You, everyone, for joining us today in this week's instalment of the Saturday history seminar.
We are very fortunate today to have found every document with us from Ashoka Universe Digital about the history of a revisionist history,
if you will, of India-Pakistan relations in the early forties and late forties and early fifties.
But of course, Assistant Professor of international relations at Ashoka University.
And she holds a Ph.D. in modern South Asian history from the University of Cambridge and has previously towards
an open Jindal Global University and also been a fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi.
Her work has been published in journals like the Economic and Political Weekly, Modern Asian Studies and International History Review.
She's also a frequent contributor to a lot of the news outlets online that all of us probably read, including the wire and scroll.
And relevant for today's talk is something that she did in 2018, which is that she taught a course on South Asia,
said histories jointly to Indian and Pakistani students as part of an attempt to understand how the
teaching of history can contribute to narratives of commonality and peaceful coexistence in the region.
This is something that she is obviously working her way through in this book that has come out with all up animosity at bay,
and we are very fortunate to have her with us today. And after the talk,
I'm sure we'll all have plenty of questions that we should let her and give that talk first and we'll try and try and hold our horses,
Olivia over to you. Thank you so much for hosting this great introduction.
I was, you know, I'm really looking forward to your your questions and insights about the book,
as well as to the comments and observations that the audience might have.
You know, I was saying just before that, just before the kind of, you know, we started,
but you know, it's also quite recently that they're going to reopen the book again.
Our faith is published it because, you know, I mean, while I was putting together the presentation of what it is like,
I kind of relived a lot of, you know, the writing of the book and it's like disconcerting.
You're going to see it on the page again. So I hope you can, you know, I mean, I hope you enjoy the talk and I look forward to your questions.
Let me just shared my screen.
What I thought I do, you know, in the time that I have for about half an hour or 40 minutes or so is just to kind of take you through, you know,
the process in which I wrote the book and take you through, you know,
the kinds of questions that it raises and the sorts of issues that it that it looks at.
And what I've done really is just to, you know, I'm going to go to very quickly get or summarise the arguments that the book makes.
And then I'm going to take you through some, you know, a couple of slides that I could, you know, put down quotes from, you know,
a series of kind of fascinating personalities of the time I put down a kind of,
you know, their thoughts on the nature of India-Pakistan relations at the time.
And I'm going to kind of talk you through the argument that the book makes while telling you,
you know, the reasons for why they were saying what they were saying, you know?
So just to, you know, very quickly kind of tell you about how I came to write this book.
I mean, as you were saying that, you know, I wrote the book as it started out as a graduate,
a Ph.D dissertation, which I wrote in Cambridge in a history faculty.
And even at the time, there was this kind of question in the air about how was the how is it that the discipline of history and in my case,
the discipline of modern South Asian history can be relevant or be of use to it?
And how can we kind of come up with, you know, better,
broader and different explanations about the constituting of international relations through a more rigorous
study of history and through a more history sized account of how states come into being and how they behave.
So it was partly, you know, while working with those kinds of questions that I was thinking about my Ph.D. dissertation,
which was about the South Asia and South Asia's partition, and I was thinking about how I could use, you know,
the partition and the historiography around it in a way that would be relevant to the thinking about, you know,
interstate relations in South Asia and South Asia as internationalist thinking, you know,
a sort of Vietnam was one of the things that I was trying to work through in my book was the question often how we think about the
India Pakistan relationship and whether there were any other different ways of thinking about the India-Pakistan relationship.
And at the time, you know, the sort of most of the literature on this topic could characterise this as a kind of unrelenting and,
you know, on the boil kind of dangerous brinksmanship that was perpetually prone to warfare.
And you know, and and moreover,
most of the literature had kind of plotted out the project the future of India-Pakistan relationship on to a map of the which,
you know, onto a map that belonged.
That kind of a thought about how I mean European states or Cold War rival states had navigated their hostility and navigated their
enmity and had thought about how the dynamics of the India-Pakistan relationship could be plotted on these kinds of trajectories,
you know, and an explanation about the hostility between India and Pakistan could come from
odd thinking about these three set Eurocentric explanations about how states behave.
