Last Thursday night around 3 a.m., a deafening explosion rocked the city of Gujranwala, Pakistan, a two-hour drive away from the Attari-Wagah border crossing.
As the entire city seemed to tremble, cries of confusion filled Sharaz Sharif Alam’s home. His four sons and his elderly parents felt shaken and wondered if they were safe. The city had been in a nationwide blackout for two days, and the streets lay eerily silent.
The family huddled together in a room lit only by battery-powered lights and held each other’s hands as they prayed. Alam started checking in with his church congregants to find out how they were doing.
“There was a strong sense of vulnerability and a quiet fear that something more serious might follow,” said Alam, the general secretary of the Presbyterian Church of Pakistan.
“We prayed—not just for ourselves but for every child left sleepless, for every mother clutching her children, for every Muslim and Christian family across this wounded land longing for dawn.”
A two-hour drive from the same border crossing, in the city of Pathankot, India, Shiji Benjamin felt as if she was living in a war zone.
The government imposed a strict night curfew last Thursday, ordered shops to shut their doors by evening, and plunged the entire city into a blackout for four nights in a row—no streetlights, no lights at home, nothing.
At night, Benjamin saw bright flashes in the sky followed by loud, “heart-shaking” booms as the Indian military shot down incursive drones. Sometimes, debris from the drones crashed and burned nearby.
“Each sound, each rumble, made our hearts skip a beat,” said Benjamin, the national coordinator for women’s ministry at Indian Evangelical Team. “We didn’t know what would come next or if we would even wake up safe the next morning.” She kept praying with her family and neighbors for protection over their city and for peace to reign.
Fierce clashes between India and Pakistan broke out last week after gunmen from a little-known group, the Resistance Front, killed 26 people, mostly Indian tourists, and wounded a dozen others in India-controlled union territory Jammu and Kashmir on April 22.
India accused the Resistance Front of linkages to Pakistan-based terrorist groups Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, but Pakistan dismissed these claims.
In retaliation for the attack, India launched “Operation Sindoor,” a series of military strikes on targets across Pakistan’s Punjab province and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, killing dozens of civilians and destroying infrastructure linked to Pakistani militants. Pakistan struck back with shelling and killed and injured dozens more Indian civilians.
Drone strikes from both countries rained down on homes and neighborhoods over the next few days as fighter jets scrambled in the air to intercept threats amid an increasing civilian casualty count.
Both countries agreed to a cease-fire brokered by the US last Saturday, with each claiming victory over the other. Several diplomatic measures, such as the suspension of a water-sharing treaty and the closure of airspace and certain border crossings, remain in effect.
The mountainous Kashmir region is at the center of this decades-long conflict between the countries—a conflict that began with Partition in 1947, when Britain divided its then colony into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan.
An estimated 3 million people died from violence, hunger, suicide, and disease when Partition took place, with reports of communal massacres, forced conversions, arson, and sexual violence in Indian provinces like Punjab and Bengal.
Britain’s plan, however, did not specify which country Kashmir would belong to. Both newly independent nations laid claim to the disputed territory, and tensions escalated to an all-out war in 1949. Thereafter, the two countries arrived at a cease-fire, with India taking two-thirds of Kashmir and Pakistan taking the other third.
Christians in India and Pakistan have also experienced a tumultuous history because of Partition. Prior to this division, roughly half a million Christians lived in the Punjab region. American Presbyterian missionaries established high schools, colleges, and medical dispensaries there in the 19th century.
When Partition occurred, Christians had to choose which part of Punjab to live in: the west, mainly occupied by Muslims, or the east, dominated by Hindus and Sikhs. For Christians, “the decision to opt for either of the new provinces was certainly very daunting,” Pakistani historian Yaqoob Khan Bangash wrote.
In newly formed Pakistan, the government arrested hundreds of Christians on charges of espionage during the 1965 war between India and Pakistan over Kashmir and the 1971 war that led to Bangladesh’s formation as a nation. Muslims in the country often treated Christians harshly, and Christians had to take on menial jobs like city sweeping, left vacant after the Hindu Dalits moved to India.
