Pallavi Raghavan
Biographic Data
| ID | 454301 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Pallavi Raghavan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Pallavi |
| FAMILY NAME | Raghavan |
| SIGNATURE | RAGHAVAN P |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Sussex |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2040-5278 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 17 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The Politics of Memorialisation; Freedom and Partition: Momentous Events of 14–17 August in India and Pakistan by Tan Tai Yong and Gyanesh Kudaisya, Delhi: Primus Books, 2023; pp 222, ₹450.
Yong, Tan Tai and Gyanesh Kudaisya (2023); Freedom and Partition: Momentous Events of 14-17 August 1947 in India and Pakistan, Delhi: Primus Books; pp xvii + 204, Rs 1095.
Caste in the feminist classroom: Towards anti-hierarchical futures
Despite loudly proclaimed commitments to challenging epistemic and material hierarchies, feminist classrooms remain insidious, concealed sites of caste violence. This paper examines how caste is (re)produced in the feminist classroom, reflecting expressly on the authors’ diverse roles in perpetuating and resisting this violence. Authored by a collective of scholars writing together across caste, gendered and teaching-learning divides, the article…
Researching rollback: Reflections on methodological and ethical difficulties
In this article, we reflect on the ethical and methodological complexities of researching gender-restrictive rollback and the movements resisting it, conceptualizing rollback as a contemporary, transnational modality of gendered violence. Drawing on our experience conducting a donor-commissioned rapid scoping review of feminist and queer anti-rollback resistance across 14 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, the paper surfaces the epistem…
Backlash at Close Quarters: Rethinking Feminist Politics from South Asia
Backlash as a defining contemporary political condition has received considerable academic and activist attention, particularly from feminist and queer scholars studying the rollback of feminist and queer gains globally. While there is growing consensus around the urgency of theorizing and resisting backlash, there is less agreement on what precisely gender backlash is, how it works, and whether it is, in fact, a useful framework through which to…
Jayita Sarkar. Ploughshares and Swords: India’s Nuclear Program in the Global Cold War
Dismantling Development: Towards an Abolitionist Theory of Development
What might it mean to approach development from an epistemic and programmatic lens aimed at the displacement of the very conditions that necessitate and sustain the international development-industrial complex? This paper explores the productive possibilities inaugurated by taking an expressly abolitionist approach to development. I identify non-reformist reform, disepistemologies, practices of refusal and radical complicity, and the notion of th…
Resisting the binary: Reconciling Victimhood and Agency in Discourses of Sexual Violence
Queer, post-colonial and Black feminist scholars and activists have long cautioned against the dangerous exclusions and complicities entailed in even the best-intentioned efforts to counter sexual violence. The rhetoric of protecting women from sexual violence is frequently and effectively invoked in order to rehabilitate old colonial projects and justify new ones that persecute sexual dissidents, police gender, sexual and caste transgressions an…
Oh, There Are Politics in Billie’s Work!’: Billie Zangewa and/at the Boundaries of Feminist Visual Activism
This article explores the consequences of reading textile artist Billie Zangewa’s art through the frame of feminist visual activism, both in terms of (i) recognizing the political potential of Zangewa’s work, as well as (ii) interrogating the conceptual boundaries of visual activism. Situating Zangewa’s work within a rich legacy of Black and postcolonial feminist investments in self-love and self-care, and in celebrations of domesticity (‘daily f…
The Limits of Decolonisation in India’s International Thought and Practice: An Introduction
This special section responds to the call for renewed attention to the international implications of decolonization with a particular focus on India and the South Asia region. The section offers insights into historical continuities and ruptures in Indian internationalism, interrogating divides between colonial and postcolonial as well as between national and international. In turn, it de-centres histories of global order-making in the twentieth …
Evacuee Property
The Ministry of External Affairs was an instrumental institution in shaping the debate about how these rules ought to be fashioned on the basis of a reciprocity. In this chapter, I look at the various stages of the negotiations—how definitions hardened, and when, and the reasons why this was so. I track the changing ways in which this question was conceptualized, and the extent to which the role played by the foreign ministries and inter-dominion…
Animosity at Bay: An Alternative History of the India-Pakistan Relationship, 1947-1952
In this groundbreaking book, Raghavan uses previously untapped archival sources to weave together new stories about the experiences of post-partition state-making in South Asia. Through meticulous research, it challenges the existing wisdom about the preponderance of animosity and the rhetoric of war. The book shows how amity and a spirit of cordiality governed relations between the states of India and Pakistan in the first five years after parti…