And it occurred to me when I was thinking about how the partition was implemented in
India and Pakistan that a different set of explanations would come about would be,
you know, would be forged as to the rationale behind the India-Pakistan dynamic and the way in which they were interacting with one another.
And one of the things that came up, you know, that I realised when I was looking at this was that the experience of partition,
in fact, through a very common challenges to the states,
to the newly formed states of India and Pakistan, and in a sense, along with their many differences between them,
of which there are many and the book doesn't try to, you know, doesn't try to kind of diminish those.
But along with the many differences, there was also this way in which both states were, in a sense, a similar and equally precarious position.
And the way in which that the dialogue between.
Them was forged was an acknowledgement of and recognition of the similarity of the precariousness of their position and an
acknowledgement that a dialogue between them had to go toward how they could both address the challenges that they faced from partition.
And so in a way, there was a kind of a commonality of purpose in the way in which they built the matrix of the India-Pakistan relationship
as a way of trying to finalise the challenges that partition posed and trying to settle the questions of partition.
And this process gave them a kind of common purpose a common object,
and also created a space for collaboration and cooperation to try to address these challenges together.
And you know, that's a way in which there are conversations about how to deal with the legacy of partition and how
to try to sort of forge themselves as complete entities arising from the partition as a way in which
that conversation also plots a longer trajectory of cooperation and collaboration between the two
states that hadn't been kind of acknowledged in a lot of the literature on the topic at the time.
So, you know, it was trying to kind of think about these sorts of questions.
I mean, it was it was trying to think about how partition, in fact,
enabled a greater space for cooperation and dialogue between the states of India and Pakistan.
But I started to think about an alternative history of the nature of the India-Pakistan dynamic.
And finally, I just want to, you know, see that, you know,
when I was working through these answers also made me think more about, you know, I mean, again,
like even at the time,
there was this kind of jump in the air about the urgency of a less Eurocentric perspective on fire and the importance of trying to arrive at other,
you know, explanations or other dimensions of it that that didn't work with, you know,
a kind of model that had been put in place by European interactions between European states and the West Indian states.
And you know, it occurred to me that when I was writing this book about the nature of the India-Pakistan relationship in
the aftermath of the partition that I was also trying to tell a story about how a non Eurocentric west,
west and non-Western states, I've got a go about the task of interacting with one another.
So one, you know, the book kind of starts out with this kind of a quote from this,
from a Deputy High Commissioner who's sort of, you know, who's sitting in Karachi in nineteen forty eight.
And he writes back this kind of irate note to the Ministry of External Affairs in Delhi, which was headed at the time by, you know, by by.
It's foreign. You know, it's sort of with the head of the army, the NEA emir.
And he writes that there are no parallels anywhere about the nature of the diplomatic relationship
subsisting between India and Pakistan or the type of system evolve or conducting these relations.
And what he was getting at was this, you know, I think I mean, through this caught it.
It kind of allowed me to explain how you know what he was getting at was that there was this kind of expectation that India and Pakistan would be,
you know, now that they were there and how they were formed and how the partition had happened.
And now that they were independent, self-contained states, they were going to be just like any other state in the international system and
their relationship would be handled according to these pre-existing rules.
And he was saying that the nature of the India-Pakistan relationship is completely different from the nature of the relationship
between any other kind of neighbouring state and the kinds of issues that his office had to look at and the kinds of,
you know, sort of people, you know, the sorts of questions that he was thinking about when we were completely different from those of any,
you know, from what any other diplomat in any other kind of, you know,
location would have done and what in a sense, you know, you know, what he was getting at was that, you know,
this particular relationship, this India-Pakistan relationship can't simply be thought of as kind of, you know,
in the normal frame of reference that existed for international relations, you know,
or it couldn't simply be thought of in terms of like a zero-sum rivalry or a kind of competition or even like,
you know, a kind of a game of brinksmanship between two evolved states.
And what he was saying was that, you know, his office was sort of flooded with requests for visas, permits, you know,
permits to travel of people needing to get a copy of their educational certificates of their marriage, licences of their birth licences.