Christians in India endured similar adversities. Attacks against Christians, from the killing of leaders to the destruction of institutions like churches and schools, grew after the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party came into power in 1998, persecuting Christians for their faith and forcing thousands to convert to Hinduism.
Altercations between the two countries have continued to flare up in Kashmir. The last major conflict occurred in 2019 when Pakistan-based extremist group Jaish-e-Mohammed bombed Indian-controlled Kashmir and killed 40 Indian soldiers.
But the small minority of Christians in the majority-Muslim region mostly existed “peaceably” with people of other faiths there, Indian apologist Jacob Daniel wrote in 2020. In the post-Partition era, for instance, author Angela Misri shared that her cousins living in Kashmir received lessons from Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, and Christian teachers.
Nevertheless, Christians in both countries continue to face persecution for their beliefs. Pakistan is ranked second, and India third, on this year’s World Watch List of 20 nations where violence against Christians is more severe.
Meanwhile, tensions between Christians arose in Kashmir a decade ago when foreign missionaries in Kashmir led local Muslims to Christianity, as the locals felt that these conversions were drawing unwanted attention from the government and putting their lives at risk. Rising Hindu nationalism has also prompted attacks against Christians in the region in recent years.
Ujala Hans, who lives in Lahore, Pakistan, has felt the effects of Partition firsthand, as her great-uncle still lives in India. Her parents also lived through the post-Partition years of political turmoil and instability as India and Pakistan grappled for control over Kashmir.
During last week’s conflict, Hans’s mother declared that if God had protected them from harm in the 1971 war between the two countries, he would also protect them this time. But Hans, a pastor, still warned her father not to answer any calls from her great-uncle across the border, fearing that the Pakistani government would think they were spying on behalf of India.
Despite these recent tensions, relationships between Pakistani and Indian Christians have not soured, say the believers CT interviewed.
Hans has cultivated friendships with Indian pastors through her international travels. “We cannot go and visit each other’s country, but when we go to other countries, we are like one family,” she said, citing a shared knowledge of the Urdu and Hindi languages as a way that Christians often establish common ground with one another.
“What I have seen is this: that the Indian church fervently pray[s] for the Pakistani church and they love the Pakistani Christians,” Hans said.
Recognizing their shared identity in Christ can help Pakistani and Indian Christians to “love beyond borders,” Benjamin said. “When the world sees enmity, we can choose to see shared suffering, shared faith, and shared humanity.”
A sense of solidarity between Indian and Pakistani Christians is not the only unexpected fruit arising from last week’s conflict. The battle has also brought people of different faiths together in Pakistan, Alam said.
Sharaz Sharif Alam Although missiles had struck close to Gujranwala and the neighboring city of Muridke, Alam knew he couldn’t remain locked up at home in fear. The day after the explosion rocked his city, he joined an emergency meeting with Christian pastors, Muslim imams, and civil society leaders. They decided to hold an interfaith peace procession last Thursday.
The two-kilometer walk kicked off at 1:30 p.m. local time, beginning and ending at Swift Memorial First Presbyterian Church. Along the way, Alam and a 200-strong crowd shouted slogans like Hum aman chahte hain (“We want peace”) and Pak army zindabad (“Long live Pakistan Army”).
Alam walked shoulder to shoulder with fellow pastors and Muslim imams while Muslim and Christian youth toted large yellow banners bearing messages of interreligious solidarity. He shared Bible verses like Romans 12:18 (“If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone”) and Jeremiah 29:7 (“Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile”).
“It was a glimpse of the beloved community, a foretaste of God’s kingdom, where swords are beaten into plowshares and enemies become neighbors,” Alam said.
The day after both countries agreed to a cease-fire, Alam co-led another procession, this time proclaiming thanks to God for preserving Pakistan.
As approximately 200 people marched out from Ghakkar Mandi Presbyterian Church, Romella Robinson, Alam’s wife and an ordained Presbyterian pastor, prayed, “O Lord, let the nations not walk the path of destruction but the path of reconciliation. Teach us to seek peace and pursue it.