Securing the nation through the politics of sexual violence: Tracing resonances between Delhi and Cologne
Postcolonial and black feminist scholars have long cautioned against the dangerous proximity between the politics of sexual violence and the advancement of nationalist and imperial projects. In this article, we uncover what it is in particular about efforts to address sexual violence that makes them so amenable to exclusionary nationalist projects, by attending to the political aftermaths of the rape of Jyoti Singh in Delhi in 2012, and the cases…
Partition: An International History
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 r…
Film review: The Beguiled
The Making of the India–Pakistan Dynamic: Nehru, Liaquat, and the No War Pact correspondence of 1950
In January 1950, Jawaharlal Nehru wrote to Liaquat Ali Khan, seeking a joint declaration of a No War Pact by the governments of India and Pakistan. The two prime ministers undertook a lengthy correspondence on this subject, spanning a year that saw rising levels of resentment and hostility between the two countries. Yet, as the inter-dominion correspondence on the No War declaration during this period shows, neither government was actually predis…
Securing the nation through the politics of sexual violence: Tracing resonances between Delhi and Cologne
Postcolonial and black feminist scholars have long cautioned against the dangerous proximity between the politics of sexual violence and the advancement of nationalist and imperial projects. In this article, we uncover what it is in particular about efforts to address sexual violence that makes them so amenable to exclusionary nationalist projects, by attending to the political aftermaths of the rape of Jyoti Singh in Delhi in 2012, and the cases…
The Making of the India–Pakistan Dynamic: Nehru, Liaquat, and the No War Pact correspondence of 1950
In January 1950, Jawaharlal Nehru wrote to Liaquat Ali Khan, seeking a joint declaration of a No War Pact by the governments of India and Pakistan. The two prime ministers undertook a lengthy correspondence on this subject, spanning a year that saw rising levels of resentment and hostility between the two countries. Yet, as the inter-dominion correspondence on the No War declaration during this period shows, neither government was actually predis…
Dismantling Development: Towards an Abolitionist Theory of Development
What might it mean to approach development from an epistemic and programmatic lens aimed at the displacement of the very conditions that necessitate and sustain the international development-industrial complex? This paper explores the productive possibilities inaugurated by taking an expressly abolitionist approach to development. I identify non-reformist reform, disepistemologies, practices of refusal and radical complicity, and the notion of th…
The Limits of Decolonisation in India’s International Thought and Practice: An Introduction
This special section responds to the call for renewed attention to the international implications of decolonization with a particular focus on India and the South Asia region. The section offers insights into historical continuities and ruptures in Indian internationalism, interrogating divides between colonial and postcolonial as well as between national and international. In turn, it de-centres histories of global order-making in the twentieth …
Resisting the binary: Reconciling Victimhood and Agency in Discourses of Sexual Violence
Queer, post-colonial and Black feminist scholars and activists have long cautioned against the dangerous exclusions and complicities entailed in even the best-intentioned efforts to counter sexual violence. The rhetoric of protecting women from sexual violence is frequently and effectively invoked in order to rehabilitate old colonial projects and justify new ones that persecute sexual dissidents, police gender, sexual and caste transgressions an…
Partition: An International History
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 r…
The Making of the India–Pakistan Dynamic: Nehru, Liaquat, and the No War Pact correspondence of 1950
In January 1950, Jawaharlal Nehru wrote to Liaquat Ali Khan, seeking a joint declaration of a No War Pact by the governments of India and Pakistan. The two prime ministers undertook a lengthy correspondence on this subject, spanning a year that saw rising levels of resentment and hostility between the two countries. Yet, as the inter-dominion correspondence on the No War declaration during this period shows, neither government was actually predis…
Film review: The Beguiled
Partition: An International History
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 r…
Evacuee Property
The Ministry of External Affairs was an instrumental institution in shaping the debate about how these rules ought to be fashioned on the basis of a reciprocity. In this chapter, I look at the various stages of the negotiations—how definitions hardened, and when, and the reasons why this was so. I track the changing ways in which this question was conceptualized, and the extent to which the role played by the foreign ministries and inter-dominion…
Animosity at Bay: An Alternative History of the India-Pakistan Relationship, 1947-1952
