Illustration by Global Voices
This story is part of Undertones, Global Voices’ Civic Media Observatory‘s newsletter. Subscribe to Undertones.
India and Pakistan have been a part of our coverage at the observatory for the past five years, and Global Voices has been reporting on underrepresented issues in the region for over 20 years. In past editions, we have focused on stories that hardly ever become part of the mainstream, such as the political battle over India’s holy rivers or growing toxic masculinity narratives in Pakistani media and beyond. This week’s two narratives underscore the humans between the attacks and the context behind them.
A region in dispute
The partition of British India, under the Indian Independence Act of 1947, designated India and Pakistan (the latter consisting of West Pakistan, now Pakistan, and East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh after its independence in 1971) as two independent dominions. The act separated the Muslim, Hindu, and Sikh populations, causing one of the most significant forced migrations in history.
In this division of British India, the diverse regions of Jammu and Kashmir could accede to either country. After failing to gain independence, Kashmir monarch Maharaja Hari Singh’s decision to join India sparked a dispute between India and Pakistan, leading to armed conflict later that year.
In July 1949, India and Pakistan agreed to establish a ceasefire line through the Karachi Agreement, supporting the halt in hostilities outlined in Part I of the United Nations Security Council Resolution dated 13 August 1948. The initiative eased tensions for several years. Yet, the two countries battled for the territory again in 1965, 1971, 1989, and 1999.
The two countries had been living under a fragile ceasefire since 2003, with both Pakistan and India periodically reporting several violations of the agreement.
On August 5, 2019, the Indian government revoked Article 370 of the country’s Constitution, removing Jammu and Kashmir's special status and splitting it into two union territories under strict security and communication lockdowns. In December 2023, the Supreme Court upheld the move. Prime Minister Modi pledged then to extend development benefits to what he considered the “marginalized communities” affected by the conditions established in the abrogated Article 370 of the Indian Constitution.
Five years after the revocation of Article 370, in July 2024, Human Rights Watch cited continued abuses by Indian security forces, including arbitrary detention and extrajudicial killings. In September of that same year, Amnesty International noted a climate of fear created by punitive measures and restrictions, contrasting Indian Prime Minister Modi’s claims that the region has been returning to normalcy since the 2019 decision.
Narrative: Kashmiris are not the enemy
On April 22, militants killed 26 individuals, primarily Hindus, in the tourist town of Pahalgam. The incident triggered a series of retaliatory actions between India and Pakistan, escalating tensions and raising the possibility of a full-scale conflict between the two nuclear-armed nations.
In the aftermath of this event, Kashmiris have suffered widespread retaliation and violence, from locals having their houses damaged during the demolition of militants’ houses by the Indian military to attacks on Kashmiri vendors across India and even Kashmiri students fleeing their studies after multiple incidents of reprisal attacks by Hindu right-wing groups.
The Kashmiri population, which includes residents of the Kashmir Valley and speakers of Kashmiri language variants in the Jammu region, is mainly Muslim. However, there is also a Kashmiri Hindu community, many of whom have migrated from the valley and now live in Jammu or other parts of India.
In response to the rise of hate against Kashmiris, the people supporting this narrative frame plead for Indian unity and coexistence while condemning the Pahalgam attack. In addition, the narrative is used to counter Islamist militants intending to exploit the repealing of autonomy imposed on Kashmir by the Indian government.
How this narrative is shared online
In this subtitled Instagram video edited from a Republic TV street interview with a Kashmiri civilian, the author applauds the interviewee's defense of the Kashmiri people against the reporters’ insistent baiting to engage with questioning over ties with Pakistan and the latter's role in the Pahalgam attack.
The author of the posts calls the interviewer a “godi media reporter,” a term popularized in India to refer to mainstream media outlets subservient to the BJP government and its narratives. The phenomenon, attributable to media capture through a handful of powerful conglomerates, is primarily blamed for the polarizing, anti-democratic state of Indian journalism, particularly of the broadcast variety.
The account publishing the item has 170k followers on Twitter, and its bio reads “Pro Constitution | Pro Democracy | Pro Secularism 🔥.” It is not affiliated with the Inquilab Urdu-language daily newspaper, nor apparently with the Indian Inquilab Party.
The item received 1,151,808 likes and 18.9k comments. It ranked +2 under our civic impact score as it has significant reach, applauds the interviewee's defense of the Kashmiri people, and criticizes the role of mainstream media outlets supporting the Indian government and its propaganda narratives.
Narrative: India is emulating the “Israel model” over Kashmir
Proponents of this narrative frame, primarily anti-colonialist activists and pro-Palestinian progressive intellectuals are pointing to the historically recent alliance between the Hindutva and Zionist ethnonationalist movements politically incumbent in India and Israel, based on their shared Islamophobic rhetoric and far-right authoritarian policies and their obsession with militarization, propaganda, and population control in pursuit of colonialist expansionism.
It’s been 19 months since the Hamas-led attack on Israel, followed up by the ensuing siege and invasion of Gaza that developed into what UN experts, human rights organizations, and Holocaust scholars are describing as a campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing. Politicians from India's ruling BJP party and right-wing propagandists have been increasingly floating an “Israel-like solution,” or “Israel model’ for dealing with Kashmir in recent years, a trend that burgeoned into full-fledged anti-Muslim instigation on social media after the attack by militants targeting Hindu tourists in Pahalgam on April 22, 2025.
On May 6, 2025, the Indian armed forces launched Operation Sindoor against Pakistan in response to the Pahalgam attack. Israel's ambassador to India expressed support for the operation and India's right to self-defense.
How this narrative is asserted online
Harsha Walia, a Bahrain-born Canadian feminist, indigenous rights, and anti-capitalist activist of Punjabi origin, shared this post on X one day after the Indian armed forces launched Operation Sindoor against Pakistan, comparing Hindutva with Zionism and listing the common elements in both ideologies, including nationalism and anti-Muslim sentiment.
“Hindutva & Zionism are ideologies of violence,” she writes, implying that India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, is following the same path as Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Harsha Walia is the co-founder of the radical migrant justice movement “No One Is Illegal,” the author of “Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism,” and the co-author of several other books on these topics.
The item received 5 quote posts, 14 comments, 281 reposts, 759 likes, and 88 bookmarks. It ranked +1 under our civic impact score as it denounces the Indian and Israeli government practices violating human rights and their efforts to spread hate against the inhabitants of the regions they have occupied.
In another case where this frame was spotted, Canadian journalist Sana Saeed reacted to the suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty by India by remarking that the impunity afforded to Israel over its Gaza offensive is dismantling international law in ways that will repeatedly impact vulnerable populations in the future. “India absolutely pulled the water treaty – knowing that Pakistan is one of the most water-scarce countries in the world- because it saw the lack of response and consequences for Israel starving Palestinians,” wrote Saeed. India has been intending to renegotiate the treaty since at least officially notifying Pakistan of its intent in January 2023, although the Jammu and Kashmir legislature had been demanding the Treaty's revision or abrogation since 2003. The uncertain future of the treaty impacts 286 million people depending on the waters of the hydrologically fragile Indus River basin.
The item received 353 quote tweets, 859 comments, 4.1k reposts, 14k likes, and 1.2k bookmarks. It ranked +2 under our civic impact score as it has a significant audience and reflects on the current status of international law and how the lack of response to illegal actions carried out by states in conflict zones indirectly legitimizes those unlawful practices.
See the item’s complete analysis here.
On May 10, 2025, India and Pakistan agreed to a ceasefire after US pressure and four days of fighting. However, hours after the agreement, explosions were heard in border cities and towns, with both sides accusing each other of violating the pact.
