India–Pakistan Relations, Explained Through the Data
2026-09-19 · by Jordi Fuster
Few bilateral relationships carry as much weight, or as much risk, as India and Pakistan. Both are nuclear-armed states with a seven-decade dispute over Kashmir that has produced four wars and countless smaller crises. The last eighteen months added another chapter, and WorldRelat's own number for the pair — 0.14 out of 10, categorized simply as "Very bad" — is about as low as this site's scoring gets.
What actually happened
In April 2025, an attack on tourists in the Kashmiri resort town of Pahalgam killed 26 people. What followed was a four-day military confrontation between India and Pakistan, ending in a ceasefire on 10 May 2025 that both sides claimed as a success — and that U.S. President Donald Trump said he had personally mediated. In the aftermath, India suspended the decades-old Indus Waters Treaty, one of the few functioning agreements the two countries had maintained even through previous wars, and has since rejected international tribunal rulings related to the dispute.
The rhetoric since has stayed sharp. India's Army Chief, General Upendra Dwivedi, said Pakistan would have to choose between being "part of geography or history" — a line Pakistan's military dismissed as a "bankruptcy of cognitive capacities." That's not the language of two countries drifting toward resolution.
A handshake, and quieter channels
And yet, alongside the public hostility, something more tentative has been happening out of view. In January 2026, officials from both countries were photographed shaking hands in Dhaka — the first public contact since the May 2025 clash — coinciding with preparations for the T20 World Cup. Roughly four Track 1.5 and Track 2 dialogues, involving retired officials and serving diplomats, reportedly took place over the following months in Muscat, Doha, Thailand and London. Even voices inside India's own Hindu nationalist establishment, including RSS general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale, have publicly argued the door to dialogue should stay open. None of this has produced an official thaw — the relationship remains frozen at the state level — but it's a meaningfully different picture than pure escalation.
What the data captures, and what it doesn't
WorldRelat's score reflects the tone of the documented relationship in aggregate, and at 0.14 it sits near the very bottom of every pairing we track — a fair reflection of a year defined by an actual shooting war, a suspended treaty, and open hostility between military leaderships. What a single sentiment number can't easily capture is the parallel track: back-channel meetings that never make an official communiqué, and a handshake that was symbolic precisely because almost nothing else was happening publicly. If Track 1.5 diplomacy eventually produces something more concrete, it's likely to show up in future documented coverage well before it shows up in an official joint statement — worth watching for anyone following the India or Pakistan country pages going forward.
Sources: Al Jazeera, "Handshake in Dhaka"; Al Jazeera, "Are India and Pakistan quietly preparing to restart dialogue?".