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