The upcoming visit of Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar to Pakistan for the SCO summit in mid-October provides an opportunity to discuss a wide range of issues affecting the relations between these countries.

Given the current state of relations between the two countries, one could hardly expect Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to travel to Islamabad for the SCO summit. But the planned visit of the Indian Foreign Minister is already a significant positive development in the, to put it mildly, challenging nature of the relations between the two South Asian giants. This has been made clear by recent events in both countries—events which, while seemingly of purely domestic importance, in reality have a bearing on extremely sensitive issues central to their bilateral relations.

India’s parliamentary elections in the Jammu and Kashmir Union Territory

In India, a country with an almost uninterrupted series of elections, the local parliamentary elections in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir have attracted particular attention as a result of recent events. These will be the first elections in the region since the landmark events of 2019, when the former state of Jammu and Kashmir lost its special status and was divided into two Union Territories, one of which is Jammu and Kashmir. This downgrading of the region provoked sharply negative reactions both from India’s Muslims (who number about 200 million) and from neighboring Pakistan.

Significantly, among the groups participating in the elections are groups which reflect the sentiments of the local Muslim population, but which have refused to engage in radical (armed) struggle against the central Government. Their interests are represented by the regional National Conference party, in coalition with India’s oldest political party, the Indian National Congress. The Indian National Congress has always upheld the principle that India is a secular state.

This stance is in stark contrast to the position of the Bharatiya Janata Party, now in its third consecutive term, which........

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