(Source: Taylor & Francis Online)
Pallavi Raghavan (Ashoka
University) has published “Parition: An international history” in the latest
issue of The International History Review.
In trying to assemble the
structure through which bilateral relations between India and Pakistan could be
conducted, policy makers drew heavily from European models of inter-state
peace-making evolved in the inter-war decades. The aftermath of the break-up of
large multinational empires along ethnic-majoritarian lines posed
administrative questions that were, in many ways, also similar to the aftermath
of the partition of the subcontinent along religious lines. In this article, I
attempt to relate these developments with the signing of the Nehru–Liaquat Pact
of 1950, between the governments of India and Pakistan. According to this Pact,
both governments would now be accountable to one another for the protection of
their minorities in the Bengal province. I argue that this approach to dealing
with the question of minority populations after a partition, had been initially
developed by the League of Nations, and that emulating these models were part
of an attempt by India and Pakistan to borrow from, but also further refine
models of European statehood for their own purposes after their partition. This
article attempts to evaluate the extent to which these expectations were met in
the making of a ‘minorities’ regime’ in South Asia.
The full article can be read here
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