THE recent remarks by RSS chief Dattatreya Hosabale advocating a reconsideration of India’s engagement with Pakistan have reopened a debate that India can no longer afford to avoid. Sanjaya Baru, in his thoughtful article in The Tribune (‘Hosabale opens a window’, May 19), correctly argues that dialogue between neighbours is not weakness but geopolitical necessity. Yet the issue extends beyond diplomacy. It touches the deeper question of whether India’s current strategic posture is sustainable in an increasingly volatile and transactional world order.
For nearly a decade, India’s Pakistan policy has been shaped substantially by aggressive rhetoric, televised nationalism and political signalling. While such posturing may yield domestic political dividends, foreign policy cannot be conducted as an extension of election campaigns. Nations survive not on emotion, but on strategic realism.
The central question today is whether India can indefinitely sustain confrontation without imposing serious economic, geopolitical and developmental costs upon itself. India’s Pakistan challenge can no longer be viewed in isolation. The geopolitical landscape has fundamentally changed with the emergence of an openly declared China-Pakistan strategic partnership.
The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, deep military cooperation, intelligence coordination and Beijing’s diplomatic shielding of Islamabad together indicate that Pakistan today operates with powerful strategic backing. This creates a dangerous reality for India. Any major escalation with Pakistan risks transforming into a wider two-front challenge involving China along the Line of Actual Control.
India’s establishment understands this risk, though public discourse frequently ignores it beneath waves of hyper-nationalism. An openly aggressive posture towards Pakistan may generate vulnerabilities rather than deterrence, particularly when India lacks adequate leverage to sustain prolonged confrontation on multiple fronts.
One of the least discussed consequences of India-Pakistan hostility is the economic stagnation imposed upon northern India. J&K, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh historically prospered through continental trade routes extending towards Afghanistan and Central Asia. Persistent confrontation has transformed these regions into militarised frontiers instead of economic gateways.
The closure of land routes has not merely damaged India-Pakistan trade; it has also obstructed broader regional connectivity and Central Asian integration. While northern states continue bearing the strategic and developmental costs of confrontation, the major beneficiaries of redirected maritime trade increasingly appear to be the ports and commercial ecosystems of Gujarat and Maharashtra. Such perceptions may be politically inconvenient, but they cannot simply be dismissed.
Despite formal hostility, trade between India and Pakistan has never entirely disappeared. India’s exports to Pakistan reportedly reached a five-year high of approximately $1.21 billion in 2024.
Much of the actual trade now occurs indirectly through Dubai, Singapore and Colombo, substantially increasing costs while benefiting third-country intermediaries. This demonstrates an important reality: geography and economics continue exerting pressure towards connectivity despite political hostility.
The extremely low level of formal trade between two neighbouring nuclear powers sharing borders, transport networks and market complementarities remains globally unusual. Commercial logic repeatedly resurfaces because geography ultimately imposes its own compulsions upon states.
China’s Belt and Road Initiative demonstrated the strategic power of infrastructure-led diplomacy. Roads, ports, rail networks, industrial corridors and trade routes now shape geopolitical influence as decisively as military deployments. India’s proposed India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) reflects this changing reality. Conceived as a multimodal corridor linking Mumbai to Europe through the Gulf and the Mediterranean, IMEC seeks to integrate maritime trade, rail infrastructure, energy networks and digital connectivity into a new transcontinental framework. Its significance is both economic and strategic — reducing dependence on vulnerable maritime chokepoints, diversifying supply chains and strengthening India’s westward integration.
Yet India must also retain the strategic imagination to think beyond present hostilities and inherited partitions. Historically, India’s most natural access to Central Asia and Europe was continental — through Punjab, Afghanistan and the ancient overland trade routes of Eurasia. The Partition and decades of hostility disrupted this geography, compelling India to rely predominantly on maritime routes.
A future political reconciliation in the subcontinent could eventually reopen the possibility of a direct rail-road corridor from the Wagah border through Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Central Asian Republics into Europe. Such a corridor would, in many respects, be shorter, faster and more economical than heavily trans-shipment-dependent multimodal systems like IMEC. Continuous overland logistics would reduce cargo handling costs, delays and maritime vulnerabilities associated with the Suez and Red Sea routes.
This is not an argument against IMEC, which remains strategically important under present conditions. Rather, it is a recognition that serious statecraft requires India to cultivate multiple connectivity options simultaneously. If South Asia ever moves beyond perpetual antagonism, a trans-Eurasian corridor through Wagah could emerge not merely as an economic route, but as the restoration of India’s historic continental linkages with Central Asia and Europe.
India’s neighbourhood diplomacy has also struggled to produce consistently stable outcomes. Relations with Nepal, the Maldives, Sri Lanka and sections of the Islamic world have periodically experienced strain. Domestic communal tensions within India have additionally complicated relations with several Muslim-majority countries.
Meanwhile, Pakistan and China continue expanding influence across India’s immediate neighbourhood. Strategic leadership requires calm confidence and diplomatic sophistication. Political grandstanding at home cannot substitute for coherent long-term regional strategy abroad.
None of this implies strategic naïveté regarding Pakistan. Terrorism, militancy and security concerns remain real and legitimate. However, mature states distinguish between vigilance and permanent paralysis. Dialogue does not mean surrender. Economic engagement does not mean strategic weakness. Controlled interaction does not mean abandonment of national interest.
Nuclear neighbours cannot indefinitely remain trapped in cycles of outrage while geography quietly punishes both countries economically and strategically. Hosabale’s remarks therefore deserve attention because they acknowledge an uncomfortable truth: sustainable national strength cannot emerge solely from rhetoric, hostility and political theatre. Statesmanship lies in recognising when strategic realism must prevail over emotional posturing.
Jago Punjab Manch is a civic initiative led by ex-servicemen committed to Punjab’s constitutional rights, welfare and future