And he was saying that there was something strangely personal in the way in which he was going about constructing
the international for India and Pakistan for India in the aftermath of partition with regard to Pakistan.
And there was something strange, you know, I mean, because, you know,
it would it would have seemed that when you go about kind of constructing the international, you're kind of busy kind of thinking about kind of,
you know, like a security based and, you know,
strategic kind of a set of considerations about how to plot India's trajectory with regard to the rest of the world.
And he was saying that that aspect of the international simply didn't apply as far as the shaping of the
India-Pakistan relationship in 1948 was concerned because he was really plotting out how the you know,
how the the the nature of the Indian state in Pakistan was to be done with, you know,
through the strangely intimate act of demarcating people's lives and demarcating, you know, people's kind of and dividing people's lives.
And, you know, when the international face of India had to be done in this kind of situation,
then the normal rules of a zero-sum game, what a strategic rivalry I simply couldn't have, you know, wouldn't have applied.
And you know, one of the other questions that he and his I mean him, but also even more prominently, his boss at the time,
a guy called Sleep Prakash was the Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan in Karachi in 1948,
even more prominently than what he has said in this report.
Steve Prakash sort of felt that, you know, the India-Pakistan interface has to be completely different from the.
You know, from from what would normally have been used, when did you know of four other states?
And one of the things that he was trying to get at was that, for example,
rules for travel or rules for property exchange are rules put into dominion migration or even, you know, rules for kind of seeking refuge.
These these Pakistan are kind of in the interface had to be drawn with regard to these sorts of considerations.
And so therefore, you know, there was this argument being made that look, you know,
that it should be possible to shape the nature of the India-Pakistan dynamic according to a different set of considerations,
then what has otherwise been done across the world?
And it should be possible for India and Pakistan to basically enable a looser arrangement for travel, at the very least for refugees and migrants.
Were suffering the brunt of the partition and to do to kind of create the Office of the High
Commission of India and Pakistan so that it would be suited to their needs rather than this kind of,
you know, this other set of considerations of how India ought to look to the rest of the world and ought to
define its rules of travel and migration in a way that was commensurate with the rest of the world?
A related quote is actually, you know, I mean, you also find, you know,
the the ping that they were addressing in this other quote that goes from the, you know, from the Partition Council,
which was a sort of put in place to try to divide up the assets of the existing
government of India between the governments of India and Pakistan after the,
you know, in after the May 1947 decision to partition had come into being.
And it was interesting that you know that even though they were faced with the
mammoth challenges of partition and migration and death and loss and abduction and,
you know, a total breakdown of law and order,
even in that context, you know, it was important to the members of the steering committee of the Partition Council,
who would both become kind of important bureaucrats in the governments of India and Pakistan.
It was important to them to assert the international of India and Pakistan first, even in the face of this mammoth kind of calamity.
And so one of the first, you know, one of the first few orders that they kind of put into place with the high
commissions of India and Pakistan had to be established immediately and that the,
you know, the regions that now consist of India and Pakistan would interact with each other as a separate sovereign entities.
And, you know, and they're going about dealing with the aftermath of the partition and trying to disentangle,
you know, the erstwhile government of India in India and Pakistan in 1947 and 1948,
and they're dealing with the aftermath of partition was also, in a sense, the shaping of the international,
you know, into the making of their of their internationalist kind of trajectories.
And that it was, you know, it was it was in that kind of context,
the high commissions of India and Pakistan sort of immediately established, you know, in the aftermath of the decision to partition.
And because of this overriding imperative to kind of give an internationalist face and a formalised kind of and finalised phase two,
the government of India and Pakistan, you know, in in in 1947 itself because, you know, and do this even in the in in a situation where you know,
the infrastructure for this simply didn't exist or the officials for counting the number of people
who were going past the military and the reliance of India and Pakistan simply didn't exist or the,
you know, the means to be able to kind of cleanly administer post partition travel weren't necessarily in place.
But it was important to assert, assert a finalised face of India in Pakistan.
And it was this common imperative that kind of shaped the role of a framework in which a lot of India,
Pakistan of the India-Pakistan dialogue in the 90s.
