international actors can play constructive roles, but only up to a point. The conversation makes a simple but vital point: third-party involvement is effective only when both parties are willing to engage in good-faith negotiation. In practical terms that means states must first agree that the existing pattern—militarization, mutual accusations, periodic kinetic strikes—has failed and is unsustainable. An independent, internationally supervised inquiry could help establish facts and reduce the ambiguity that fuels escalation. Pakistan’s calls for an international commission reflect both a genuine desire for a neutral fact-finder and a political strategy to internationalize the issue. India, however, has historically been resistant to outside intrusion into what it deems domestic or bilateral matters. That resistance is political and ideological; accepting international adjudication can be portrayed at home as weakness or a betrayal of sovereignty. Beyond inquiries, multilateral institutions can provide mechanisms to manage specific risks. Economic and technical institutions—like the World Bank, which brokered the Indus Water Treaty in 1960—can help sustain agreements that reduce the chance of conflict. But those mechanisms depend on continued mutual interest in preserving the status quo. If one side chooses to weaponize essential resources, the institutional remedy will be inadequate without political will. There are also existential risks where international norms and interventions have limited traction: cross-border terrorism, nuclear posturing, and ecological destruction in a fragile Himalayan system. The UN can convene, mediate, and document; it cannot force sovereign states to change domestic political calculations. Ultimately, the conversation underscores that international actors can nudge and facilitate, but cannot substitute for bilateral political decisions to de-escalate. ## Why is the India-Pakistan border so violent and unstable? Understanding the violence along the India-Pakistan frontier requires returning to the origins of partition. The line that separates the two nations was born in 1947 out of a partition that was not merely administrative but genocidal—estimates of a million dead and ten million displaced are a grim reminder of how deep the rupture runs. That trauma made Kashmir, which remained ambiguously divided after partition, into an enduring ideological battleground. Unlike the India-China boundary, which reflects colonial-era border ambiguities and a long list of tracts disputed over kilometers, the India-Pakistan line is concentrated around a contested territorial claim—Kashmir—and is saturated with historical resentment. It is not just a frontier; it is the locus of competing claims to national identity and legitimacy. That is why the Line of Control is perhaps the most militarized strip in the world, guarded by hundreds of thousands of troops and punctuated by periodic wars and skirmishes since 1948. There are structural reasons for recurrent violence: the partition left unresolved political questions; both states developed security institutions whose raison d’être depends on an external enemy; and ethno-nationalist movements in border regions feed into cross-border narratives of suffering and liberation. The militarization also creates incentives for intelligence services and political elites to leverage violence for strategic advantage. Moreover, the border communities themselves bear the cost of this instability—economic development is stunted, social fabrics are frayed, and cycles of grievance become self-reinforcing. Comparatively, India’s friction with China lacks the same potent historical and ideological overlay. While serious and potentially dangerous, the India-China border disputes have been characterized more by positional disputes and episodic standoffs than by a continuous, identity-driven conflict that cuts to the core of national narratives. That difference in origin and meaning helps explain why India-Pakistan violence is both chronic and uniquely combustible. ## What is the role of internal politics in all this? Domestic politics are the accelerant that turns an incident into a crisis. The conversation highlights how political constituencies, media ecosystems, and the incentives of ruling parties shape responses. For India’s ruling coalition, which draws heavily on Hindu nationalist sentiment, appearing strong in the face of an attack is not just strategic—it is existential. A government that projects softness risks losing credibility among its core supporters. That dynamic makes restraint politically costly. Pakistan’s internal calculus is different but significant. The Pakistani state includes powerful military and intelligence institutions that derive institutional legitimacy from a hardline posture toward India. Yet at the moment discussed, Pakistan’s civilian leadership and mainstream media appeared to favor restraint, roughly because the country faces severe economic constraints and could ill afford a large-scale conflict. Thus, while hardliners exist in both societies, the balance of domestic pressures differs. Beyond elites, social media and alternative media amplify simplified, often hyper-nationalist narratives that leave little room for nuance. What is striking in the conversation is how even left-of-center or critical outlets sometimes collude in a hawkish frame, demonstrating that nationalism transcends simple left-right divides. Once a political community commits to p