In this groundbreaking book, Raghavan uses previously untapped archival sources to weave together new stories about the experiences of post-partition state-making in South Asia. Through meticulous research, it challenges the existing wisdom about the preponderance of animosity and the rhetoric of war. The book shows how amity and a spirit of cordiality governed relations between the states of India and Pakistan in the first five years after parti…
Securing the nation through the politics of sexual violence: Tracing resonances between Delhi and Cologne
Postcolonial and black feminist scholars have long cautioned against the dangerous proximity between the politics of sexual violence and the advancement of nationalist and imperial projects. In this article, we uncover what it is in particular about efforts to address sexual violence that makes them so amenable to exclusionary nationalist projects, by attending to the political aftermaths of the rape of Jyoti Singh in Delhi in 2012, and the cases…
Oh, There Are Politics in Billie’s Work!’: Billie Zangewa and/at the Boundaries of Feminist Visual Activism
This article explores the consequences of reading textile artist Billie Zangewa’s art through the frame of feminist visual activism, both in terms of (i) recognizing the political potential of Zangewa’s work, as well as (ii) interrogating the conceptual boundaries of visual activism. Situating Zangewa’s work within a rich legacy of Black and postcolonial feminist investments in self-love and self-care, and in celebrations of domesticity (‘daily f…
The Limits of Decolonisation in India’s International Thought and Practice: An Introduction
This special section responds to the call for renewed attention to the international implications of decolonization with a particular focus on India and the South Asia region. The section offers insights into historical continuities and ruptures in Indian internationalism, interrogating divides between colonial and postcolonial as well as between national and international. In turn, it de-centres histories of global order-making in the twentieth …
Dismantling Development: Towards an Abolitionist Theory of Development
What might it mean to approach development from an epistemic and programmatic lens aimed at the displacement of the very conditions that necessitate and sustain the international development-industrial complex? This paper explores the productive possibilities inaugurated by taking an expressly abolitionist approach to development. I identify non-reformist reform, disepistemologies, practices of refusal and radical complicity, and the notion of th…
Resisting the binary: Reconciling Victimhood and Agency in Discourses of Sexual Violence
Queer, post-colonial and Black feminist scholars and activists have long cautioned against the dangerous exclusions and complicities entailed in even the best-intentioned efforts to counter sexual violence. The rhetoric of protecting women from sexual violence is frequently and effectively invoked in order to rehabilitate old colonial projects and justify new ones that persecute sexual dissidents, police gender, sexual and caste transgressions an…
Jayita Sarkar. Ploughshares and Swords: India’s Nuclear Program in the Global Cold War
The Politics of Memorialisation; Freedom and Partition: Momentous Events of 14–17 August in India and Pakistan by Tan Tai Yong and Gyanesh Kudaisya, Delhi: Primus Books, 2023; pp 222, ₹450.
Yong, Tan Tai and Gyanesh Kudaisya (2023); Freedom and Partition: Momentous Events of 14-17 August 1947 in India and Pakistan, Delhi: Primus Books; pp xvii + 204, Rs 1095.
Caste in the feminist classroom: Towards anti-hierarchical futures
Despite loudly proclaimed commitments to challenging epistemic and material hierarchies, feminist classrooms remain insidious, concealed sites of caste violence. This paper examines how caste is (re)produced in the feminist classroom, reflecting expressly on the authors’ diverse roles in perpetuating and resisting this violence. Authored by a collective of scholars writing together across caste, gendered and teaching-learning divides, the article…
Researching rollback: Reflections on methodological and ethical difficulties
In this article, we reflect on the ethical and methodological complexities of researching gender-restrictive rollback and the movements resisting it, conceptualizing rollback as a contemporary, transnational modality of gendered violence. Drawing on our experience conducting a donor-commissioned rapid scoping review of feminist and queer anti-rollback resistance across 14 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, the paper surfaces the epistem…
Backlash at Close Quarters: Rethinking Feminist Politics from South Asia
Backlash as a defining contemporary political condition has received considerable academic and activist attention, particularly from feminist and queer scholars studying the rollback of feminist and queer gains globally. While there is growing consensus around the urgency of theorizing and resisting backlash, there is less agreement on what precisely gender backlash is, how it works, and whether it is, in fact, a useful framework through which to…
Political science (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Politics (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · South Asian Studies and Conflicts (5 works) · Law (4 works) · Feminism (3 works) · Gender Politics and Representation (3 works) · Gender, Security, and Conflict (3 works) · Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East (3 works)