Kashmir and Ontological Security: Re-evaluating the Role of Self-identities in a Multi- layered Conflict

Theories of Liberalism in Kashmir Conflict

The theories of liberalism consist of varying arguments such as the DPT, commercial liberalism (Mehsud, 2017) and liberal institutionalism/neo-liberalism. These state-centric theories believe that democratic, domestic, economic, regional or international institutions facilitate cooperation and peace amongst the states. Their mutual emphasis is on interstate politics, cooperation and peace (Abbott, 1999). However, they have been critiqued for being ill-equipped to explain security concerns such as terrorism, internal conflicts (Dunne, 2009) and inter-state relations of a world where a situation of ‘War of all against all’ prevails (Mehsud, 2017).

Primarily, the DPT asserts that democratic states do not go to war with each other (Hegre, 2014). However, this assumption is irrelevant to explain the external conflict in Kashmir, as India is a well-established democracy while Pakistan is a fragile democracy. Another dimension to the same argument is that authoritarian and failed states promote terrorism and threaten democratic states (Dunne, 2009). However, this argument is irrelevant, too, as Pakistan is neither a failed state nor an authoritarian state. Moreover, its transitions from democracy to military rule and vice-versa also have had no significant impact on its terror-sponsoring and funding. This argument thus fails to explain the external conflict over Kashmir.

Similarly, the DPT asserts that states are internally peaceful (Hegre, 2014). This argument comes with a consideration that electoral gains compel the democratic leaders and institutions to address their voters’ grievances and ensure their welfare, development and participation (Hegre, 2014). However, despite India being the world’s largest democracy and having offered concessions to Kashmiri federalism in the past, the conflict has hardly seen an end. This proves that the mere existence or absence of democracy and democratic institutions cannot explain the causal factors of the conflicts. The DPT thus falls short of explaining the internal conflict in Kashmir.

Commercial liberalism emphasises that free trade brings cooperation and prosperity, thereby promoting peace amongst nation-states (Mehsud, 2017). However, this argument is irrelevant to explain the Kashmir conflict since India and Pakistan’s trade and economic interactions are scant. In addition, both the states continue to economically disengage with each other as their political hostilities intensify. In 2020, Pakistan’s imports and exports with India remained a mere 2–3% of its total trade, while India’s imports and exports with Pakistan remained less than 1% of its total trade (Singla, 2021), thus being irrelevant to explain the Kashmir conflict.

Finally, neo-liberalism asserts that third parties or institutions can help states overcome anarchy and trust deficit and can foster peace and cooperation (Mallavarapu, 2012). However, a contrast prevails with India and Pakistan; both the states have gone to war multiple times despite being a part of regional and international institutions such as the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and the United Nations (UN). They have also failed to implement an UN-facilitated plebiscite (Hussain, 2009) and continue to violate the UN-monitored ceasefire in the Kashmir border. India has also opposed mediations or negotiations on Kashmir with external parties, with a few exemptions to Pakistan (Pirzada, 2019), thus, indicating the limitations of the neo-liberalism theory and proving that mere institutions and third-party guarantees cannot deter conflicts.

The Realists’ Encounter with Kashmir Conflict

Realist theories presume states as strong unitary actors facing threats from other states. Their focus thus continues to centre around power politics, inter-state conflicts, national interests, physical security, material capabilities and balancing (Mallavarapu, 2012). The three main variants of realism are classical realism, structural realism and neoclassical realism.

The theory of classical realism credits the imperfect nature of human beings for the state’s international conduct (Mallavarapu, 2012). Structural/neo-realism credits the international system for a states’ behaviour. It argues that since the international system is anarchic, states prioritise their survival and material capabilities. This leads to uncertainty, security dilemma and balancing, which contributes to certain defensive or offensive foreign policy outcomes (Walt, 1998). Finally, neoclassical realism argues that a country’s foreign policy outcome is determined by the international system and by the leaders’ interpretations and responses to the former (Rose, 1998). These responses depend on relative material capabilities, ideology, culture, psychological factors and the state structure (Rose, 1998).