This was done and had this kind of common imperative to kind of create statehood immediately was what
kind of what what is kind of behind the logic of that of their subsequent collaborative efforts.
One kind of issue.
But you know what was also what was also interesting about the thinking about this question is that the kinds of answers that India and Pakistan
come up with to try to about this whole issue of how does one go about creating statehood and sovereignty and international personality,
the kinds of answers that they came up with? Also diverge to some extent from pre-existing, you know, a Westphalian model.
And a particularly good example of this was the shaping of the Nehru Advocate
Agreement and the minorities pact that was signed between the come in April 1950.
I imagine the audience is, you know, more than familiar with the, you know, with the pact and with the recent controversy about this fact.
But you know, I want to very quickly take them through that.
You know what, what it what it was about. And to very quickly take them through the reasons that I found this interesting and you know,
what this pact was about was was put into place as a response to the alarming refugee crisis in Bengal in 1950,
where the sheer numbers of refugees streaming across the boundary lines of East East and West Bengal,
the sheer numbers of them scared both governments to the extent of, you know,
sort of feeling threatened by a war, you know, of feeling taken that look,
this the numbers are sort of large enough that this can conceivably lead to a war between India and Pakistan because, you know, it's not.
I mean,
there was there was no shortage of politicians in both India and Pakistan who were kind of arguing that it but the other country had been created.
These excluded discriminatory and violent circumstances in which minorities couldn't exist,
and that it was the responsibility of a religiously defined sense of nationalism
to strive to seek revenge or try to seek a redressal for their plight.
And secondly, they were also making the argument that, you know,
the sheer numbers of the refugees placed a heavy burden on the exchequer of provincial governments, of state governments.
And who would, you know, unable to afford to feed these numbers of refugees?
And it was, you know, and and to kind of, you know, sort of provide rehabilitation to these numbers of refugees.
And it's in response to that kind of crisis that may ruin Liaquat.
Ali Khan agreed in 1950 to set up, you know, to, you know, to the minorities back,
according to which both governments would be accountable to one another for the
welfare of minorities in the provinces of in both the provinces of Bengal.
And so theoretically, the government of East Pakistan would be entitled would be legally entitled, according to this agreement.
To seek answers from the government of India and the government of West Bengal about the plight of minority Muslims in Bengal when they were being,
you know, you know, for the persecution and vice versa.
And the reasons I found this arrangement particularly fascinating was also to do with the fact that, you know,
if you think about the question of sovereignty in South Asia and the fact that you have two states who are as notoriously prickly about sovereignty,
about being exclusively exclusively responsible for all the concerns that go on within their boundary lines and, you know,
a kind of intolerant of any institution or authority to kind of intervene in concerns within their boundary line,
that kind of definition of sovereignty in South Asia.
In that kind of context, the contours of this fact, which enabled the governments of India and Pakistan to do to raise concerns vis-a-vis one another,
I found that kind of at each with a quite, you know, wide kind of intriguing.
And you know, I mean, I found it necessary.
I mean, I want you to think about, you know, I found it necessary to explain it.
And you know what, what this you know,
what they showed me was that there was a way in which this exercise in trying to implement the question of partition and to collaborate.
Kind of come to a settlement on the questions of partition, had opened up a space for collaboration and dialogue in which alternative ways
of thinking about sovereignty and and identity could be thought through.
So, you know, and it was, you know, it was about sort of, you know, when this was, you know, when this was, you know,
and I also thought that this was sort of interesting because, you know, it shows us how,
for one thing, in a lot of the literature that existed in the India, Pakistan, in India-Pakistan relations,
it kind of showed us that there was this kind of unthinking sense of hostility toward one another because of the dynamics of a
zero-sum game in which one fully formed state that is sovereign is entitled to act in a hostile way to another fully formed state.
That is something you know, and again, like the the the module for which in which hostility like this is left out,
you know, tends to come from a Eurocentric kind of context.
And it occurred to me that, you know, that this at this fact also shows me that for one thing,
it's not as if there was an unthinking and unrelenting hostility that you know, that both were kind of just compulsively following that.