Kashmir Crisis EXPLAINED: Everybody Is LYING! | Jyotishman Mudiar What is fueling the current tensions between India and Pakistan? What is the historical root of this conflict? How do the Indian and Pakistani media narratives differ? And where does this conflict sit in the global context? To answer all this and more, today I’m talking to Jyotishman Mudiar, the host of the very successful YouTube Channel “India and Global Left”. Jyotishman has also been producing great content over there for many years already, so I highly recommend checking it out. Links: Jyotishman's channel "India and Global Left": @IndiaGlobalLeft Timestamps: 00:00:00 Preview 00: 01:01 Intro 00:02:07 What's happening in India-Pakistan right now? 00:08:52 Will the UN help calm down the situation? 00:13:15 Why is the India-Pakistan border so violent and unstable? 00:16:35 What is the role of internal politics in all this? 00:20:26 Does any outside power intervene in this conflict? Check out our merch: https://neutralitystudies-shop.fourthwall.com #M3 Once you carry out that and present it as a hyper-nationalist solution to conflict, then you are bound to do something bigger this time. So there is this tremendous public pressure, led by the intellectually bankrupt Indian elite class, that now there should be something even bigger. And it's so grotesque that it's not just the far-right media, but even the left-of-center media, even left-of-center alternative media, even people who would otherwise be critics of Hindu nationalism—they are jumping on this bandwagon. Diplomats, hardline retired military officers, right-wing journalists, centrists—they are the spokespersons, and they are building up this narrative. And of course, there is massive internal pressure on the Hindu nationalist government because their constituency is hyper- nationalist. #M2 Hello, everybody. This is Pascal from Neutrality Studies, and today I'm talking to Jyotishman Mudiar, the host of the very successful YouTube channel India and Global Left. Jyotishman has been producing great content over there for many years already, so I highly recommend you all check it out right after this video. For instance, he recently did an interview with John Mearsheimer that was very enlightening for me on the way Mr. Mearsheimer sees things. And I thank you for doing that. I'm very happy to have you back on this show as well. #M3 Thank you so much for having me on. -- 1 of 7 -- #M2 You know, you've been meeting a lot of people, and especially that Mearsheimer video has been fantastic for me. We'll talk about that in just a second, but I would like to start because you are originally from India, although currently you're studying. #M3 I'm Indian. I hold Indian citizenship. #M2 Sorry, not originally. Yeah, you hold Indian citizenship, although you're currently... #M3 I've never had any other citizenship. #M2 Yeah, sorry, I phrased that badly. But I want to ask you about India and Pakistan. Could you tell us what's happening at the moment and what's going on between these two countries? #M3 The tragedy is, we don't know. And the reason we don't know is because if you look at the media on both sides of the border—the Pakistani side and the Indian side—you get two different pictures that do not come together at all. It reminds me of Marc Bloch's *The Historian's Craft*, where he says that during times of war, do not believe anything that the media tells you. So, if you look at the Indian media, the story goes like this: at Pahalgam, in the part of Kashmir controlled by India, there was a terror attack that killed 26 people, mostly tourists and Hindus, as it turns out. And the story is that it was orchestrated at the behest of the Pakistani establishment. That's the Indian narrative. It was meant to target Hindus in particular. There were reports that initially... Resistance Front, a militant or terrorist group—pick your side, as you define it. They had owned it, but later it was said that they backed out, and now there is no one who is owning up to it. But the Indian narrative is that it was done by these terror operatives who operate from Pakistan, and that the Pakistani establishment is directly involved, in collaboration with them. That's the Indian narrative. Now, if you look at the Pakistani media, it's completely the opposite. Pakistan says that there is no evidence the Indian government has been able to present—not just of -- 2 of 7 -- their involvement, which they call ridiculous, but even that it was carried out by any organization that operates from Pakistan. In fact, they have gone on to say that it is most likely an Indian false flag operation, done because there are elections coming up in India. And they have now been insisting that a commission of inquiry should be set up under international leadership—I mean, you can decide who that would be. That should be the way forward, and there shouldn't be an escalation or the two nuclear countries going to war because of this. Sadly, even the liberals and the left-of-center, the so-called progressive media, have been jumping on this bandwagon that says there is no other way out but to teach a lesson to the Pakistani establishment, which means just literally going to war. And there are talks about pulling out of the Indus Water Treaty, which was signed in 1960. It is a river water sharing treaty that has been extremely critical and vital to the lower riparian states in Pakistan. And the Indian government is now talking about going back on it. Now, I think the critical point to understand here is that this is happening against the backdrop of a total double standard among the elites on both sides. So if you look at the Indian side, in the part of Kashmir that India controls, there is a very extensive literature on the enormous repression by extrajudicial measures, forced disappearances, demolitions of homes through counter-terrorist operations, and so on and so forth, which has meant a brutal repression of Kashmiri aspirations in that part of Kashmir. What the Pakistani elites do—which includes the media, the intelligentsia, the Pakistani intelligence, government, military, and so on—is consider it