‘In war, no one is a winner’: Sudden ceasefire ends anxiety about war in India

BENGALURU – “Common Sense, Great Intelligence.”

This was how US President Donald Trump described the decision by India and Pakistan to cease military hostilities that have kept the countries on edge for three days.

Minutes after a “full and immediate ceasefire” was announced from 5pm on May 10, it felt as if a great weight was lifted off most Indians.

A sense of foreboding had gripped much of the country as military strikes across the border with Pakistan triggered fears of a larger-scale military confrontation, something that many young Indians have not had to think about for decades.

Several Indians who spoke to The Straits Times before the sudden ceasefire demanded a violent response to

Pakistan’s alleged hand in the Pahalgam terrorist attack

on April 22 that killed 26 civilians, while others called for restraint and peace. 

Many requested anonymity or gave only their first names, amid a charged atmosphere.

After the ceasefire announcement, a few did grumble.

A 35-year-old software programmer in Bengaluru was upset about “the abrupt end” and wished India had “taught them (Pakistan) a good lesson” before agreeing to the ceasefire.

But others, like Delhi-based technology lawyer Apar Gupta, appear to have felt a surge of relief.

“I am glad that when peace presents itself, we rise to greet it... I believe the vast number of Indians recognise the true price of war,” he posted on social media platform X.

It was also welcome respite for thousands of Indians who have been facing artillery shelling and bombardment since May 7 near the Line of Control (LoC), India’s de facto border with Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir.

The Indian government said artillery fire from Pakistan killed at least 16 and injured more than 50 in the worst violence between the two neighbours since a renewed ceasefire in 2021.

Since May 8, people there had been hearing

the grim hum of drones

and seeing red flashes of Pakistani drones intercepted by Indian air defence systems. 

Hundreds of villagers who live near the LoC were evacuated.

A photographer who visited Uri in Kashmir on assignment shared a photograph of a woman holding shrapnel after her house was hit by shelling from Pakistan. 

“Schools are shut and turned into shelters for evacuated people. Some families are living in basement bunkers, and they are not sure when they will ever get to go back home,” she told ST. 

Projectiles and flashes were seen in the night sky above the Indian city of Jammu that was plunged into darkness after a blackout on the second night of blasts in the region.

Blasts were heard near the Srinagar airport in Jammu and Kashmir on the night of May 9. 

Ms Sana, a nurse in one of Kashmir’s biggest hospitals, said the blasts had made her family sleepless and anxious. 

An unfortunate veteran of months-long curfews and years of strife in one of the world’s most militarised zones, the nurse said that this time, the hostilities and rhetoric “feel different” from before, like the build-up to a full-out war.

After the ceasefire announcement, Ms Sana sent a flurry of heart emojis on WhatsApp.

People were hugging each other around her. She said: “So much relief. So much joy. In war, no one is a winner, common people suffer.”

Across the border regions of Jammu and Kashmir, Rajasthan and Punjab, residents have had to stay indoors, advised to turn their lights off by dusk. When air sirens blared, street lights would go off too. 

On May 10, after a night of loud blasts, sirens, “neutralised” drones and missile attacks in 26 locations, according to the Indian army, residents in these areas had started hoarding groceries and fuel, although the local administration prohibited it.

Most Indians were cancelling travel plans as India closed 32 airports, but some were still stuck in places with closed airspace, like Ms Tushita Patel, 55, a retired professional travelling with her school friends in Leh, in the Ladakh district in Kashmir.

None of them felt scared, but she said most tourist spots like the Tso Moriri lake were deserted.

“Days of airport closure will ruin the start of (Leh’s) tourist season,” Ms Patel said. However, the Ladakh hotel association had decided to extend boarding free of charge to all stranded guests.

A war of words

While Indians at the border faced the tangible consequences of shelling, border closures and blackouts, a war of words had exploded in the rest of the country. Worse, misinformation in both mainstream and social media had obfuscated reality.

Banker Dinesh Mathur, a resident of a high-rise building in Mumbai, wanted India to display its military strength to “a troublesome neighbour” that “provoked a sleeping beast” by attacking tourists in India; while human rights lawyer Sameer Saran felt isolated and chastised when he tried to question the prevailing nationalistic fervour.

Having worked with refugees in conflict-hit Sri Lanka, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Myanmar, Mr Saran, who lives in the north Indian state of Haryana, said: “I am alarmingly aware of how conflict fuels more polarisation. The broken relationships don’t always heal, the distrust sown gets entrenched.”