They were actually quite creative and new ways of thinking about and non-confrontational ways about this,
about the future of India-Pakistan relations.
And there was this sense that, you know, if the, you know, if the kind of processes of partition can be worked out once and for all.
And you know, there's a way in which there is an expectation that the successor states can have a relatively
more stable and plausible and stable kind of can plausibly have a more stable kind of coexistence.
And if you know, the architect was also kind of, you know,
a part of that kind of expectation about the nature of how the India-Pakistan relationship would work.
You know, the other a set of things that was also going on as the Bengal crisis had unfolded over the months of like,
you know, over the kind of 1949 and 1950 as the refugee crisis was unfolding in Bengal.
What had also happened was that at Nehru had written to Liaquat Ali Khan about about a possible no war pact between India and Pakistan,
according to which neither country would declare war on the other in the first instance.
And, you know, and while they were navigating the political challenges from the Bengal crisis,
they were also simultaneously conducting a correspondence about a possible no war pact between these between India and Pakistan.
Now again, the you know, the reasonings reasoning behind the NorBAC is, you know,
is again quite interesting because it showed me, you know, because of what happened.
What happened was that the Hindu knights and says that I should, you know,
one option is that both of us commit to a formal declaration in which neither will declare war on the other in the first instance.
Now, you know, the fact of the thinking about the pact is quite interesting because for one thing,
it was modelled on the Bryant Kellogg pact that had been signed between European countries in the war
period to try to come to a kind of collective security arrangement around the containment of Germany.
And the idea had been that look, if you if one country goes to, you know, I mean, if one country goes to war against another in Europe, then you know,
the the no country was allowed to declare war or the other in Europe, and the United States was going to kind of guarantee that agreement.
Now, for one thing,
the application of this European precedent on the shaping of the India-Pakistan relationship was interesting because it showed me that,
you know, that there was a way in which,
you know, both foreign offices were thinking about the kind of shape that India-Pakistan relations
would be and were quite open to the possibilities that an award back would offer.
And for another thing, it was also interesting because, you know,
it was the other reason that it was also being conducted was that this was also Nehru's
way of trying to stave off his colleagues over the question of policy making in Pakistan.
And it just made me tried to stave off the influence of Sardar Patel or other opposing colleagues within the cabinet who
would offering competing views and who were trying to avoid gaining more traction about why a more violent relationship,
a more hostile relationship with Pakistan shouldn't be undertaken.
And in the face of that kind of challenge. Nehru set up a you know this communication with Ali Khan, which is conducted in public,
which is published in people as it's been carried out at the time and which is a
sort of signalling that he is in charge of policy making with Pakistan as well.
Now the pact itself feels the reason that it fails is because the terms of the clauses within it, as far as you know,
seeking a redressal on issues like the need and Indus waters, those aren't agreed to between India and Pakistan.
And within a narrow bureaucracy,
there was a lot of opposition to India committing itself in writing to a seeking recourse from the International Court of Justice on these issues.
So the fact best deal, but at the same time, what it shows is that there was a sense that, you know,
the political high ground could be digging through a public kind of a declaration that
this pact was being sought and there were there was a way to gain political dividends.
You know, if you were telling everybody that you knew that you were in the midst of this kind of correspondence with with the UPA Ali Khan,
you know, and there was a way in which both sides also understood that it was advantageous to them as far as international opinion was concerned.
To be seen to be carrying out this bag, and again,
it showed to me like the expectation of a slightly different trajectory of the outcome of India-Pakistan
relations than what would have been then you know what a lot of the literature seemed to suggest,
you know, am I up in the I mean, I might. How am I doing?
Have I almost finished? I mean, you can if do you want to continue?
You can continue. If you like how much? How much time do I have left?
You can easily talk to another 10 minutes, 10 minutes. So there's plenty of that.
OK. Um, the you know, the last set of things I want to, you know,
another set of things I want to flag about the shaping of the India Pakistan relationship is,
you know, the making of their international personalities and how you know, this exercise.
Also, could you know how room to fashion identities that are not necessarily confrontational with one another?