Amongst these three theories, classical and structural follow a thorough state-centric presumption. They follow a domestic–international divide that undermines domestic politics and non-state actors (Mallavarapu, 2012). Consequently, most of the realist arguments have reasoned the external conflict for Kashmir with geopolitical significance (Haqqani, 2003; Mattoo, 2003), India–Pakistan’s power distribution and expansion (Michael, 2018), structural constraints, balancing, security dilemma and mistrust (Mehsud, 2017). Subsequently, scholars such as Mehsud (2017) have also reduced the internal conflict in Kashmir to a mere proxy war caused by India and Pakistan’s power struggle.

Nevertheless, considering the conflict as a mere proxy war and a victim of power politics oversimplifies Kashmir’s internal conflict. It ignores several domestic and intra-state factors. It is true that Pakistan’s insurgency funding is intended to secede Kashmir from India and integrate it with Pakistan (Staniland, 2012). But the conflict consists of voluntary non-state actors demanding independence by protesting and pelting stones against the Indian armed forces while also being wary of Pakistan (Nair & Sambanis, 2019). This is despite the locals’ recently increased support and coordination with the local militants (Shah, 2020). These demands for Kashmiri independence are caused due to domestic factors such as strong ethnonational identity, grievances, human rights violations, army deployment, autonomy loss and identity erosion (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights [OHCHR], 2018; Tremblay, 1996). However, since the realists side-line domestic factors and non-state actors, they fail to analyse the internal conflict in Kashmir.

Similarly, crediting the external conflict to Kashmir’s geopolitical significance, India–Pakistan’s power struggle, power maximisation, anarchy and security dilemma is not free of criticism. Primarily, the argument of geopolitical significance can be debunked considering how India’s other rival, China, claims the barren lands of the neighbouring Aksai Chin (Phanjoubam, 2020) while having no such claim over the strategic heights and water-providing Kashmir region. Second, the claims of the security dilemma, anarchy, power struggle and maximisation cannot be generalised either. Both India and Pakistan have solved their territorial disputes peacefully and diplomatically with their other neighbours. Pakistan has given up its territories in Kashmir to China, and India has given up its other territories to Sri Lanka and Bangladesh (Gilani, 2020), while they refuse to do the same to each other. It thus becomes vital to understand the external conflict by considering a state’s history of interactions, domestic politics and nation-building factors.

Finally, despite its considerations for domestic and international factors, neoclassical realism faces some limitations in explaining the multi-layered conflict. The theory’s consideration of the international structure and the elites’ response is solely designed to explain a states’ foreign policymaking. However, Kashmir also has an internal conflict that is largely independent of the international structure. This includes domestic factors such as counter-insurgency operations, electoral riggings, integration policies, human rights violations and domestic politics. Similarly, the theory also fails to explain why India and Pakistan’s policies of integrating and annexing Kashmir have been consistent throughout the last seven decades. This is despite the changes in the international structure and the material capabilities and leadership of both countries.

These IR theories thus fail to give a complete explanation of the conflict in Kashmir. While liberal theories are irrelevant, realism explains the multi-layered conflict with oversimplification. The theories’ emphasis on state-centrism and external threats side-line certain vital issues of the multi-layered conflicts, such as national identities, nation-building, history, domestic politics and internal conflicts.

Exploring Greed Factor in the Conflict

The greed theory propagates that internal conflicts are manifested to loot resources or reap individual profits (Hoeffler & Collier, 2004). These theories discount the role of external actors and focus on domestic factors such as profit-seeking motives, self-interested behaviours (Ross, 2004), individual economic opportunities, state structure, resource availability, and the presence of lootable natural resources (Hoeffler & Collier, 2004; Korf, 2005) and mineral resources (Di John, 2007).

However, exploring the factor of lootable natural and mineral resources in the Kashmir conflict is ill-suited. Primarily, the region of Kashmir possesses abundant non-lootable resources such as water, horticulture and floriculture. Its possession of lootable natural/mineral resources instead remains very limited (James & Özdamar, 2005). Furthermore, the looting of these resources has been restricted by the rebel’s inability to control territories due to strong state presence, army deployment and strict surveillance (Staniland, 2012).

Greed theorists also consider economic opportunities, opportunities of enrichment and individual gains as the cause for the conflict. To credit this argument, the conflict in Kashmir has witnessed some instances of economic opportunities, self-interested behaviours and gains. For instance, the insurgents are involved in narcotics (PTI, 2019b), weapons smuggling (Defence News, 2017), extortions (Tremblay, 1996) and collecting ransoms (Schofield, 2003) to micro-fund their activities and operations. Similarly, some personnel of the Indian armed forces have also enriched themselves by earning rewards, promotions and bribes through framed encounters, arrests, detentions (Ghate, 2002) and timber smuggling (Nabi & Ye, 2015); this has in part contributed more anti-Indian sentiments and grief, and thereby the exacerbation of the conflict.