Several Indian Muslims, who also opposed war, had refused to speak to ST, fearing abuse for their pacifist views.

A Muslim photographer from south India had been “apprehensive how any words will be distorted or used against me or my family in the future”.

A real estate agent in Bengaluru who had been “numb under the pressure” to prove his patriotism “by rejoicing about the attacks on Pakistan” felt a mild consolation at the ceasefire. But he hoped that India would now work on rooting out Islamic terrorism so that “bigots lose an excuse to attack me for being Muslim”.

War versus peace

The possibility of war had dawned on writer Anirban Gangopadhyay when he saw the floodlights of the Dharamshala cricket stadium, visible from his terrace in the Himalayan town of McLeodganj, suddenly go off at around 9.30pm on May 8.

An ongoing league cricket match between two city teams had been suspended midway, and the airport was closed.

But like most Indians, it was later that night that the 49-year-old was truly “shaken up by all that was spewed” in the media about Indian forces attacking Pakistani cities like Karachi, as this would have meant an all-out war.

The next morning, fact-checkers proved that much of it was fake news. 

Mr Gangopadhyay said he had felt as if “somebody had done an operation on our minds”, as if facts did not exist any more.

For many in south India, who have historically never felt the brunt of Indo-Pak conflict due to its distance from the north, the hostilities were a theoretical discussion. 

Retired naval commander C.R. Rejith, who now builds ships in Chennai, said that most folks around him had been going about their lives normally, watching sports and movies, the clashes “just another news item, because it doesn’t pinch people here, and rarely has”.

But in the online space, a battalion of social media warriors from across the country were calling users who posted anti-war messages anti-nationals, and rallying Hindu nationalist handles to troll them. 

These people may have been “chest thumping because they are not in the line of fire”, said an animal rescuer in Bengaluru, who was avoiding online forums to protect his mental health. 

In only three days, the avalanche of unverified and fake reports of clashes, as well as the Indian and Pakistani government rhetoric of tit for tat, had made conversations a minefield.

A war would have ruined India too, made groceries unaffordable, tanked the economy and worsened unemployment, a Gurgaon health policy consultant said.

She wanted to yell at the “ridiculous people” in her high-rise building’s WhatsApp group who wanted “revenge against Pakistan”. Instead, to maintain her sanity and friendships, she had withdrawn into silence.

Overwhelmed by a sense of depression, she had switched the TV off, kept her mobile phone away and went to sleep early, she said.

Mumbai-based Indian Navy veteran and maritime scholar Johnson Odakkal said: “The public might have wanted India to scale up and strike hard, because of the frenzy that’s built up now, but that would have been neither strategic nor realistic.” 

He appreciated the Indian government “for its calibrated response to handicap Pakistan militarily, not wreak vengeance on the people of Pakistan”.

Retired naval commander Rejith, too, said after the ceasefire that war did not benefit anyone: “Any wasteful activity is not welcome. I am sure we have had some meaningful gains, either economically, diplomatically or militarily.”

Old friends and foes

India and Pakistan are old foes, having fought three wars in 1948, 1965 and 1971, as well as a limited conflict in 1999. But with 65 per cent of the population now under 35, few remember the history, losses, or cultural and familial bonds the countries share.

Delhi-based Prama Bhandari, 87, is among the few elderly Indians who recall that the countries were old friends too, until the brutal violence 78 years ago, when the subcontinent was partitioned into today’s India and Pakistan. It was the original tragedy that birthed decades of mistrust and the current hostilities.

She was nine then, and left Lahore in Pakistan with her 25-member family in an arduous journey. 

“I saw thousands living in refugee tents, buses burning, and lawyers reduced to polishing shoes and delivering newspapers,” said Mrs Bhandari.

Her moving narration of her father’s narrow escape from Pakistan, and his return every year since to visit a Muslim friend, is part of the oral history archives at the Partition Museum in Amritsar, a city near the border with Pakistan that has been shrouded in blackouts and haunted by the spectre of conflict. 

The ageing Mrs Bhandari had smiled sadly during the Zoom call with ST, adjusting her oxygen tube.

“In a war, no one wins. I pray for the leaders to have greater wisdom and stop the firing,” she said.

Her prayers, for now, have been answered. Military and government officials from India and Pakistan will hold talks to chart the way ahead on May 12.

Correction note: An earlier version of this story had referred to a limited conflict in 1999 as a war. This has been corrected.