The story of India-Pakistan relations has often been told as one of hatred—the animosity often nurtured prior to the partition and its aftermath. It is argued that the woes of the bloody partition, which culminated in the massacre of over a million people and displacement of over another ten million across borders, continue to haunt the two postcolonial nations. And in that sense, added to other contentious things—such as the issue of Kashmir—the two countries have found it difficult to trust each other since independence. Pallavi Raghavan proposes a rather unconventional take on India-Pakistan relations in her book Animosity at Bay: An Alternative History of India-Pakistan Relationship, 1947-1952.[1]
Raghavan’s book argues that at the heart of India-Pakistan relations lies an element of collaboration between the two countries in the aftermath of partition. Unlike the conventional reading of partition as the cause of mistrust between the two, Raghavan argues that partition itself assumes a central role in everyday governance between two countries. It becomes an important element of “mutual acknowledgement of the validity of both states”.[2]
Pallavi Raghavan writes: “In the aftermath of the partition, the central leadership in both countries were aware of the intense fragility of the nation-state project in South Asia. The legitimacy of their existence could be called into question in any number of ways—citizenship in both India and Pakistan could not be defined on the basis of religion, or race, or ethnicity, or language…Collaborative exercises in bilateral relations were thus carried out as part of the exercise of willing the post-colonial state of India and Pakistan into existence”.[3]