Book review: Pallavi Raghavan,Animosity at Bay: An Alternative History of the India-Pakistan Relationship,1947–1952

In this unconventional take on the history of India-Pakistan relations, Raghavan introduces her viewpoint that the prominent explanation of acrimony between the two countries premised on religion is a ‘stretch’ (p. 5). Reflecting on events from the 1950s and subsequent decades, she contends that the leadership on both sides often tried to facilitate harmony regardless of the odious condition of India-Pakistan relations following the bloody Partition in August 1947. To that end, Animosity at Bay maps riveting details of the joint efforts by the two nations in their respective quest for paradoxical self-sufficiency.

Chapter 1, titled ‘Bilateral Solutions’ (pp. 23–45), dissects and underscores how imperative the assumptions of the Partition Council’s Steering Committee were. Based not on disputing, but on taking cognizance of Partition’s validity, this created a framework aimed at feasible co-existence of these newly-born nation-states. It delineates how the administrative reaction to pacify the consequences of Partition was governed primarily by bilateral handling of various intersecting issues. Raghavan stresses the significance of laying foundation for a sturdy diplomatic structure, well-equipped to deal with problems that mired the India-Pakistan relations at the time. The actions of all the actors involved in establishing this bilateral structure, mainly the respective foreign ministry, were determined by numerous deliberations. However, both governments, as a matter of central priority, also strove to tackle the law-and-order question through their separate diplomatic machinery.

Chapter 2 discusses the Nehru-Liaquat Pact (1950), which was signed when Partition-related migration posed a substantial threat to both governments’ political stability. This agreement, representing a significant moment, extended the jurisdiction of both countries’ High Commissions to the welfare of minorities. In a deeper analysis of the rationale behind this pact, however, Raghavan identifies that this was also a way to solidify the respective claims to a divided statehood, and an attempt to concretely acknowledge each other’s individual authority, rather than risk ambiguities. Raghavan (pp. 49–56) relies on the proceedings of the first inter-dominion conference on minorities held in 1948. It is noteworthy that these bilateral discourses did not seek to prohibit migrations along the eastern sector (p. 56). Rather, they established a bilateral machinery that acknowledged the significance of this issue.

Evacuee property at large, as contended in Chapter 3 (pp. 73–98), emerged as a wartime concept that travelled across the globe under diverging political contexts. Consequent debates about its management greatly influenced the political practices of numerous regions of the British Empire. Earlier, Zamindar (2007: 28) argued that refugee rehabilitation played an important role in forming India’s and Pakistan’s narratives of legitimacy. Raghavan (p. 76) treads a lesser crowded path to examine ‘the reasons for the mutual inter-referentiality between the two governments in fashioning the rules around the control over evacuee property’. She highlights the significance of reciprocity in framing the evacuee laws and the impact of the respective Ministry of External Affairs’ participation in this process. The focus was not just on acquiring assets for rehabilitating refugees but also to conclusively disjoin the trans-dominion property ownership structure. Both states’ involvement, again, indicates the respective efforts to assert and define oneself against the ‘other’.

Chapter 4 (pp. 99–116) analyses how amidst an escalating refugee crisis in Bengal, when war seemed imminent, India and Pakistan deliberated signing a No-War Pact. The incentive was to outlaw war and settle disputes through dialogues (p. 101). Tracing the correspondence between Jawahar Lal Nehru and Liaquat Ali Khan regarding this pact, Raghavan stresses the juxtaposition underlining the complex relations between these deeply entwined yet hostile two nations. To astute observers, the failure of this No-War Pact was foreseen, but it was striking how this effort was publicised.

Deliberations around the Indus Water Treaty of 1960 further demonstrate how Partition was conceived. Chapter 5 (pp. 117–38) focuses on the history of negotiations during the 1950s to uncover how arguments about sovereignty and the state’s role were conceptualised and followed in this scenario. Although the irrigation question concerned primarily the provincial governments, considerations focused on what would best bolster the respective centre’s position. The nascent stages of these negotiations, Raghavan shows, revealed a pattern about which form of territorial integrity India and Pakistan preferred (p. 118). An equally significant part of these negotiations was how these agendas were rebranded. After Partition, the new boundary line was an imperative way to demonstrate the existence of separate state structures. Similarly, the Indus Water Treaty reflected a striving for separate utilisation of the irrigation networks, as much for the development of India and Pakistan as for asserting the respective national sovereignty (p. 119).

Raghavan’s recurring argument regarding the role of the prevailing world order in affecting India-Pakistan relations during the 1950s finds its nucleus in Chapter 6, ‘Shaping International Personalities’ (pp. 139–60). This holistic discussion shows how the bilateral relationship between India and Pakistan was derived from processes followed around the world when ‘inter-state relations were being defined’ (p. 139). Finally, assessing the potentiality of the two governments to enable better trading relationships, the concluding chapter (pp. 161–82) examines the official discourses to bring this into effect. The governments were initially torn about whether to conduct trade as two independent nations or devising a new arrangement of trade relations inside the one in existence during the pre-Partition era. The devaluation crisis of 1949 was tackled momentarily by a trade agreement in 1951, which turned out to be unfeasible eventually. Raghavan here counters the frequently held argument that better trade relations would lead to improved bilateral relations between India and Pakistan.

Scholarship on strained India-Pakistan relations has been persistent. Recently, Frankel (2020: 43) has contended that enmity resulting from communal carnage during the Partition precluded any possibility of cooperation between the two nations. Raghavan takes an alternative route and, substantiated by comprehensive research, this study is replete with insights into the actions of significant political and bureaucratic players that influenced the multi-dimensional paradigm of India-Pakistan relations during the formative years. There was undoubtedly much enmity, but also the need and opportunity to profile oneself, nationally as well as individually, on the international stage.

This book is an essential read for those seeking to understand the intricacies of India’s diplomatic history with its widely perceived nemesis, Pakistan. On a larger canvas, this study makes two concurrent points. Firstly, it lifts the state-making process of the 1950s from the realm of South Asia and places it into the continually evolving world order in the aftermath of two world wars. Various attempts at formulating statehood in India and Pakistan cannot, then, be seen in a vacuum. In fact they resulted from their colonial experiences and inherited frameworks of contemporaneous international relations. Secondly, this study offers a unique perspective on the synchronised relations between India and Pakistan, in the wake of the havoc caused by the brutal Partition, while indeed keeping the concomitant animosity at bay.