Disputed Rivers

Sovereignty, Territory and State-Making in South Asia, 1948-1951

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3948813
AutoresDavid Haines (0000-0002-2831-7160, Cabot (United States), autor correspondente), Daniel Haines
Ano2014
Volume19
Fascículo3
Páginas632-655
Data de publicação2014-07-03
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoGeopolitics (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1465-0045 • E-ISSN: 1557-3028
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14650045.2014.896796
OpenAlexW2068201453
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas8

The construction of territorial sovereignty is key to conceptions of modern states. Yet after the Partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, when both became independent from Britain, the precise nature of India’s relationship to Pakistan was open to some question. Was Pakistan a foreign country? Was India’s relationship to it international? This article uses the example of a dispute over water resources in the Indus Basin to highlight the process through which Indian officials in New Delhi’s External Affairs and Law ministries came to define Pakistan as constitutionally, as well as geographically, “outside” India between 1948 and 1951. Yet while Indian policy makers manoeuvred into an aggressive stance against Pakistan, both countries’ membership of the British Commonwealth implied an international relationship blurring the formal distinction between “domestic” and “foreign”. Negotiating the contradictions between Commonwealth rules and the desire to assert sovereignty over territory and resources, I argue, made Indian sovereignty contingent on circumstance

Colonialism · Commonwealth · Economics · Economy · Foreign policy · Indus · International relations · Negotiation · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Sovereignty · Structural basin · Territorial integrity · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Law · Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East · South Asian Studies and Conflicts