The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh number two, Dattatreya Hosabale, set the cat among the pigeons recently when he suggested that India should keep the “window of dialogue” open to Pakistan, even while emphasising people-to-people ties and civil society engagement. He observed that though Pakistan’s military and political establishment cannot be trusted, civic engagements through sports and science should continue.Hosabale’s remarks collided head-on with the official position of the RSS’s own political progeny. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which runs the government of India, has taken an unambiguous line: “terror and talks cannot go together.” Since the Pulwama attack of 2019 and the subsequent Balakot air strikes, New Delhi has operated on the doctrine that there is no question of any dialogue with Islamabad as long as it continues to support terrorism against India. Communications and trade between the two countries remain suspended and both deny overflight rights to the other. The suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty following the Pahalgam attack of April 2025 and the military exchange that followed Operation Sindoor have hardened that position further.Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.There is little doubt that Hosabale’s perspective is not liberal, but fundamentalist. The RSS believes in the concept of Akhand Bharat – an undivided subcontinent – and its chief, Mohan Bhagwat, has declared that all those who live in Bharat are related to Hindu culture, Hindu ancestors, and Hindu land. For the RSS, Pakistan is not a foreign country in the deepest sense; it is an estranged part of a civilisational whole, and therefore always, in principle, reachable.So who speaks for India on Pakistan? Obviously, the government of the day. But the RSS-BJP relationship has never been one of clean separation, and Hosabale is no minor figure. As Sarkaryavah (General Secretary), he is the organisational backbone of the Sangh. His remarks were not off-the-cuff; they were considered. That they diverge from government policy is either a sign of internal strategic debate within the Sangh Parivar, or a deliberate attempt to keep a back channel open at the ideological level even as the political track remains frozen.After a period in which he tried to woo Pakistan – inviting Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for his inauguration in 2014 and after a surprise visit to Lahore to wish him for his birthday – Prime Minister Modi has taken a hard line towards Islamabad. This comes after a series of attacks – Pathankot in 2016, Uri in 2016, Pulwama in 2019 and Pahalgam in 2025, India has refused to maintain normal relations with its neighbour. New Delhi retaliated for these attacks and the response reached a crescendo of sorts in Operation Sindoor of 2025 which is technically still on. New Delhi has also suspended the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 and says it will be in abeyance till Pakistan “completely stops cross-border terrorism.”The problem with the Modi policy is that instead of dealing with a problem, it is seeking to ignore it. This is a luxury you cannot afford with a country that happens to be our neighbour as well as a nuclear armed adversary.Maybe he needs a lesson from the policy of another RSS pracharak, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who also served as India’s prime minister. Ignoring the views of the then RSS chief, as well as several domestic critics, Vajpayee pursued the goal of normalising ties with Pakistan through the thick and thin. He tried to promote people-to-people ties through opening road and rail routes to Pakistan – Delhi-Lahore bus and the Samjhauta Express route was extended. He also sought to address the problem through the Lahore Declaration to normalise ties and address the nuclear issue.The Pakistani Deep State, aka the Pakistan Army, sought to undermine this with its Kargil adventure. Vajpayee faced the challenge with skill and sophistication. Instead of an all out retaliation, he ordered the forces to throw out the intruders in the Kargil heights but limit their response, both on the ground and the air, to the Kargil area only. This careful response to what was an adventurist provocation resulted in widespread international support for India. China refused to intervene, and the US bluntly told the Pakistanis to withdraw to their side of the Line of Control.Vajpayee did not give up. He invited General Musharraf – who had taken over as the head of the government through a coup – to discuss various issues at a summit in Agra in July 2001. This effort failed and another Pakistani provocation came with the attack on the Indian parliament in December that year.This time Vajpayee ordered a general mobilisation of the Indian military under Op Parakram, and would have ordered an attack, but the Indian forces took an inordinate time to mobilise and international pressure built up on India not to escalate. In the meantime, Musharraf made a commitment that he would halt cross-border infiltration and curb terrorist activities.Parakram was a messy failure, but Vajpayee persisted and in January 2004, at the sidelines of the SAARC summit in Islamabad, he signed a bilateral agreement that committed India and Pakistan to a dialogue on a slew of issues including Kashmir and terrorism. On the eve of this agreement, Musharraf