Rotter, Andrew. Comrades at Odds: The United States and India, 1947-1964. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000.

== Summary ==
As a
cultural history of diplomatic relations, Rotter’s book argues that “what
happened between the United States and India after 1947 had origins not in the
use of the atomic bomb, the Iron Curtain, and Zhdanov speeches, or even in the
partition of the subcontinent, but in the symbols and myths Americans and
Indians created about each other many decades before the Cold War, and in
events that occurred as far back as the early nineteenth century.” (xxvii) For
Americans (tourist writing, popular novels, and encounters), what emerges from
the 19th and 20th century Western accounts of India and
Indians “is the conviction that this was a disorderly place, these an unruly
people.” (12) This view was held amongst policy makers in the Truman and other
administrations after India’s independence and when it became a key player in
the geopolitics of the Cold War. Yet, Indians also held stereotypical views of
Americans as well. Rotter summarizes both as follows: “While Americans regarded
Indians as hypersensitive, arrogant, unrealistic, mired in superstition,
indolent, irresponsible, and disorderly, Indians believed Americans were
hypersensitive, arrogant, overly rational, materialistic, racist, vulgar,
shallow, hasty, and violent.” This, in many ways, resulted in an inverted view:
Americans saw in India chaos, a jungle, and uncleanliness; yet, Indians saw the
same in America. Indians also formed an identity that contrasted with the
materialistic/modernist Western view, emphasizing its more spiritual
traditions, restraint, and moral sensibility. Each thus constructed an Other
that framed and complicated the geo-political and foreign policy relations between
each country. Ultimately, Rotter argues (and is the premise of this whole
book), “how a nation defines its strategic interests is partly determined by
its history and identity, by the way in which people imagine themselves as
members of a society of individuals and their nation as a member of a society
of nations.” (249) The book is broken down to chapters that look at how '''
cultural (mis)understanding affected strategy making, economics, governance,
race, gender, religion, and class caste and status.
See also: Christine Klein