Comrades at Odds explores the complicated Cold War relationship
between the United States and the newly independent India of
Jawaharlal Nehru from a unique perspective -- that of culture,
broadly defined. In a departure from the usual way of doing
diplomatic history, Andrew J. Rotter chose culture as his
jumping-off point because, he says, "Like the rest of us,
policymakers and diplomats do not shed their values, biases, and
assumptions at their office doors. They are creatures of culture,
and their attitudes cannot help but shape the policy they make". To
define those attitudes, Rotter consults not only government
documents and the memoirs of those involved in the events of the
day, but also literature, art, and mass media. "An advertisement, a
photograph, a cartoon, a film, and a short story", he finds, "tell
us in their own ways about relations between nations as surely as a
State Department memorandum does".
While expanding knowledge about the creation and implementation
of democracy, Rotter carries his analysis across the categories of
race, class, gender, religion, and culturally infused practices of
governance, strategy, and economics.
Americans saw Indians as superstitious, unclean, treacherous,
lazy, and prevaricating. Indians regarded Americans as arrogant,
materialistic, uncouth, profane, and violent. Yet, in spite of
these stereotypes, Rotter notes the mutual recognition of profound
similarities between the two groups; they were indeed "comrades at
odds".
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