Watching what’s happening in South Asia lately brings back that heavy feeling I know too well. It’s a knot of deep concern tangled up with sheer exhaustion. Of course, reading about violence against civilians anywhere is sickening, plain and simple. But what gets me, what feels so frustratingly familiar, is how fast India blames Pakistan – almost before we even know what really went down. That knee-jerk accusation, before any real facts can possibly emerge. Frankly, this predictability is disheartening. It feels like a well-worn path, one that consistently steers away from confronting the difficult, persistent realities simmering within the territory India itself controls.

Time and again, I, like many others observing the region, have witnessed this pattern. An incident erupts in IOJK – a region burdened by decades of suppressed aspirations and unresolved political status – and almost as a reflex, official narratives from New Delhi pivot towards alleged external interference. When India’s Foreign Secretary speaks of supposed “cross-border linkages” without offering concrete, verifiable proof, it strikes me less as a presentation of findings and more as the opening act of a political performance. It seems designed, primarily, to externalize internal difficulties and galvanize nationalist sentiment, rather than to genuinely uncover truth.

The key thing that seems consistently overlooked in India’s approach is seeing the people behind the politics. There doesn’t seem to be a willingness to look beyond the security angle and truly acknowledge the deeply felt political hopes and grievances of Kashmiris themselves. This deliberate myopia allows the root causes of the unrest to fester. The extensive military presence, the documented accounts of harsh suppression tactics, and the palpable climate of fear enforced by Indian authorities – these haven’t brought peace or........

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