The South Asia Story; The First Sixty Years of US Relations with India and Pakistan

This book carries a series of brief sketches on how twelve US presidents since Franklin Roosevelt perceived and dealt with South Asia-most particularly, of course, India and Pakistan, from World War II to present day. It proposes that US foreign policy was influenced by broad political-historical patterns as well as the personal whims and preferences of the elected president at any given point in time. In this way, though political considerations which underlie their individual actions and define their contexts, foreign policy was also influenced by their unique personalities, levels of awareness, and intellectual gifts (or lack of them).

Harold A. Gould is Visiting Professor of South Asian Studies in the Center for South Asian Studies at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, the U.S.

Previous to that he was Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Asian Studies at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. He received his Ph.D. in Anthropology at Washington University of St. Louis in 1959. Since going to India on a Fulbright Scholarship in 1954-1955, Dr. Gould has made numerous research trips to India (with grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health, the American Institute of Indian Studies, and the University of Illinois Research Board); he spent more than a total of ten years in the country spread over more than fifty years. His research and scholarly publications encompass every facet of Indian society and civilization that is relevant for a social scientist/social historian, including rural society, social stratification, local-level politics, electoral processes, and national and international politics.