India · Pakistan · 1947–2026
Fifty moments in war, diplomacy and popular culture that changed how India encountered Pakistan and its people.
India and Pakistan became independent countries in August 1947. Partition forced between 10 and 15 million people to leave their homes, often amid terrible violence. This displacement shaped how families in both countries would remember each other.
Pakistan-backed tribal raiders entered Jammu and Kashmir in October 1947; regular Pakistani troops later joined the fighting. Indian troops arrived after Maharaja Hari Singh signed the Instrument of Accession. A UN-backed ceasefire took effect in 1949, leaving part of the former princely state under Pakistani occupation.
India and Pakistan signed the Indus Waters Treaty in 1960. It divided the use of six rivers and created a system for handling disputes. The agreement survived several wars, but India placed it in abeyance after the Pahalgam attack in April 2025.
Yash Chopra’s Dharmputra looked back at Partition and Hindu communal politics. Its warning was directed inward: hatred of Muslims could also damage the country India was trying to build. The film remains an unusually direct early treatment of religious majoritarianism.
Pakistan launched Operation Gibraltar in Kashmir in 1965, hoping to trigger an uprising. Fighting then spread across the international border. A UN ceasefire ended the war in September, but each country built its own account of victory.
Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri and President Ayub Khan signed the Tashkent Declaration in January 1966. Both governments agreed to withdraw their forces to pre-war positions. Shastri died in Tashkent hours after the agreement was signed.
The Pakistan Army’s crackdown and genocide in East Pakistan sent about 10 million refugees into India. India entered the war in December and won a decisive victory in thirteen days; Pakistani forces surrendered in Dhaka and Bangladesh became independent. Bangladesh had recognised the genocide long before its prime minister restated it in 2026. The victory shaped Indian war films for decades, from Border to Raazi.
Indira Gandhi and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto signed the Simla Agreement in July 1972. The ceasefire line in Kashmir became the Line of Control. The two governments also agreed that future disputes would be handled bilaterally and by peaceful means.
Garm Hava followed a Muslim family in Agra after Partition. Its pressures were domestic: a frozen bank account, the loss of a home and growing suspicion towards Muslims who remained in India. The border was present even when it was never shown.
Pakistan’s General Zia-ul-Haq travelled to Jaipur to watch a Test match with Rajiv Gandhi in 1987. The visit came while Indian and Pakistani troops were massed near the border. It gave the leaders an informal meeting during a dangerous military standoff.
Doordarshan broadcast Govind Nihalani’s Tamas as a television series in 1988. Its account of communal violence before Partition reached homes across India. The broadcast also faced protests and a court challenge from groups that wanted it stopped.
A.R. Rahman recorded ‘Gurus of Peace’ with Pakistan’s Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan for Vande Mataram. The two stars sang about the cost of conflict in the year India marked 50 years of independence. It became an early landmark of Indo-Pak collaboration in the satellite-TV age.
Border became one of India’s biggest war films. But it ended with ‘Mere Dushman Mere Bhai’, a song asking what either country had gained from war. The film could celebrate Indian soldiers while still questioning the conflict.
India’s largely indigenous nuclear programme carried out five tests at Pokhran in May 1998. Pakistan replied with six tests later that month after receiving important nuclear and missile assistance from China. Every later military crisis would carry the risk of escalation between two nuclear-armed states.
Deepa Mehta’s Earth returned to Lahore during Partition. Friends and neighbours were pulled apart by communal violence, while the story stayed close to the people living through it. The film appeared in the same year that India and Pakistan openly tested nuclear weapons.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee travelled to Lahore by bus in February 1999 and signed a declaration with Nawaz Sharif. The BJP prime minister also visited Minar-e-Pakistan, giving the peace effort a clear public image. A few months later, the Kargil War began.
Pakistani soldiers and armed infiltrators occupied positions on the Indian side of the Line of Control in Kargil. Indian forces retook the heights in a hard-fought victory. The operation, planned by Pakistan’s military under General Pervez Musharraf, wrecked the peace opening begun at Lahore.