as part of a resistance for freedom and liberation of Kashmir, which you could say is an arguable and reasonable case. The problem, however, is that when it comes to Balochistan and the FATA area—the Federally Administered Tribal Areas in Pakistan—they have the same issues. These are Pashtun-dominated areas, and they have similar aspirations of seceding from Pakistan. And these nationalist movements there are considered by the Pakistani state as terror groups. And so the Balochistan Liberation Army, Balochistan National Army, or Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan— these are called terror groups. And one can argue that they can be defined as terror groups because they constantly rely on terror methods. And on the Indian side, including people in the national security apparatus and so on, they would say that we should do something about these areas— liberate them, break them away from Pakistan. So there is this massive double standard among the elites on both sides. When it comes to their own territories, where they should downscale their repression and leave these areas to the people, they're completely toeing nationalist lines. And they say that it is the other side that is just fomenting terror here, which may or may not be the case. We don't know at all. I mean, there is evidence on both sides. We don't know. But what is definitely the case is that these areas have been repressed. There have been several forms of repression, and there is a very extensive body of literature. And I think it is this backdrop that more or less defines the tension between India and Pakistan. And so what is true and what is false has become anybody's guess. I mean, you don't know what is going on, in a way. I mean, we do know -- 3 of 7 -- about the repressive aspects. We do know about facts. But we basically don't know much about the involvement of each other. And that's where we are. #M2 So the only thing that is certain is that we had this terrorist attack, that people died, and both sides are blaming each other. Do you see any hope in the United Nations or outside actors trying to help calm these animosities and actually conduct the inquiry that is now needed? #M3 Yes, before that, I should also say that it is definitely true that the terror attack killed 26 people at Balgam. But it is also true that Pakistan has been facing several terror attacks. In fact, Pakistan is ranked number two in terms of terror attacks by the IEP, which provides the Global Terrorism Index. And in 2024, there were roughly 1,100 terror attacks in Pakistan. Half of them were by Tehrik-i- Taliban Pakistan, which is a Pashtun group separate from the Afghan Taliban, but with very close connections to them. They have their own aspirations of liberating the Pashtun areas away from Pakistan. And the Indian state is accused of fomenting troubles there. What I want to add is that we shouldn't have this overreaction about one extremely heinous terror attack, because there are many more terror attacks on the other side as well. I'm not saying that the Indian establishment is definitely involved, but there is multiple pieces of evidence shown by the Pakistani side about its involvement. So the point is that they should pull back. Both the intelligence agencies and the military on both sides should pull back, pull away from these areas, let autonomy flourish, and then talk to each other. And that relates to your question. Any external entity, whether it's the United Nations, other countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, or any country for that matter, can be effective only if the two sides are willing to talk to each other. Only if the two sides say, "Look, this has been a failed strategy. We have done it for more than 75 years since the tragic partition in 1947, when the British were overthrown from the Indian subcontinent. We have tried this for many decades. It hasn't worked. It is not in the interest of people on both sides of the divide. Let's just withdraw from that." If that is the case, then these negotiations can work. The World Bank-negotiated Indus Water Treaty works only if both countries decide to obey it. Right now, of course, India doesn't have the technological capacity to divert a lot of water, but it says that it would build rapidly, and that would be a humanitarian and ecological disaster. I mean, Noam Chomsky spent a lot of time towards the end of his life warning us against two things: one is nuclear, the other is ecological and environmental. And this flashpoint has both. India and Pakistan are two heavily armed nuclear states, and it can spiral out of control. I mean, we have an extensive literature on the Cuban Missile Crisis, and it was just by miracle that we survived. So that's one side of it. The other side is that the Himalayan belt is extremely ecologically sensitive. -- 4 of 7 -- There are multiple floods, multiple droughts, and global warming is making these cycles even more erratic. And if you are to build enormous dams over there to divert water, it will have a tremendous impact, not just in creating droughts in the lower riparian areas, but also across the upstreams. So, to give a short answer to your question: any negotiation is welcome, and third-party involvement can be there, given that both India and Pakistan want to participate. On this front, I think at this moment in history, it is the Indian side that seems to be unwilling to talk, and it is the Pakistani side that has been sending signal after signal about wanting to talk. #M2 Why is it that the Pakistani-Indian border seems, at least to me, from what I hear—and I don't hear everything—but what reaches me is that the Indian-Pakistani border is highly violent and volatile? India also has border disputes with China, and those are also problematic, but they're less violent, a