India and Pakistan have to find a way out of security dilemma

India and Pakistan have locked horns again, exchanging fire across the Line of Control on Saturday, one day after the United Nations Security Council convened an unofficial meeting on the dispute over Kashmir between the two neighbors.

That New Delhi has scrapped the special status of India-administered Kashmir and thus changed the status quo of the disputed region has led to the flaring of tensions between the two neighbors. However, it is the security dilemma that India and Pakistan have been struggling to overcome for decades that is at the root of the problem.

The two countries should have shaken off the burden of colonialism and treated each other as friendly neighbors after the British colonial rulers partitioned India into two countries in 1947. But the two sides have not shown the courage, confidence and wisdom to break from their colonial past and embrace a brighter future.