Pallavi Raghavan’s Animosity at Bay: An Alternative History of the India-Pakistan Relationship, 1947-1952 , approaches the early years of ...
Pallavi Raghavan’s Animosity at Bay: An Alternative History of the India-Pakistan Relationship, 1947-1952, approaches the early years of India-Pakistan relations through a lens different from the one usually deployed.
Rather than focusing on the many conflicts, Raghavan’s book goes over efforts like the Nehru-Liaquat pact – in which the two countries mutually reaffirmed a commitment to care for their own minorities – and the correspondence about a potential No-War pact. The book demonstrates how much the two young nations actually collaborated, in part with the aim of asserting themselves as separate nation-states.
I spoke to Raghavan about the “strange intimacy” of India-Pakistan ties, what it felt like to wade into the very crowded space of Partition and post-Partition scholarship, and what people forget when they study these two nations.
Can you give a little bit of context for the reader – what are you attempting to do with Animosity at Bay?
The book itself originally started with a PhD dissertation, which I began in 2008 at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of a historian, Joya Chatterji. And the PhD dissertation was basically about analysing the impact of the Partition, and the ways in which state institutions in India and Pakistan were affected and how they’re a...