However, contrasting the theory’s argument, these gains and economic enrichment activities began only after the onset of the conflict and not vice-versa. Thus, despite the theory’s ability to explain the war economy and in-part exacerbation of the conflict, it lacks the potential to explain the cause of conflict outbreak. Its extensive focus on domestic factors neither reasons Pakistan and India’s dispute over Kashmir nor answers why Kashmiris are indulged in the internal conflict.

Grievances in Kashmir

The grievances theory propagates that grief of various kinds contributes to conflict outbreaks (Keen, 2012). These grievances might include horizontal inequalities or inequalities amongst social groups, lack of economic alternatives, political exclusion, non-inclusive governments, discrimination, human rights violations, cultural differences, justice denial, alienation (Keen, 2012; Webb, 2015), mass victimisation and the loss of identity, autonomy and power (Cederman et al., 2010; Fearon & Laitin, 2000). But, just like the greed theory, this theory too focuses on domestic factors and undermines the role of external actors.

The grievances argument considers economic disparities and deprivation as a prominent reason for a conflict outbreak. However, this argument is ill-suited for Kashmir since it has better socio-economic indicators than many other Indian states. For instance, Haryana remained peaceful with a poverty rate of 11% in 2011–2012 (The World Bank, 2017) and an unemployment rate of 8.6% in 2017–2018 (TNN, 2019), while Kashmir remained engulfed in the conflict with 10.4% poverty in the year 2011–2012 and an unemployment rate of 5.3% in 2017–2018 (TNN, 2019). Similarly, the case of horizontal inequality holds less relevance, as federal states in India are classified on socio-ethnic composition, and Kashmir already has better socio-economic indicators than most of them. Finally, the argument of state-induced economic injustices and discrimination also holds very little currency since India provides Kashmir with special and generous economic packages and aids (Ganguly, 1990; Khan, 2012).

Even arguments of unemployment and deprivation of education leading to internal conflicts (Keen, 2012; Webb, 2015) are irrelevant to Kashmir. Kashmir witnessed massive unrest in 2008, despite only 0.88% of its population being educated and educated-unemployed (Directorate of Economics & Statistics, 2011). In recent times, the conflict has also seen educated professionals such as Riyaz Naikoo, a teacher by profession (Sareen, 2020), and Rafi Bhat, a professor by profession (Ahmad, 2018), participate in the insurgency. A report prepared by the Indian security agencies in 2017 has also reiterated this fact by quoting that only three out of 67 local militants in Kashmir had never been to the school (Jaleel, 2017). This indicates that the conflict has not been caused due to the lack of education and employment.

Grievance theorists also consider socio-political grievances such as political exclusion, non-representative governments and loss of identity, autonomy and power as the reasons for conflict. Likewise, these socio-political grievances have played an essential role in the Kashmir conflict.

Kashmir’s history of socio-cultural interactions has shaped the unique identity of Kashmiriyat (Khan, 2012). The identity’s demands for autonomy and secularism persuaded most Kashmiri elites to prefer a democratic, secular and federal India over Pakistan (Khan, 2012). However, following its integration, India started depriving Kashmir of its autonomy. India withdrew its plebiscite offer (Shankar, 2016), introduced presidential orders (Mustafa, 2019) and president/governor tenures (Tremblay, 1996), rigged elections and instilled puppet leaders (Bose, 2007). This integration approach severely threatened the Kashmiri autonomy and identity, and it created a sense of political exclusion and victimisation. Thus, with the 1987 elections rigging, Kashmiris rebelled against Indian domination and coercion with Pakistan’s support (Misra, 2001).

While these local and Pakistani fighters attempted to secede Kashmir away from India, the state clamped down violently. Having been tough against demands of separatism and plebiscite, India deployed a large number of troops to counter the insurgency (Khan, 2012). These operations mitigated and reduced the militancy by the ‘mid-1990s’. But the state’s tactics of militarisation, human rights violations, justice denial and coercion contributed to further Kashmiri grievances (Bose, 2011).

