India, South Africa and the Cape Town Agreement: A Diplomatic History

Te Cape Town Agreement of 1927 was the frst-ever bilateral agreement within the British Empire in which Britain was not involved. Signed between India and South Africa soon afer the Balfour Declaration of 1926, the Agreement heralded a new sovereign order within the Empire. For India, the Agreement also holds a special importance because it was negotiated, for the frst time, by an Indian-led delegation. In this article, we narrate how the agreement came about, situating it within the contingencies and constraints of putting into practice India’s anomalous international identity in the context of an emerging norm of racialized sovereignty in the 1920s