Are India and Pakistan quietly preparing to restart dialogue?

Islamabad, Pakistan – Earlier this month, arsenic Indian tv channels and authorities leaders were celebrating the day of the warfare against Pakistan successful May 2025, 1 of the astir influential ideologues of the governmental question that Prime Minister Narendra Modi leads struck a discordant note.

In an interrogation with an Indian quality agency, Dattatreya Hosabale, wide caput of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) – the mothership of the Hindu majoritarian doctrine of Hindutva that guides Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party –  said New Delhi should research dialog with Pakistan.

Recommended Stories

• list 1 of 4Two wins, 2 losses: What India, Pakistan person learned a twelvemonth aft war
• list 2 of 4India to Iran: How 2 wars shaped emergence of Pakistan’s Asim Munir
• list 3 of 4Handshake successful Dhaka: Can India and Pakistan revive ties successful 2026?
• list 4 of 4Can India halt Pakistan’s stream h2o — and volition it spark a caller war?

“We should not adjacent the doors. We should ever beryllium acceptable to prosecute successful dialogue,” helium said.

His comments instantly stirred up a governmental tempest successful India, with the absorption questioning the RSS presumption and pointing retired however it was successful stark opposition to Modi’s.

Indeed, Modi and his authorities person repeatedly said “terror and talks can’t spell together”, arguing against immoderate dialog with Pakistan, which India accuses of sponsoring and arming fighters that person attacked Indian-administered Kashmir and Indian cities for decades. The four-day 2025 warfare – which Pakistan and India some importune they “won” – followed an onslaught by gunmen successful the edifice municipality of Pahalgam successful Indian-administered Kashmir successful which 26 tourists were killed.

Pakistan welcomed Hosabale’s comments, with Foreign Ministry spokesperson Tahir Andrabi saying Islamabad would hold to spot whether determination was “an authoritative reaction” from India to calls for talks.

More than a week later, the Modi authorities is yet to formally respond to Hosabale’s telephone for dialogue, but different salient voices successful India person backed the RSS leader, starring to suggestions that New Delhi mightiness beryllium preparing the crushed to restart ceremonial engagement with Pakistan.

Analysts say, however, that portion there’s a increasing rationale for the neighbours to re-engage diplomatically, and that they person already softly taken babe steps successful this direction, resurrecting a full-fledged dialog volition not beryllium easy.

Voices from the margins – oregon investigating the waters?

The propulsion for talks didn’t extremity with Hosabale.

Former Indian service main General Manoj Naravane publically backed the RSS leader’s position, besides telling an Indian quality bureau connected the sidelines of a publication motorboat successful Mumbai that the “common antheral has thing to bash with politics” and that relationship betwixt peoples people helps amended relations betwixt states.

Across the border, Andrabi responded: “We anticipation that sanity volition prevail successful India and warmongering volition slice distant and pave the mode for much specified voices.”

While the RSS is the aforesaid arsenic the BJP and is not itself successful government, astir elder BJP leaders, including Modi, person served for years successful the group, which plays a captious relation successful gathering grassroots enactment for the governing party.

Irfan Nooruddin, a prof of Indian authorities astatine Georgetown University, said the signals for talks were emerging from the RSS and retired generals similar Naravane for a reason.

“The Modi authorities has boxed itself into a country with its anti-Pakistan rhetoric,” helium told Al Jazeera.

“For it to unilaterally basal down and initiate dialog would beryllium perchance politically costly. So, for the calls to travel from the RSS and from ex-military leaders is to the BJP’s vantage arsenic it gives them governmental cover. Any efforts connected their portion tin beryllium spun arsenic responding to calls from nine alternatively than a governmental concession,” the Washington, DC-based world said.

Below the surface

The calls for dialog aren’t coming successful a vacuum, constituent retired analysts.

Jauhar Saleem, a erstwhile Pakistani diplomat, told Al Jazeera that astir 4 meetings involving erstwhile officials, retired generals, quality figures and parliamentarians from some sides had taken spot implicit the past year, since the May 2025 warfare that ended successful a ceasefire that United States President Donald Trump insists helium mediated.

The meetings, divided betwixt Track 2 and Track 1.5 formats involving respective serving officials, were held successful Muscat, Doha, Thailand and London, helium said. A Track 1.5 format refers to a gathering wherever determination are serving officials and retired bureaucrats, subject officers and members of civilian nine from some sides. Track 2 events are ones wherever members of civilian nine and retired authorities and subject officials from the 2 sides meet, but with the blessings of the governments. These mechanisms are utilized by governments arsenic icebreakers and to trial the waters for ceremonial diplomacy wherever there’s a deficiency of spot betwixt 2 countries.