The state adopted tortures, interrogations, rapes, extrajudicial killings (Mathur, 2016), detentions, arrests and the use of pellet guns (OHCHR, 2018) to suppress dissent, secessionism, militancy, protests and stone-pelting, all in a similar fashion. These tactics have contributed to an unofficial estimate of 80,000–100,000 deaths in the region (Khan, 2012), thus, fuelling the anti-Indian sentiments and attracting several youngsters, educated individuals and professionals to partake in the conflict (Mathur, 2016; OHCHR 2018) through protests, stone-pelting or insurgency.

Further, as the access to the internet and social media increased by 2014, India’s coercive policies towards Kashmir exacerbated the anti-Indian and pro-Islam sentiments of the locals. This phenomenon increased the number of local militant recruits, anti-Indian protests and stone-pelting (Shah, 2020), and it manifested some limited anti-Indian cooperation and coordination amongst these agents, therefore, attracting more coercion and force from India leading to more grievances, secessionism and Pakistan-backed militancy, and sustaining the bloody circle of violence.

The grievances theory thus provides a very insightful explanation of the exacerbation of the internal conflict. However, it fails to explain the origin of the conflict as it does not assess why states adopt specific policies that might lead to grievances in the first place. For instance, the theory cannot explain why India adopted the policies of integration and counter-insurgency that caused the grievances, or even why Pakistan supports radicalisation and militancy and exploits grievances to promote secessionism and insurgency. Thus, just like greed theory, the grievance theory falls short of assessing the causes of the conflict outbreak and the external factors that determine it.

Endogenous Ontological Security and the Internal Conflict

To understand the internal conflict in Kashmir, it is crucial to assess the history, identities, nation-building process and domestic politics of both India and Pakistan. As the anti-colonial moment intensified in India, the Indian National Congress envisioned a secular and plural nation, while the Muslim League prioritised its Islamic nationalism and demanded ‘Pakistan’—a new state for Indian Muslims (Schofield, 2003).

The founding leaders of Pakistan were staunch believers of the two-nation theory, and they believed that Hindus and Muslims are different, both culturally and nationally. They perceived that the majority of Hindus would ultimately dominate Muslims under the hoax banner of secularism, and only a partition based on a Hindu ‘Hindustan’ and a Muslim ‘Pakistan’ could solve this issue (Khilnani, 1997). However, the Indian leaders propagated a secular and plural nation where equality and democracy were guaranteed to all citizens, including Muslims (Khilnani, 1997). The prevalence of these nationalisms thus hindered and questioned each other’s identity and raison d’etre.

The partition and the emergence of India and Pakistan hence produced new conflict lines and a violent distinction of inclusive ‘us’ and exclusive ‘them’ (Tremblay, 1996). In addition, both the states were also mandated to create a sense of ‘us’ and enhance a strong nation-building process amongst a group of diverse ethnic nationalities (Dutt, 1998). This was to avoid any challenges to the state’s internal legitimacy and authority. However, sustaining a self-identity and integrating Kashmir was crucial to creating this sense of ‘us’.

Since the mid-fourteenth century, Kashmir has been a Muslim majority state (Khan, 2012). The idea of considering Kashmir as a part of Pakistan existed since 1933 when Chaudhuri Rahmat Ali first coined the term Pakistan as an acronym for Punjab, Afghan Province, Kashmir, Sindh and Balochistan (Schofield, 2003). However, its integration was also critical to post-independent India’s secular identity (Michael, 2018). The region thus evolved as a zero-sum game, where its integration with Pakistan would distort India’s ontological security and vice versa. Furthermore, since the region possessed the potential to radically disrupt the self-identities of both states, it was deemed to be a ‘critical situation’.

This prominence led to the first inter-state war between India and Pakistan, which left Kashmir divided into Indian- and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. This division had hardly changed the region’s ‘critical situation’ and zero-sum status. Evidently, both India and Pakistan refused to abide by the conditions laid by the UNSC resolution, namely, Pakistan’s demilitarisation in the region, which was to be followed by a plebiscite. Pakistan refused to fulfil the first condition of withdrawing its army from Kashmir as it feared losing the whole of the region due to India’s electoral manipulation and military tactics. Consequently, India refused to hold a plebiscite either (Hussain, 2009).

Annexation of the whole of Kashmir was vital to the self-identity of Pakistan that was shaped by the two-nation theory. This demand for Kashmir further grew intense since it started administering a smaller Kashmiri population and territory than India (Bose, 2007). To achieve this, Pakistan continues to claim and contest over the Indian part of Kashmir and also sponsors its insurgency.

It also limited challenges of ethnonationalism and secessionism from the Pakistan-administered Kashmir by maintaining a narrative of supporting the plebiscite and promoting freedom of Kashmiris (Zutshi, 2017). Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan regions are thus neither officially recognised as a province nor represented in the national parliament. Instead, Pakistan continues to de-facto administer the region through puppet administrations and coercive and manipulative proPakistan policies (Zutshi, 2017)—an effort that will contribute to a pro-Pakistan mandate, even if the highly unlikely plebiscite were to be held. Further, Pakistan’s stress on exempting the independence option from the 1947 Plebiscite (Hashim, 2021) indicates the former’s desire to annex the whole of Kashmir rather than granting it any independence.

However, for India, the priority lies in maintaining the status quo and in integrating and governing the Indian-administered Kashmir. This is because the Indian Administered Kashmir, even in its current shape and demography, is a Muslim majority state with 68% of the population being Muslim (Dutta, 2019), which is sufficient to fulfil its self-identity. Thus, although governing an additional Muslim population from Pakistan-administered Kashmir might be desirable for India’s self-identity, it is not obligatory. This also explains India’s defensive rather than offensive Kashmir policy and its occasional interest in accepting the status-quo as the official international border (Mohan, 2007).

Defending and integrating its part of Kashmir has thus become vital to India’s ontological security. Hence, when Sheikh Abdullah—the uncontested leader of Kashmir—criticised India’s Kashmir policy (Balachandran, 2019), Nehru grew anxious about losing Kashmir and arranged for Abdullah’s arrest in 1953 (Shankar, 2016). In the following year, Pakistan’s Mutual Defence Assistance Agreement with the United States further cautioned India of another Pakistani military aggression in Kashmir (Shankar, 2016). Nehru thus ceased India’s plebiscite proposal in 1954 (Shankar, 2016) and commenced with integration policies in Kashmir. This was to win the populace’s loyalty (James & Özdamar, 2005) and to maintain India’s status quo and ontological security.

By ceasing the plebiscite proposal, India attempted to link Kashmir with the state constitutionally. Consequently, in 1954, India granted complete autonomy to Kashmir through a presidential order that shaped Articles 370 and 35 (A) (PNS, 2019). These provisions provided a separate constitution for Kashmir, limited the employment and ownership of lands in Kashmir for non-Kashmiris, and restricted India’s jurisdiction to the region’s foreign affairs, defence and communications (Tremblay, 1996), thus, leaving Kashmiris to practice and preserve their federal autonomy and Kashmiriyat identity.

However, with such autonomy, India anticipated a space of misuse from ‘internal others’ who could trigger its ontological insecurities by challenging its legitimacy over Kashmir. India thus commenced with controlling Kashmiri political elites and federal politics. Consequently, elites disagreeing with India’s stance on Kashmir were systemically expelled from power or arrested. They were substituted by leaders who were micro-managed by the Indian government, a president/governors’ rule (Bose, 2007), or regional parties that merely demanded autonomy within the Indian union itself. This can be substantiated with the imprisonment of Chief Ministers Sheikh Abdullah and Bakshi Ghulam when they fell out with the Centre (Bose, 2007); the dismissal and reinstatement of Farooq Abdullah’s government in 1984 and 1986 depending on his relations with the centre (Hussain, 2002; Kashmir Life, 2002); or even the recent house arrest of Kashmiri leaders to silence their resentment on the revocation of Article 370 (Sandhu, 2019), thus, contributing to political alienation, autonomy loss and grievances of Kashmiris.

However, in addition to controlling the elites, India aspired to strengthen its ontological security by gradually integrating Kashmiris and treating Kashmir on par with other federal states. India thus provided massive economic incentives to the region (Khan, 2012) and expanded its jurisdictions from foreign affairs, defence and communications through several presidential orders (Tremblay, 1996). The Indian parliament was also substantially empowered to make decisions over Kashmir on 94 out of 97 central list issues (Mustafa, 2019). It also passed laws that could bring Kashmir under the direct control of the Centre through the president and governor’s rule. Similarly, India also changed terms such as prime minister and Sardar-i-Riyasat to chief minister and governor (Tremblay, 1996) and chose Urdu over Kashmiri as the federal state’s official language (ANI, 2020). Recently, India also abolished Kashmir’s autonomy by revoking Articles 370 and 35 (A), citing reasons of national integration (Khurana, 2019). These policies thus strengthened India’s ontological security by hindering Kashmiri identity and autonomy.

