As long as Pakistan is full of Islamic fundamentalism, and India is filled with Hindua nationalism, there will never be peace between these countries. This is what was concluded in a recent article by the New York Times:

India and Pakistan have seemingly pulled back from the brink again. But so much was new about the nuclear-armed enemies’ chaotic four-day clash, and so many of the underlying accelerants remain volatile, that there’s little to suggest that the truce represents any return to old patterns of restraint.

A new generation of military technology fueled a dizzying aerial escalation. Waves of airstrikes and antiaircraft volleys with modern weapons set the stage. Soon they were joined by weaponized drones en masse for the first time both along the two countries’ extensive boundaries and deep into their territory — hundreds of them in the sky, probing each nation’s defenses and striking without risk to any pilot.

Then the missiles and drones were streaking past the border areas and deep into India’s and Pakistan’s territories, directly hitting air and defense bases, prompting dire threats and the highest level of military alert.

Only then did international diplomacy — a crucial factor in past pullbacks between India and Pakistan — seem to engage in earnest, at what felt like the last minute before catastrophe. In a new global chapter defined by perilous conflicts, distracted leaders and a retreating sense of international responsibility to keep peace, the safety net had never seemed thinner.

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Mr. Raghavan observed that neither country has a significant military industrial base, and the need to rely on weapons sales from abroad means outside pressure can have an effect. But the positions of both sides appeared more extreme this time, and India in particular seemed to want to see if it could achieve an outcome different from previous conflicts.

“I think there is a stronger sort of determination, it seems, on the part of the Indian government to sort of make sure that the Pakistanis do not feel that they can just get away or get even,” he said. “Which definitely is part of the escalatory thing. Both sides seem to feel that they cannot let this end with the other side feeling that they have somehow got the upper hand.”

The political realities in India and Pakistan — each gripped by an entrenched religious nationalism — remain unchanged after the fighting. And that creates perhaps the most powerful push toward the kind of confrontation that could get out of hand again.

Pakistan is dominated by a military establishment that has stifled civilian institutions and is run by a hard-line general who is a product of decades of efforts to Islamize the armed forces. And the triumphalism of Hindu nationalism, which is reshaping India’s secular democracy as an overtly Hindu state, has driven an uncompromising approach to Pakistan.

On Sunday, there was still no indication that Pakistan or India might repair their diplomatic relations, which had been frosty even before the military escalation, or ease visa restrictions on each other’s citizens. And India did not seem to be backing away from its declaration that it would no longer comply with a river treaty between the two countries — a critical factor for Pakistan, which said that any effort to block water flows would be seen as an act of war.

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When it came time to use force against Pakistan this past week, India wanted to put that lost prestige and those past difficulties behind it. It also sought to show a new, more muscular approach on the world stage, able to wield not just its rising economic and diplomatic power, but military might as well.

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Each day that followed was filled with language from both India and Pakistan suggesting that they had achieved what they wanted and were ready for restraint. But each night was filled with violence and escalation. More traditional artillery volleys across the border kept intensifying, bringing the heaviest loss of life. And the drone and airstrikes grew increasingly bold, until some of each country’s most sensitive military and strategic sites were being targeted.