And you know, one of the things I looked at, you know, in the book is the way in which India and Pakistan went about kind of, you know,
sort of signalling their internationalist trajectories to the rest of the world in the aftermath of partition and the
way in which their international personalities were called were not simply as a consequence of a product of their,
you know, a compulsive hostility to one another. But the face of their, you know,
their international face was also made in places where they were actually areas of commonality between India and Pakistan.
And a particularly good example of this was, you know, was their position on the question of Indian settlers in South Africa,
who and the question of, you know, and the question of whether or not they were to be given citizenship by the government of South Africa.
And both India and Pakistan had argued on the same side of the United Nations that the settlers in South Africa ought to be,
you know, also be given citizenship in South Africa.
And, you know, and it shouldn't be the responsibility of the governments of India and Pakistan.
Do you know for rehabilitation and the other, you know, a particularly interesting set of commonalities that they had was, in a sense,
the search for, you know, a set of, you know, a language about in which the concerns of decolonisation and state building and developmental aid.
These kinds of concerns took precedence over Cold War rivalries, you know?
And for example, what is particularly interesting about the internationalist trajectories of India
and Pakistan in the early 50s was the similarity of their kind of position,
you know, with regard to the United States and also the similarity of their position
with regard to the United Kingdom and the sterling balance kind of question.
And you know,
there was a way in which this again led the shaping of this kind of internationalist peace wasn't simply being done out of a compulsive hostility,
or it wasn't even necessarily being done because of the dynamics of the Cold War rivalry, but was instead, you know,
being done because of, you know, a common platform that both had that both wanted to be seen to be occupying.
I also found their positions on Palestine to be particularly interesting because, you know,
because although both India and Pakistan had different positions in opposition to the partition of there, you know they were no less.
You know, both of them, but nonetheless keen to be seen to be careful to explain to the rest of the
world about the reasons for their opposition to the partition of Palestine.
And you know, I mean, in a sense, the way in which they were trying to suggest that partition had to be done according to a certain logic and
had to be done in accordance in accordance to the wishes of the people after the election and had to be done,
you know, with the consent of all the parties involved.
There was a way in by making this kind of argument, they were also in a sense signalling that if a partition is done according to these arguments,
then a partition is valid and therefore the coexistence of India and Pakistan on a stable footing.
You know, it is plausible. So there was, you know, I mean,
it was also interesting that you know this this particular moment of the 1950s and this question of how one was to be seen to
be kind of implementing the question of partition had opened up a set of spaces of collaboration and cooperation whereby,
you know, the internationalist identities of India and Pakistan would be like that, you know,
in going to consultation another rather than in, you know, in a framework of hostility with one another.
I also finally wanted to talk a little bit about the Indus Water Treaty and the terms of pre and and,
you know, India, a trade treaty between India and Pakistan that was signed in 1950.
And the reasons that I found this found both of these to be interesting.
I mean, in the book, I don't actually talk about the signing of the treaty in 1962, and there are you can in 1960 by you.
Can I offer a pre-history of the Indus water talks?
And I suggest that, you know, the terms on which the treaty was eventually signed, a treaty that, for all its faults,
continues to be one of the long lasting kind of declarations in India-Pakistan relations
and whose terms are still kind of adhered to by and large by both states today,
even though there was a lot of opposition to the terms of the treaty as well.
But what I wanted to suggest in on on about the way in which the treaty was conceptualised in 1948 1949 was the sense that acknowledging
the finality of partition and acknowledging the necessity of the division of the waters by both states was the only way it was,
you know, and coming to a settlement about the terms on which this water was to be divided was the only would would provide for a more,
you know, a more stable kind of outcome in the shaping of India-Pakistan relations.
So when collaborative efforts, you know, for dialogue between India and Pakistan were being done,
they were being done with the view to finalising the terms of the partition and to try to settle the terms of the division of the partition,
including the Indus waters. And even though as it happened, I mean, as you know, as as as is also widely known,
the division of the waters was, for one thing, ecologically terrible.