“I judge they person helped transportation guardant informal dialog connected a scope of issues with a presumption to preventing large misunderstandings, and investigating the ground, possibly paving the mode for ceremonial contacts, which person been astir non-existent successful caller years,” Saleem said.

Tariq Rashid Khan, a erstwhile major-general who aboriginal served arsenic Pakistan’s ambassador to Brunei, described the dialogues arsenic indispensable infrastructure alternatively than diplomatic progress.

“Track-1.5 and Track-2 dialogues are not a substitute for authoritative diplomacy. Instead, they are a information valve,” helium told Al Jazeera.

When asked straight past week astir reports of specified contacts, Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs declined to comment.

“If I was to comment, determination would beryllium nary backmost channel,” Andrabi said during his briefing.

The altered equation

These quiescent engagements are unfolding against a backdrop that has shifted considerably since the ceasefire of May 10, 2025.

Pakistan’s planetary lasting has changed markedly successful this period. Field Marshal Asim Munir, who commanded Pakistani forces during the conflict, was by April 2026 personally brokering the ceasefire betwixt Washington and Tehran.

The Islamabad talks held connected April 11-12 produced the archetypal nonstop high-level engagement betwixt the US and Iran since 1979, with President Donald Trump publicly crediting Munir and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif aggregate times.

Meanwhile, India-US relations are nether strain implicit commercialized tariffs and migration restrictions, narrowing the abstraction successful which New Delhi tin number connected Washington to defer to its regional preferences connected Pakistan.

For India, analysts say, that displacement carries consequences New Delhi has yet to publically acknowledge.

“The geopolitical concern has flipped connected its head,” Nooruddin told Al Jazeera. “India has gone from having rod presumption with respect to its leverage successful Washington to being connected the outside, portion Pakistan has expertly managed to re-enter America’s bully graces. India could spend to crystal retired Pakistan erstwhile it appeared to beryllium forging a peculiar narration with the US, but nary longer.”

But Khan, the erstwhile Pakistani subject official, cautioned against overstating the value of the caller signals.

“Quiet signalling reflects realism much than abrupt reconciliation,” helium said.

The heavy divide

Khan’s scepticism was underscored by the events of the past week.

Speaking astatine a civil-military lawsuit astatine the Manekshaw Centre successful New Delhi connected May 16, Indian Army main General Upendra Dwivedi said if Islamabad continued to “harbour terrorists and run against India”, it would person to determine whether it wanted to beryllium “part of geography oregon past oregon not”.

Within 24 hours, Pakistan’s subject responded. The Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) directorate described the remarks arsenic “hubristic, jingoistic and myopic”, informing that threatening a nuclear-armed neighbour with erasure from the representation “is not strategical signalling oregon brinkmanship; it is sheer bankruptcy of cognitive capacities”.

Any effort to onslaught Pakistan, the ISPR added, could “trigger consequences that shall neither beryllium geographically confined nor strategically oregon politically palatable for India”.

Meanwhile, a ruling from an planetary tribunal captured the authorities of the narration successful miniature.

The Court of Arbitration astatine The Hague issued an grant connected May 15 concerning pondage limits astatine Indian hydroelectric projects connected the Indus stream system.

Pakistan welcomed the ruling, expectedly, portion India rejected it outright, reiterating that the tribunal was “illegally constituted” and that immoderate determination it issued was “null and void”.

The Indus Waters Treaty, placed successful abeyance by New Delhi pursuing the Pahalgam attack successful April 2025, remains suspended, India’s Ministry of External Affairs said. The pact has agelong been the cornerstone of h2o sharing betwixt India and Pakistan, and, earlier its suspension successful 2025 by India, had survived 3 wars betwixt the neighbours.

The speech betwixt Dwivedi and the ISPR was the clearest nationalist awesome yet of wherever relations stand.

“A statement is taking spot successful the Indian strategical ecosystem astir the level of engagement with Pakistan, wherever immoderate spot merit successful moving towards ceremonial dialogue,” Saleem, the erstwhile Pakistani diplomat, told Al Jazeera. “But the governmental volition for the aforesaid is not yet intelligibly evident.”