Deconstructing India-Pakistan Relations: State Security and Colonial History

This book examines the complex dynamics of India-Pakistan relations, by situating the same in the postcolonial setting of the subcontinent. In pursuit of this, the book analyses the impact of the linkages between the postcolonial processes of state-making and the structuring of political communities, upon the evolution of the problématique of state security in South Asia.

For the purpose of undertaking this task, the author deconstructs the countries’ colonial history, with an aim to mapp its impact on the making of the foreign policy of Pakistan. Drawing primarily from colonial discourse theory and historical sociology, the book links the trajectory of Pakistan’s international politics, to its domestic politics and “weak state” inheritances. By doing this, it offers a stimulating treatment of the history of the country’s troubled postcolonial relations with India. This has been done in the book, by presenting the modes by which the religio-military and politico-bureaucratic classes that constitute the power elite in Pakistan, tended to have moulded an India-centred State security problématique.

This book will be of interest to researchers studying South Asian security, India-Pakistan relations and the defence and foreign policy of Pakistan.

Dr. Sanjeev Kumar H.M. is currently a professor of International Relations and Global Politics at the Department of Political Science, University of Delhi, India. He has previously taught at the South Asian University (SAARC University), the University of Allahabad and the Karnatak University, Dharwad. His areas of interest include International Relations Theory, Political Theory and International Relations, Democratisation and Security in South Asia, the history of ideas in South Asia and Islamic thought and International Relations. He has authored/edited 8 books and 70 articles/book chapters, in his areas of expertise. Prof. Kumar is the author of The India Pakistan Sub-Conventional War: Democracy and Peace in South Asia and his forthcoming book is entitled Decolonizing Grand Theories: Postcolonial Ontology, Historical Sociology and Mid-Level Theories in International Relations.