ordered a ceasefire along the LoC where the constant firing had provided cover for Pakistani infiltration into India. The SAARC summit itself took the decision to create a South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA), though this has yet to be actualised.The impact of this Pakistani decision was marked. In the year 2001, casualties of Indian security forces reached a high of 628 dead, but from 2004 onwards they began to decline, till they bottomed out at 18 in 2012 and have not gone into three figures since.The 2003-2009 period saw more people-to-people travel between the two countries than in recent memory. Beginning 2003, the two sides hosted each other alternately for four cricket series with fans traveling to either country in large numbers to support their teams. People travelled across the border, visited relatives, or revelled in visiting a new country.Importantly, back-channel talks between officials led to the two coming tantalisingly close to resolving the Kashmir issue through a four-point formula that would not change the borders as they existed, but make them soft by enabling movement of peoples of both sides of Jammu & Kashmir. This has been known as the Musharraf four point formula, but in reality it was something which both sides had worked on.But the four-point formula was destroyed by the Mumbai attack of 2008, as perhaps it was meant to. General Musharraf’s government imploded and India-Pakistan ties have drifted since then. After the brief thaw in 2014-2015, the drifting ties culminated in Op Sindoor. India sought to isolate Pakistan in the international community and failed. Instead, India has had to see Islamabad gain in status with the help of US President Donald Trump. Efforts have been made by both countries to develop and maintain a backchannel through the Pathankot and Pulwama incident, but the appointment of hardline and even fundamentalist General Asim Munir as the Pakistan Army chief has put a stop to that.Hosabale’s framing – engage civil society, maintain people-to-people ties, keep the door ajar – is in some ways the least demanding form of engagement. It does not require recognising Pakistan’s government as a good-faith interlocutor, nor does it concede anything on the terrorism issue. Sports diplomacy and scientific exchanges between private actors cost the state little and, in theory, sustain the argument that India’s quarrel is with the Pakistani establishment, not with the Pakistani people. This is a distinction that has long been attractive to Indian liberals and is now, interestingly, being re-articulated by the RSS.The problem is that in practice, the distinction between state and civil society in Pakistan is porous in ways that create real risks. Cricket diplomacy, for instance, has repeatedly been weaponised by Pakistan’s information apparatus to project normalcy during periods of active support for terrorism. Scientific exchanges require institutional linkages that are difficult to maintain in an adversarial security environment. And any visible softening, even at the people-to-people level, sends signals domestically in both countries that can be exploited.There is a deeper conceptual issue here. India’s Pakistan policy since 2016 has been built on the logic of coercive deterrence – raising the costs of Pakistani adventurism to the point where the calculus of continued support for terrorism becomes untenable. Operation Sindoor represents the most kinetic expression of that logic yet. But coercive deterrence, by design, does not produce a political settlement. It freezes a problem at a higher level of mutual hostility, something that seems to be happening now. At some point, if the deterrence logic is to yield anything durable, it must be complemented by a political track, however minimal or conditional.There is a school of thought in New Delhi – increasingly influential – that Pakistan as a functional state is running out of road. Economic collapse, civil-military tensions, Baloch and Pakhtun insurgencies, a restive public: the argument is that time is on India’s side, and that any engagement now only provides oxygen to a regime that deserves none. This is a tempting argument, but historically dangerous. Failing states do not simply dissolve; they become more dangerous, more dependent on external adventurism to sustain internal cohesion, and more susceptible to the very jihadist networks they have cultivated. Failing states have another characteristic—they have multiple channels of authority. That is the one reason many of the initiatives to normalise ties with Pakistan have faltered.For now, the government will not move. The political costs of appearing to soften on Pakistan in the current climate are considered too high. Besides, hostility to Pakistan is also a proxy of hostility to Muslims in India, an important element in the BJP’s political positioning. But it is important to realise that relentless antagonism towards Pakistan is unlikely to yield results and impose opportunity costs on the economic development of this country.In the real world, there is never an absolute solution to a problem, solutions cannot be turned off and on like taps. Through dialogue and discussion, incentives and disincentives, a policy can be shaped towards the desired end. It often requires great patience and perseverance.Manoj Joshi is a Distinguished Fellow, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi.