Each side doubts the other's commitment to good relations — and the two countries look outward toward almost opposite sets of friends.
Nearly 80 years after the dissolution of British India, most people in each country name the other as their greatest geopolitical threat. But the survey's more striking finding is asymmetry, not symmetry: Indians and Pakistanis see the same rivalry through opposite maps of the world — one tilted toward Washington and Moscow, the other almost entirely toward Beijing.
The threat question was open-ended: respondents named a country rather than picking from a list. That makes the convergence notable. A majority of Indian adults — 54% — volunteered Pakistan, and 43% of Pakistanis volunteered India. No other country came close in either place.
The ally question splits them completely. Three-quarters of Pakistanis (75%) name China, a degree of consensus rare in any open-ended survey item. Indians are far more scattered: Russia leads at 36%, the U.S. follows at 16%, and roughly a third of Indians did not answer the question at all.
Roughly nine-in-ten Pakistanis (91%) hold an unfavorable view of India, and the intensity matters as much as the share: 73% say very unfavorable. Pew notes that this sentiment is shared broadly across demographic groups in Pakistan.
Indian views of Pakistan are almost as negative — 78% unfavorable, 65% very unfavorable — but with an important difference in the shape of the distribution. 15% of Indians did not answer the question, compared with just 2% of Pakistanis. Indian non-response is a recurring feature of this survey and it shows up again on the ally question and on views of regional neighbors.
The Indian series has depth. Pew has asked this question of Indian adults for more than a decade, and no reading since 2013 has put favorability above two-in-ten. The 2026 figure of 8% is among the lowest ever recorded — and the gap between favorable and unfavorable is at its widest in the series.
Pew asked each public how committed four groups — the Indian people, the Indian government, the Pakistani people and the Pakistani government — are to good relations between the two countries. The pattern is almost mechanically symmetric: people have faith only in their own country.
Indians say the Indian people (56%) and the Indian government (57%) are committed. Pakistanis disagree emphatically — only 31% and 15% respectively. Run the mirror: Pakistanis say the Pakistani people (64%) and government (61%) are committed, while Indians put those at 23% and 21%.
The sharpest single number is Pakistani judgment of the Indian government: 79% say it is not committed to good relations, against 15% who say it is. Indians return a softer verdict on Pakistan's government — 51% not committed — but largely because a quarter of Indians said they were not sure.
Indians rate the U.S. three times as favorably as Pakistanis do (45% vs. 15%) and are considerably warmer toward Russia (58% vs. 39%) and Vladimir Putin (51% vs. 32%). Indians are among the most positive publics toward Russia and Putin across the 37 countries surveyed this spring.
China flips the sign entirely. 90% of Pakistanis view China favorably and 83% express confidence in Xi Jinping; among Indians the figures are 23% and 25%. Pew notes that across 36 countries, the favorability gap between the U.S. and China is largest in Pakistan — and India is one of only six countries where people rate the U.S. more positively than China.
India is rated favorably by 79% of Sri Lankans, 42% of Bangladeshis and 7% of Pakistanis — a 72-point spread across three neighbors. Sri Lanka is the only one of the four countries that is viewed more favorably than unfavorably in all of the other three.
The alignment shows up in the threat and ally questions too. 63% of Sri Lankans name India as their most important ally; Bangladeshis and Pakistanis most often name India as their greatest threat. Confidence in Prime Minister Narendra Modi tracks the same gradient: 70% in Sri Lanka, 42% in Bangladesh, 4% in Pakistan.
Since 2024 the region has moved, and mostly in one direction: warmer toward Pakistan, cooler toward India in Bangladesh, and warmer toward nearly everyone in Sri Lanka. Favorable views of Pakistan rose 13 points in Sri Lanka and 14 points in Bangladesh, while views of India fell 15 points in Bangladesh. India's own ratings of Pakistan moved the opposite way, from 12% to 8%.
Pew reports consistent gaps by religion inside India. Indian Muslims are more than three times as likely as Hindus to view Pakistan favorably (21% vs. 6%) and nearly twice as likely to view Bangladesh favorably (41% vs. 23%). They are also less likely to name Pakistan as India's greatest threat (34% vs. 57%).
The direction of these gaps is worth stating carefully: they are differences in degree, not in kind. Two-thirds of Indian Muslims still express a negative view of Pakistan. Pew's 2020 estimates put the Muslim share of India's population at about 15%.
Age moves the numbers much less. Indians under 35 are slightly more favorable toward Pakistan than those 50 and older (9% vs. 5%) and meaningfully warmer toward Sri Lanka (54% vs. 43%).
Three things stand out when the survey is read as a whole.
The rivalry is stable, not escalating. Indian views of Pakistan have been overwhelmingly negative for the entire period Pew has measured them. The 2026 reading is at the low end, but the series has no inflection point — it has a floor.
The asymmetry is in the alliances, not the animosity. Each public names the other as its top threat — 54% in India, 43% in Pakistan — and nothing else comes close in either country. What separates them is everything else: Pakistan's near-unanimous orientation toward China against India's split and partly undecided orientation toward Russia and the U.S.
Each side misreads the other's public. Pakistanis put the Indian public's commitment to good relations at 31% while Indians put it at 56%; Indians put the Pakistani public's at 23% while Pakistanis put it at 64%. Across the four groups rated, each public puts its own people and government at 1.8 to 3.8 times the commitment its neighbor assigns them — a gap of perception at least as large as the gap of preference.