By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s military on Sunday issued a blistering response to remarks by India’s army chief, describing them as “hubristic, jingoistic and myopic” and cautioning New Delhi against any attempt to push South Asia into another war whose consequences, it said, would prove “devastating” for the entire region and beyond.
In a statement released by the Inter-Services Public Relations, the military’s media wing took direct aim at comments made a day earlier by Gen. Upendra Dwivedi. During an interactive session in New Delhi, Dwivedi was asked how the Indian army would respond if circumstances similar to last year’s four-day military escalation with Pakistan arose again. He reiterated long-standing Indian allegations — repeatedly denied by Islamabad — that Pakistan harbors terrorists and supports attacks against India. Pakistan, he said, “had to decide whether they want to be part of geography or history or not.”
The ISPR statement framed Dwivedi’s words as far more than routine rhetoric. “Contrary to the delusional and hallucinational belief system and despite the omnipresent ill wishes that prevail in Hindutva-led India, Pakistan is already a country of consequence at global level, a declared nuclear power and an indelible part of South Asia’s geography and history,” it said. The remarks, it continued, showed that “the Indian leadership has neither been able to reconcile with the very idea of Pakistan nor it has learnt the right lessons, even after the passage of eight decades.”
Such a mindset, the ISPR added, “has repeatedly pushed South Asia towards wars and crises.” Threatening “a sovereign nuclear neighbour with elimination from ‘geography’ is not strategic signalling or brinkmanship,” the statement warned. “It is sheer bankruptcy of cognitive capacities, madness and warmongering despite knowing the reality that such geographic obliteration would certainly be mutual and comprehensive.”
The language reflected the depth of lingering bitterness between the two nuclear-armed rivals, whose forces clashed in their worst fighting since the 1999 Kargil conflict exactly one year ago. That confrontation, which Pakistan commemorated last week as a victory it calls “Marka-i-Haq,” began after India blamed Pakistan for backing a militant attack on April 22, 2025, in Indian-occupied Kashmir that killed 26 people. Pakistan denied any involvement and called for an independent investigation. India responded in early May 2025 by carrying out strikes inside Pakistani territory, saying it had hit terrorist camps. Pakistan said it shot down six Indian fighter jets. For four days the two sides exchanged fire with jets, drones and artillery before agreeing to a ceasefire on May 10. Tensions have remained elevated since, with each capital continuing to accuse the other of sponsoring militant attacks.
At a May 10 ceremony at General Headquarters in Rawalpindi marking the anniversary, Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff and Chief of Defence Forces, Field Marshal Asim Munir, warned that any future “misadventure” against Pakistan would bring “extremely far-reaching and painful” consequences for the adversary. Sunday’s ISPR statement went further, accusing India of ignoring its own “historically documented record of being a harbinger of terrorism in the region, a state sponsor of terrorism, key source of regional instability, practitioner of transnational assassinations and a hotbed of disinformation campaign across the globe.” New Delhi’s aggressive posture, it said, “stems less from confidence and more from frustration at its inability to harm Pakistan, that has been brutally exposed during Marka-i-Haq.”
The military urged Indian leaders to show the “restraint, maturity, and strategic sobriety” expected of responsible nuclear states rather than “the language of civilisational supremacy or national erasure.” India, it said, “needs to reconcile with Pakistan’s salience and learn to peacefully co-exist with it. Otherwise, any attempt to target Pakistan can trigger consequences that shall neither be geographically confined nor strategically or politically palatable for India.”
International analysts have grown increasingly concerned that the next crisis between the two neighbours could be more dangerous than the last. With fewer avenues for outside mediation and both sides’ nuclear doctrines evolving, the window for de-escalation appears narrower than ever. The ISPR statement did not mention specific Indian military plans but framed Dwivedi’s remarks as part of a pattern that has kept South Asia on edge for decades. The two countries have fought three major wars since 1947, two of them directly over the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir, which each claims in full but controls only in part.
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