The Sovereign Lives of India and Pakistan: Post-Partition Statehood in South Asia

This book explores what it has meant for India and Pakistan to act as sovereign states entangled at birth by an unsatisfactory partition. Sovereignty is conventionally understood as a means to achieve the goals that states set for themselves. The book argues that for India and Pakistan, sovereignty has become an end in itself, and that its pursuit has aided majoritarianism, insecurity, and mutual estrangement.

The book examines the trajectory of three problems that the partition of 1947 bequeathed to the two states. It investigates the state-minority relations, national identity debates, and contestation over Kashmir to outline the parallel processes of minoritization, homogenization, and territorialization. It shows how these processes signify the two states’ quest for sovereignty. The scholarship on India and Pakistan often privileges their bilateral relations. In contrast, this book carries out the deeper task of a single-frame analysis and critique of their intertwined statehoods.

Ultimately, the book shows the inadequacy of the nation state form as the basis for political community on the subcontinent. It concludes by pointing to the contemporary relevance of alternative ideas of sovereignty and political community for South Asia that were articulated during the first half of the 20th century.