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On April 22, 2025, the area of Pahalgam in IIOJK suffered from a deadly militia attack that took the lives of 26 Indian tourists. The terror operation allegedly affiliated with The Resistance Front, a proxy of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, targeted non-Muslim men in an attempt to resist the negative demographic changes in Indian occupied Kashmir. The targeted assault on Hindu travellers was tactfully done to strike at both the national and emotional well-being of India whilst harming its physical and human existence.
Memes transformed water from a weapon of war into a symbol of shared humanity between estranged neighbours.
This has catapulted the already fragile stability in the South Asian region to utter chaos, with Delhi calling for a stringent military response and Pakistan evading blame for the alleged militia attack. The timing of the rueful attack at a time when Delhi was already apprehensive of alleged Pakistani involvement in prior terrorist attacks has worsened the divide between the two states, calling for a strict response.
Suspension of the Indus Water Treaty and State Responses
Indian response has been swift; it has increased military operations on the Line of Control (LoC), the Wagah-Attari border has been closed, Delhi has expelled Pakistani diplomats, and revoked visas for Pakistani nationals. PM Narendra Modi has publically vowed to pursue the Kashmir attackers to “the ends of the earth”. Most spectacularly, India has suspended the Indus Water Treaty which acted as the root of a 64-year-old war averse diplomacy framework between the two nuclear armed neighbours.
Pakistan has vehemently denied orchestrating the violent attack in Pahalgam with Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif urging the international community for an extensive investigation into the matter. Nonetheless, following India’s reaction to the fiasco, Pakistan has also closed its airspace to Indian flights, halted issuing visas to Indian nationals and has suspended all trade in relation to or from India by whatever name or description, or to any third country through Pakistan. Islamabad maintains a strong opposition to India’s decision regarding abeyance of the Indus Waters Treaty application.
The World Bank established the binding international Treaty which includes no clause that allows either party to suspend it independently. The Pakistani nation considers water as its crucial national resource because it provides life support to 240 million citizens and will protect their water access at all times. The act of modifying or interrupting Pakistani water rights according to the Indus Waters Treaty and the seizing of lower riparian rights will lead to military conflict with full national power intervention.
The state has declared defiance through diplomatic channels by charging India with “weaponization of water” and seeking international legal backing to combat the suspension in worldwide institutions. Additionally, Pakistan maintains its right to uphold all bilateral agreements with India such as Simla Agreement as unenforceable while India remains engaged in terrorist activities against Pakistan together with cross-border killings and opposition to international law and Kashmir-related UN resolutions.
Memes as Modern Diplomacy: Pakistan’s Digital De-escalation
Internally, Pakistani youth demonstrated unexpected dissonance with the official state retaliation with many digitally literate using social media platforms to share messages that promoted peace while using humor to connect with citizens across borders. A multitude of memes together with video content and posts celebrating common cultural relationships and shared grief spread greatly to unify people regardless of their political stance. During official declarations of hostility, Pakistani public has functioned to create alternative messages which emphasize human unity alongside their shared history while desperately advocating for geopolitical divisions to stay away from essential resources such as water.
Young Pakistani creators used humour as digital diplomacy to defuse the region’s most dangerous standoff in years.
In the days following the attack and Treaty suspension, some interesting and notable phenomena emerged when scrolling through Pakistani X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, Instagram: Memes that the Indus Waters Treaty was like an old marriage needing ‘couple’s therapy’ instead of a messy divorce. TikTok creators have been posting comedic skits of Indians and Pakistanis sitting awkwardly over chai, failing to communicate but ending up laughing. Instagram carousels have split, one side showing Pakistani children playing in the Indus, the other Indian children by the Beas River, both captioned ‘Water belongs to no flag’.
Humour, has often served as a secret lifeline between populations. At this moment of peril, Pakistani creators went digging in that tradition. Platforms were filled with #PaaniPyarHai hashtags (Water is Love) that transformed water from a divisive to an integrative factor. Rivers were drawn as ‘mothers,’ reaming India and Pakistan like arguing siblings, the cartoonists depicted. Twitter spaces, Clubhouse rooms, where Indians and Pakistanis spoke freely over fears, hopes and shared complaints, without mediation by officials.
Significance and conclusion
This was not accidental. Pakistan’s civil society empowered by its increased internet penetration and digital literacy has learned how to use humour and, more importantly, emotional storytelling as political tools, over the past decade. Now, merciless bilateral mobilization is being wielded to soothe the most combustible bilateral crisis in years, using the same tactics that once set fires under authoritarian crackdowns and inflation crises. This digital diplomacy is mostly being led by young Pakistanis aged 18-30, who came to know a world where India and Pakistan officially could not be friends but both could be connected socially through Bollywood, cricket, and YouTube. The words of their memes were not mere jokes; they were strategic digital peacebuilding.
Social media became the unexpected battlefield of peace, offering emotional storytelling where official diplomacy faltered.
It would be naïve to assert that memes alone can shatter the hardened structures of military doctrine and nationalistic fervour, but it would be an equally egregious error not to give some attention to this digital movement. In an era of information warfare, the conflict is often exacerbated by information but the grassroots information ecology burgeoning across Pakistani platforms provides an excellent counter-narrative: that of an organic, networked plea for sanity. In case of insufficiency of diplomatic efforts, the chaotic, imperfect and meme ridden spaces of social media could buy the precious time for cooler heads to prevail.
The author is currently getting her bachelor’s degree in Nuclear and Defence Strategic Studies at the National Defence University. She is a dedicated and analytical professional with expertise in international law, media, and public policy. Her work in governmental, legal, and media sectors has granted her insights regarding legislative processes, litigation, research analysis, and news production.