These grievances of political alienation, identity and autonomy erosion peaked with the 1987 electoral rigging (Schofield, 2003). The 1987 elections witnessed a surge in the popularity of the Muslim United Front (MUF) party that was supported by Pakistan-backed Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) (Williams, 2003). The central government rigged the elections as it grew anxious about potential challenges to India’s authority over the region (Williams, 2003). Realising that their electoral mandate was not respected again, several Kashmiris who had witnessed constant grievances at the hands of a coercive state undertook an anti-India and pro-independence stance.

As the anti-India sentiments surged in Kashmir, Pakistan found an opportunity to annex Indian Kashmir and fulfil its ontological security. Pakistan tapped on Kashmiri grievances, and it funded and trained native insurgents and Pakistani and foreign fighters (Haqqani, 2003). This led to the 1989 insurgency outbreak (Misra, 2001). However, as the insurgency questioned India’s ontological security and authority over Kashmir, the state decided to eliminate these ‘internal others’. India retaliated through massive armed forces deployment and iron-fist counter-insurgency operations (Mathur, 2016). Whilst India was eliminating these ‘internal others’, Pakistan also left the pro-independent and pro-secular organisations at the mercy of Indian forces. It instead started instilling the insurgency with the pro-Pakistan and pro-Islam organisations (Staniland, 2012), such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Muhammad and Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) (Evans, 2000) to ensure that Kashmir could be annexed to Pakistan.

The immediate years following the insurgency outbreak were vital for India and Pakistan and their ontological securities. India adopted an ‘iron-fist’ policy to prevent Kashmir from seceding away. Arbitrary detentions, public firings, extrajudicial killings, interrogations, physical abuse, sexual abuse, rapes, tortures, disappearances, raising local militias and justice denial became India’s most commonly used instruments to curb its ontological insecurity (Evans, 1999; Mathur, 2016). However, as the local militancy weakened with these coercive tactics, India re-initiated its integration attempts in parallel to its counter-insurgency operations. An election was conducted in 1996; the army launched their winning hearts and minds operations, and the government initiated some development projects and started talking to the Kashmiri separatists, including a breakaway HM faction led by Abdul Majeed Dar (Evans, 1999; Shah, 2020). These negotiations excluded any discussion on India’s authority over Kashmir and aimed to resurrect peace in the valley (Evans, 1999; Swami, 2004).

These developments, however, brought little comfort to Pakistan and its ontological security. As local militancy in Kashmir continued to take a blow by the mid-1990s, Pakistan reinforced and supplemented its militancy project and objectives in Kashmir with the Afghan Mujahidin and the Taliban (Gowdara Shivamurthy, 2021). Islamist fighters from Pakistan and elsewhere thus started making deep inroads into Kashmir from 1993. By 2000 and 2001, the number of foreign militant deaths outnumbered even local militant deaths (Shah, 2020). However, witnessing this opportunism of Pakistan and the imposition of foreign culture and practices, Indian Kashmiris also lost credibility and trust in the former.

Meanwhile, the Indian state continued with its counter-insurgency and integration policies in the early 2000s. The state launched a massive goodwill and outreach programme and held a relatively fair election in 2002. Even after multiple terror attacks, it continued engaging with Kashmiri separatists (Habibullah, 2018; Shah, 2018). Simultaneously, Pakistan had also continued supplementing the scattered remains of the local militancy with its extremist fighters. Even with the United States’ post 9/11 diplomatic pressure and the investments in confidence-building and composite dialogue (CD) with India, Pakistan had only decreased rather than halting its cross-border infiltration and terror attacks (Bennett-Jones, 2007; Wani, 2021), thus, indicating the state’s keenness to suffice its ontological security.

India also continued to be anxious about Kashmir during all this time and carried on with its integration policies. It agreed on Amarnath Yatra land transfers, continued maintaining its armed forces in the region, denying justice, defending arbitrary arrests and killings, and ignoring Kashmiri grievances, despite the reduction in militancy and militant attacks (Fazili, 2010). This only continued to distance the people from the government. Equally detested by India and Pakistan, most Kashmiris thus resorted to protests and stone-pelting to demand independence, as seen with the 2008 and 2010 unrests (Fazili, 2010). Nevertheless, India continued adopting brute force and coercive tactics against these protestors and weakened militants to limit its ontological insecurity.

These tactics also largely contributed to the new militancy phase in Kashmir. India’s coercive tactics, Kashmir’s unsolved grievances and the accessibility to social media had given birth to a new phase by 2014. Here, Pakistan and pro-Pakistan organisations aimed to entrench anti-Indian sentiments or pro-Islam and pro-Pakistan ideology amongst the locals through social media platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter and Signal (Shah, 2020). This contributed to increased protests, stone-pelting, local militant recruits and some tactical ‘anti-Indian’ cooperation amongst the insurgents and the locals, despite the locals’ desire for independence (Nair & Sambanis, 2019), thus, challenging India’s authority over Kashmir and also showcasing that Kashmiris favour Pakistan over the former (Nair & Sambanis, 2019).

The new militancy phase thus triggered severe ontological insecurities for India and has led to even more assertiveness, thus, inviting policies such as Operation All-Out, the abrogation of Article 370 and a year-long internet ban (Khurana, 2019). On the other hand, Pakistan has continued to oppose this move widely and has reasserted its claim over the whole Kashmir region (Zompa, 2021). It has continued sponsoring and supporting militancy while exploiting the grievances and alienation of the locals (Shah, 2021), thus, setting the ground for a new phase of militancy in the region again.

These practices of integrating Kashmir and enhancing ontological security have contributed to the origin and exacerbation of the internal conflict in Kashmir. The internal layer of the conflict in Kashmir contains deep historical, nation-building, identity, state-behaviour, and internal and external factors that cannot be entirely explained by either the dominating IR or the ‘new wars’ theories alone. Steele’s argument of endogenous creation and sustenance of ontological security better explains the ongoing conflict. However, this endogenous ontological significance of Kashmir has contributed to the external conflict and exogenous ontological security as well.

External Conflict and the Exogenous Ontological Security

Mitzen (2006) argues that states gain and sustain their ontological security exogenously through inter-state interactions. She asserts that when states interact with each other routinely, they learn about others’ behaviour and identity and reciprocate accordingly. In the process, they learn about themselves and their self-identities. Subsequently, even in a case when hostile relations define states’ self-identities, states prefer maintaining their ontological security through conflict and hostility rather than cooperation (Mitzen, 2006). The India–Pakistan rivalry and the external conflict over Kashmir can be explained in this context.

Even before the partition, both India and Pakistan had a clear endogenous understanding of themselves. While the former embraced secularism, the latter adopted a Muslim identity. This efficiently reduced Kashmir to a ‘critical situation’ and a zero-sum game, and it contributed to the first India–Pakistan war in 1947–1948. However, with no decisive outcome, Kashmir was divided into two parts, and both the states competed and claimed the whole region, therefore, marking the beginning of a rocky relationship based on competitive actions, claims and hostility.

In addition, the endogenous significance of Kashmir had made concessions and negotiations over the region nearly impossible for India and Pakistan. As the talks consistently failed, both the states claimed and competed over the other by arming themselves. The US–Pakistan Mutual Defence Assistance Agreement of 1954 indicated this growing hostility and competition (Shankar, 2016).

This hostile relationship had also begun to define India and Pakistan’s self-identities. It can be observed that this process had increasingly begun to be entrenched somewhere between the ‘late 1950s’ to the ‘early 1960s’. This could be read with how the ceasefire violations of both the countries increased from only 20–30 ceasefires in the ‘1950s’ to over triple digits in the following decades (Tremblay & Schofield, 1998), or even noting how Pakistan’s President Ayub Khan demanded compensation for staying neutral and not attacking India during the 1962 India–China war (The Week, 2020).

Meanwhile, the endogenous ontological needs of annexing or integrating Kashmir continued to exacerbate the exogenous interactions of hostility and competition. For instance, Pakistan launched Operation Gibraltar when it found the opportunity to annex Indian-administered Kashmir in 1965 (Joshi, 2015). Although India deterred Pakistan’s objectives, it led to a full-scale war and disrupted their prevailing positive interactions. This also distorted their age-old economic and people to people interactions (Malik & Javed, 2015), thereby furthering their negative perceptions, identities, and interactions.

By 1971, however, it was clear that these endogenous self-identity needs had solidified the exogenous ontological security of India and Pakistan. Both the states had begun to identify themselves as the hostile adversary of the other. This can be exemplified by how India used the Bangladeshi refugee crisis as an opportunity to assist the rebels, cut Pakistan in size (Jillani, 2011) and thereby further damage the latter’s two-nation theory (Mohan, 2020). This was the first time that India and Pakistan fought a war without Kashmir being the cause, indicating that the exogenous self-identities of hostility and rivalry had begun to define India and Pakistan’s interactions.

Nonetheless, this defeat and partition of Pakistan had only caused more humiliation and exacerbated these hostilities and exogenous self-identities. This, in turn, also eased and facilitated Pakistan’s need to suffice its endogenous self-identity by sponsoring terror in Kashmir (Kumar, 2009).

The intersection of these endogenous and exogenous self-identity needs also played a significant role in the 1999 Kargil war. The nuclear tests of India and Pakistan had triggered some interest in maintaining peace in the region. However, the need to satisfy the ontological security through hostile interactions and actions had problematised any peace sustenance. This was even more the case with Pakistan, as it was keen to sustain its endogenous ontological security by annexing Kashmir through a seasonal vacuum practised by the Indian military in the Kargil sector (Qadir, 2002). Thus, despite India’s political process and negotiations with Pakistan, the latter’s military and political leaders showed interest in sanctioning the military to infiltrate Kargil and re-energise Kashmir’s militancy (Qadir, 2002).

The intersection of these endogenous and exogenous self-identity needs has also complicated any form of conflict resolution. This case became more evident in the CD phase, which began in 2004 and lost its momentum with the 2008’s 26/11 attacks (Batabyal, 2011). The CD initiative was designed to mitigate India–Pakistan hostility and solve their conflict over Kashmir. Throughout the limited progress, the only proposed feasible solution for Kashmir was the ‘four-point’ solution (Bennett-Jones, 2007). It proposed open borders in Kashmir, initiating joint supervision and gradual demilitarisation of the region. This solution was feasible for both the states as it could still let Pakistan and India sustain their endogenous self-identities. The joint supervision and open borders could help Pakistan maintain some control and administration in Indian Kashmir, while India hoped this solution could prevent terrorism in Kashmir and legitimise its claim and authority.

This progress, however, collapsed with Pakistan-sponsored the 26/11 attacks (Batabyal, 2011), which were launched when both India and Pakistan attempted to mitigate their endogenous ontological insecurities and deter their future hostile interactions. This indicated that Kashmir’s centrality to India and Pakistan’s endogenous self-identities had problematised an easy solution to the conflict, but the hostility sufficing their self-identities had made it even more challenging to foster peace and cooperation. Years of hostile interactions have compelled India and Pakistan to perceive themselves as rivals. This has also provided them with exogenous self-identities that has been difficult to overcome. Consequently, the peace process between India and Pakistan has been ransacked multiple times. Examples of it can even be seen with Pakistan’s role in the Kargil war after the Lahore Summit and the collapse of the Agra Summit.

However, with 26/11 and the lapse of CD, the four-point solution also ceased to exist. Kashmir thus returned to being a ‘critical point’ for both India and Pakistan. Pakistan re-energised its cross-border militancy and then started shaping and supporting Kashmir’s new militancy, while India continued with its assertive and integration policies (Fazili, 2010; Khalid, 2015; Wani, 2021). These actions led to more claims, militancy, assertive policies, hostility and altercations. Attempts and calls for peace have again been ransacked with the Pathankot terror attacks after Modi’s goodwill visit to Pakistan (Sirohi, 2016) and India’s Balakot airstrikes despite Imran Khan’s call for peace (PTI, 2019a).

Therefore, it has rather been easy for India and Pakistan to sustain this exogenous self-identity through consistent negative interactions. This includes military escalations, frequent stand-offs, terror attacks, promotion of militancy, limited military actions, military balancing, arms race, regular fire exchanges at the Kashmir border and inter-state wars at regular intervals (Sitaraman, 2015). Nevertheless, this advent of satisfying exogenous ontological security only furthers their hostile self-identities and claims and stakes for Kashmir. This interaction of endogenous and exogenous ontological needs has left little space for peace and trust amongst both the states, thus, continuing to contribute to the war in and over Kashmir.