The India-Pakistan tensions along the Line of Control (LoC) are once again spiralling and could eventually end up into a serious military escalation between the two nuclear armed neighbours. The killing of a senior Indian Army officer and a leader of Kashmiri resistance forces have further heightened the tensions in the Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK), for which India has once again blamed Pakistan. Owing to the growing international focus on India’s grave human rights violation in Kashmir and pogrom of the minority Muslim population in India, there is a likelihood that the right-wing Hindu extremist groups would try to deflect international attention and once again build a momentum for a military action against Pakistan.

To understand the evolving dynamics a webinar is being planned, which would aim to address the following key questions:

• How serious is the current crisis and will it lead to a conflict?
• What would be the role of the international community in preventing/ diffusing the crisis?
• With the international community embroiled in managing the COVID-19 related crisis, would there be an incentive for the major powers to intervene and diffuse a military crisis, or both India-Pakistan will have to deal with it on their own?
• With the international community embroiled in managing the COVID-19 related crisis, would there be an incentive for the major powers to intervene and diffuse a military crisis, or both India-Pakistan will have to deal with it on their own?
• Does warmongering and hostile rhetoric make any sense in the current peculiar pandemic environment?
• With India’s claims of surgical strikes being a “new normal” and Pakistan’s policy of “Quid Pro Quo Plus,” what could be the nature of a potential future crisis? And will a ‘surgical strike’ change the domestic Indian reality?
• In view of the rising influence of Hindutva at the senior decision-making level, is there as a space to manage India-Pakistan relations through a dialogue?