Sarfarosh cast a respected Pakistani ghazal singer as a man running a terror network inside India. The villain was charming, educated and culturally familiar. Released shortly before Kargil, the film gave cross-border cultural contact a more suspicious frame.
‘Kabhi Toh Nazar Milao’, Adnan Sami’s album with Asha Bhosle, sold millions of copies in India. Sami was then a Pakistani citizen, but his voice became part of Indian pop and film music. He moved to India and became an Indian citizen in 2016.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pervez Musharraf met in Agra in July 2001. The summit ended without a joint declaration. The two governments could not agree on how to address Kashmir and Pakistan-based terrorism in the same document.
Five terrorists from the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba attacked India’s Parliament in December 2001. Security personnel stopped them from entering the building, but nine people were killed. India and Pakistan then mobilised hundreds of thousands of troops in a ten-month standoff.
The Indian and Pakistani governments agreed to a ceasefire along the Line of Control in November 2003. Cross-border firing fell sharply. The quieter border helped make later bus services, family visits and the 2004 cricket tour possible.
Main Hoon Na was built around an India–Pakistan prisoner exchange called Project Milaap. Its villain was a former Indian officer trying to sabotage the plan. In one of the year’s biggest films, peace was the mission rather than a side message.
India toured Pakistan for a full cricket series in 2004. Thousands of Indian supporters crossed the border, and stories of Pakistani hospitality became part of the coverage. India won its first Test series in Pakistan. The thaw was now visible beyond official meetings.
Veer-Zaara told the story of an Indian man and a Pakistani woman separated by the border. Its Pakistani characters included a principled lawyer and a close, recognisable family. The film became the year’s highest-grossing Hindi release worldwide.
The Srinagar–Muzaffarabad bus began in April 2005, linking Kashmir Valley with Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. It allowed families divided by the Line of Control to meet after decades. Many early passengers were elderly people revisiting places left in 1947.
Atif Aslam made his Bollywood debut with ‘Woh Lamhe’ in 2005. His voice soon became a fixture in Hindi films and on Indian radio. That popularity outlasted the political thaw, even when Indian concerts and new collaborations became harder.
Pakistani comedian Rauf Lala won The Great Indian Laughter Challenge in 2006. Indian viewers voted for him during a period when performers were moving more freely between the two countries. A Pakistani artist had become a familiar face on Indian television.
Amanat Ali, Junaid Sheikh and Mussarat Abbas competed on Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Challenge in 2007. A dispute over whether they should sing Indian patriotic songs showed both the reach of the shared format and the political limits around it.
Khuda Kay Liye received a commercial release in India in 2008, the first Pakistani film to do so in roughly four decades. Indian audiences were seeing a Pakistani film debate religious extremism, migration and life inside Pakistan.
Ten Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists attacked India’s financial centre and killed 166 people over nearly three days. Ajmal Kasab was captured alive. His testimony, calls with handlers and later investigations gave Indian and international agencies detailed evidence about the attackers’ training and support network in Pakistan. The peace process stopped.
India had always been the much larger economy. In 2009, its GDP per person also moved above Pakistan’s in current US dollars: about $1,095 against $964, according to the World Bank. The attack on Mumbai, India’s financial centre, had not stopped the country’s broader economic march. The gap would keep widening.
The Times of India and Pakistan’s Jang Group launched Aman ki Asha in 2010. It promoted concerts, business meetings and public contact between the two countries. The campaign showed that cultural outreach continued even after the Mumbai attacks.
Zee launched Zindagi in 2014 with television serials from Pakistan. Shows such as Zindagi Gulzar Hai, Aunn Zara and Humsafar found a large Indian audience. Viewers were seeing Pakistani homes and families instead of encountering Pakistan only through the news.
Bajrangi Bhaijaan followed an Indian man trying to return a lost Pakistani girl to her family without a passport. It became the year’s biggest Hindi hit in India. Its Pakistan was guarded by the state but helped by ordinary people.