It was for another thing, you know, actually disadvantages in terms of both countries in terms of the share of the water that either would receive,
even though a collaborative attempt at developing the basin together would have yielded more power to both countries.
Even though these facts were true, it was.
Both countries kind of preferred to actually attempt to have a discussion about how the water should be divided and the,
you know, the more constructive and productive parts of the dialogue.
It was over the terms of the division.
And it was this a set of dialogues that that had been undertaken in 1948, in 1949 that was ultimately signed in the treaty by you.
So, you know, and this this way of thinking about the division of, you know,
and the reasons for the signing of the treaty and the way in which the thinking about,
you know, how water was to be organised was also part of the peace with the state building and development list,
ideologies that fit in and sort of widely in place in the 1950s and therefore kind of, again,
you know, prescribed to by both governments in, you know, do it, do it, do it to a heavy extent.
And you know, there's a way in which there's a sense that what is really about what is really kind of encouraging this,
this idea of trying to divide up the waters and trying to come to an agreement on
this basis on the Indus question is a sense that what responsible states should do.
Is to be involved in developmental projects for the populations and to be involved in big, you know,
irrigation, dam making schemes and, you know, infrastructural projects for their population.
And this is the kind of, you know, and it is the responsibility of India and Pakistan to embark on this kind of project.
And again, it's a recognition of this kind of standard or this kind of, you know,
a yardstick for thinking about how states ought to behave that dictated the way in which the,
you know, the way in which they are kind of conducted their relationship and dictated the way
in which they thought about how to come to a settlement on the on the partition.
So I, you know, so and and this was, you know, I mean, I also want to very briefly, I mean, I can come back to this in the in the question,
but also very briefly talk about how this logic of state involvement in infrastructure
development and state involvement in an economic project was also sort
of in place when they were negotiating on trade and negotiating on trade treaties
and negotiating on the terms of how India and Pakistan would would conduct,
you know, a trade relations with one another. And they would, you know, saw what they were.
What they were trying to do was to again. You know, this was a messy process of disentangling in the sense that these were,
you know, communities wanted to trade with one another were usually communities.
We're used to trading with one another. For example, in the Bengal delta, as part of the older and very tightly knit together dense set,
the sets of economic and social connexions and trade had been part of part and parcel of that tradition.
And what you have in 1948 and 1949 is the making of the insertion of the states of India and Pakistan into this tradition and an
insistence by the governments of India and Pakistan that they had to be recognised as such as being a kind of mediators on the street.
And there was an underlining that kind of process of insertion was a sense of commonality with one another.
As far as the, you know, as far as the kind of mutual, you know, objective of each other was understood, as you know,
for the necessity of giving a shape and face to partition and creating the states of India and Pakistan as a consequence of that.
So there was a way in which the nature of the collaborative effort between involvement with collaborative kind of, you know,
Project of India and Pakistan involved an agreement for them to disentangle
from one another and for them to embark on a process of dialogue too about,
you know, thinking about the terms of these, of this disentanglement.
And you know, I mean, although the book doesn't go beyond 1950, I argue that look at to the extent that it applies.
I mean, so it's this kind of necessity to acknowledge,
acknowledge and validate the fact of the partition that lies at the heart of all collaborative
and operative attempts in that dialogue making process between India and Pakistan.
And this, you know, this kind of necessity.
I mean, you know, it sort of appears over and over again in the shaping of the India-Pakistan relationship.
I mean, even if the issues of change, the nature of the question about about, you know,
should the dialogue be kind of based on acknowledgement of the finality of partition or not,
you know that I mean,
the terms on which that question is answered is often responsible for the extent to which the dialogue between India and Pakistan is productive.
So, you know, I mean, what I suggest in the book is that in a sense,
there was this a kind of a parallel strand of a productive of a kind of a productive attempted
cooperation and dialogue between India and Pakistan that also emerged as a consequence of the partition?
And when you know, when we're trying to tell the India-Pakistan story, it's important the kind of track how that strand goes,
as you know, as a as a kind of indicator for the nature of well-being in India-Pakistan relations.
I think I'm going to stop here and, you know, I'm happy to take questions.
Comments about this. Thank you for listening.