India’s rapid rise as the world’s fifth-largest economy has boosted its confidence and clout on the world stage, where it has played an important role in addressing regional crises such as Sri Lanka’s economic collapse and the Myanmar earthquake.
How India threads the diplomatic needle - courting favour with Trump over issues like trade while asserting its own interests in the Kashmir conflict - will depend in large part on domestic politics and could determine the future prospects for conflict in Kashmir.
In a sign of just how fragile the truce remains, the two governments accused each other of serious violations late on Saturday.
Trump said on Sunday that, following the ceasefire, “I am going to increase trade, substantially, with both of these great nations”.
India considers Kashmir an integral part of its territory and not open for negotiation, least of all through a third-party mediator. India and Pakistan both rule the scenic Himalayan region in part, claim it in full, and have fought two wars and numerous other conflicts over what India says is a Pakistan-backed insurgency there. Pakistan denies it backs insurgency.
For decades after the two countries separated in 1947, the West largely saw India and Pakistan through the same lens as the neighbours fought regularly over Kashmir. That changed in recent years, partly thanks to India’s economic rise while Pakistan languished with an economy less than one-10th India’s size.
Pakistan has repeatedly thanked Trump for his offer on Kashmir, while India has not acknowledged any role played by a third party in the ceasefire, saying it was agreed by the two sides themselves.
By launching missiles deep into Pakistan, Modi showed a much higher appetite for risk than his predecessors. But the sudden ceasefire exposed him to rare criticism at home.
The main opposition Congress party got in on the act, demanding an explanation from the government on the “ceasefire announcements made from Washington, D.C.”
And while the fighting has stopped, there remain a number of flashpoints in the relationship that will test India’s resolve and may tempt it to adopt a hard-line stance.
“Pakistan would not have agreed (to a ceasefire) without U.S. guarantees of a broader dialogue,“ said Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, a former foreign minister and currently chairman of the People’s Party of Pakistan, which supports the government.
“Because the underlying issues remain, and every six months, one year, two years, three years, something like this happens and then you are back at the brink of war in a nuclear environment,“ he said.
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