by David Kavanagh

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a surprise stop in Pakistan on Friday to discuss bilateral ties with his counterpart Nawaz Sharif at his estate East of Lahore.

In so doing, Mr Modi became the first Indian premier in about a decade to visit the country with which India has quarrelled since Britain officially left that part of the world in 1947.

While a scheduled official meeting between the two leaders was cancelled last August following ceasefire violations along their borders, high level talks were partially resumed during a short interaction at last month’s climate talks in Paris.

Expanding on this, Mr Modi’s decision to physically visit Pakistan on his way home from Russia is being viewed by some as a welcome step towards warming relations between the nuclear-armed neighbour states.

A spokesman for Mr Sharif said their more intimate hour-long meeting involved a discussion about a diversity of bilateral issues, among which is the disputed Kashmir region that has historically caused the most conflict between the two nations.

A Hindu nationalist, Mr Modi rose to power in May 2014 partly on the promise that he would offer a harder approach towards Pakistan.

Following his election he gave security forces greater license to retaliate forcefully to incursions along the Kashmir divide.

Skeptical oppositional groups have decried Mr Modi’s visit to Pakistan as inappropriate and irresponsible.

Opposition Congress Party leader Manish Tewari said nothing in the relationship between the two countries had changed on-the-ground to warrant attempts at peace.

“If the decision is not preposterous, it is utterly ridiculous,” he said.

In recent months, Pakistan has been accused of both supporting terrorism in India and funding Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.

Just prior to visiting Pakistan, Mr Modi visited Kabul and pledged to support the war-torn country in an effort to foster regional peace.

“India is here to contribute, not to compete; to lay the foundation of the future, not light the flame of conflict,” he said.

The India-Pakistan feud in context:

Hindu-majority India and Muslim Pakistan have been engaged in a bitter and complex rivalry since 1947, when British colonial India was partitioned into the two separate states as part of the independence process.

Since then, the countries have engaged in three major wars and a multitude of other skirmishes and diplomatic disputes, many of which have been centred around one particular flashpoint: the Himalayan region of Kashmir.

While a back-and-forth, ever-escalating conflict over this area has always been a mainstay of the history of India-Pakistan relations, the dispute took especially severe shape in 1965, when a border war along the Line of Control of Kashmir erupted.

This was concluded with a UN brokered ceasefire in the same year which, along with the Simla (or Shimla) peace accord in 1972, made it seem like violence over the region would eventually dissipate.

This was not the case, however, and the situation in Kashmir has gone through convoluted ebbs and flows in escalation since, complicated even more so by the growing Islamic militant groups carrying out insurgent attacks on Indian territory.

The 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, which killed approximately 166 people, was carried out by militants that had been trained in Pakistan.

Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, the apparent mastermind behind the attack, was freed from a Pakistani prison earlier this year, prompting mass public outcry and further tension with India.

For a far more detailed account of the history of the India-Pakistan feud, check out Al Jazeera’s in-depth timeline here.

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