Narendra Modi made a surprise visit to Lahore in December 2015. About a week later, Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists attacked the Pathankot airbase. The sequence showed how a Pakistan-based terrorist group could wreck another diplomatic opening.
Four terrorists from the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed attacked an Indian Army base in Uri and killed 19 soldiers. India responded with surgical strikes on terrorist launch pads across the Line of Control. Dialogue gave way to a policy built around retaliation and deterrence.
Ae Dil Hai Mushkil faced threats because its cast included Pakistani actor Fawad Khan. The Maharashtra Navnirman Sena opposed its release, while Indian film bodies restricted Pakistani talent. Zee also removed Pakistani programmes from television.
Raazi centred on an Indian spy who married into a Pakistani military family before the 1971 war. The film remained firmly on the Indian side, but gave the family she deceived emotional weight. Patriotism and grief occupied the same story.
A Jaish-e-Mohammed suicide bomber killed 40 CRPF personnel at Pulwama. India struck a terrorist training camp near Balakot in Pakistan. Pakistan responded the next day and the two air forces fought, taking the countries into their sharpest military crisis in years.
Uri: The Surgical Strike turned India’s 2016 operation into a blockbuster. ‘How’s the josh?’ moved from cinema halls into speeches by politicians and public officials. A military response had become a piece of popular culture.
The Kartarpur Corridor opened in November 2019. It allowed Indian Sikh pilgrims to reach Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Pakistan without a visa. The route remained a rare working agreement even as diplomatic and cultural relations deteriorated elsewhere.
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Pakistan violated the 2003 ceasefire more than 5,000 times in 2020, according to India, killing civilians and soldiers and disrupting life in border villages. In February 2021, the two militaries recommitted to the agreement. Firing fell sharply, giving residents along the Line of Control a respite even though diplomacy and trade remained frozen.
Coke Studio Pakistan released ‘Pasoori’ in 2022. It reached No. 1 on Spotify’s Viral 50 chart in India and crossed one billion YouTube views by January 2025. Formal exchange had nearly stopped, but Indian listeners were still pressing play.
Indian viewers kept watching Pakistani serials on YouTube after they disappeared from regular television. Hit episodes could draw up to 20 million views worldwide, with India a major part of the audience. The numbers are global, so they cannot measure Indian sentiment on their own. They do show that curiosity survived the political freeze.
Terrorists attacked tourists at Baisaran near Pahalgam on 22 April 2025 and killed 26 people. India’s National Investigation Agency later charged the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba and its proxy, The Resistance Front. India closed the Attari crossing and placed the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance.
India launched Operation Sindoor on 7 May and struck terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Pakistan responded, and missile, drone and artillery exchanges followed. The two militaries agreed to stop firing on 10 May.
Dhurandhar connected its fictional spy story to attacks including IC-814, Parliament and 26/11. Many viewers saw it as an answer to years of Pakistan-based terrorism. Critics argued that it mixed real events and fiction too freely.
Dhurandhar: The Revenge took its Indian agent deeper into a fictional campaign against Pakistan-based terror networks. For many viewers, its revenge fantasy offered catharsis after Parliament, 26/11, Pulwama and Pahalgam. The film operated in a fantasy world, but the anger it channelled was accumulated over years.
At Wagah, Indian and Pakistani guards perform the same ceremony each evening. The gestures are aggressive, but lowering the flags and closing the gate require exact coordination. The handshake is brief. The routine begins again the next day.
What remains
India and Pakistan remain tied by geography, history, language and family memory. Their economies continue to grow, but at sharply different rates. People in both countries still want much the same from life: safety, opportunity and a better future for their children.
People-to-people contact is now severely limited. There is little political space for another peace process, and Pakistan’s military-dominated system narrows it further. In the near term, there is good reason to be cynical.
However, music and drama travel where people cannot. The two nations remain connected despite the borders. For the long term, one can hope.
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