Raghavan is the Director General, Indian Council of World Affairs, New Delhi. He is a former Indian High Commissioner to Singapore (2009–2013) and Pakistan (2013–2015). He has a PhD in agrarian history from Jawaharlal Nehru University and is the author of Attendant Lords, Bairam Khan and Abdur Rahim: Courtiers and Poets in Mughal India (2016), which was awarded the Mohammad Habib Memorial Prize by the Indian History Congress in December 2017. His other books include The People Next Door: The Curious History of India’s Relations with Pakistan (2017) and History Men: Jadunath Sarkar, G. S. Sardesai, RaghubirSinh and their Quest for India’s Past (2019).