Ideas of South Asia Symbolic Representations and Political Uses

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South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal

10 | 2014 Ideas of South Asia Symbolic Representations and Political Uses

Aminah Mohammad-Arif and Blandine Ripert (dir.)

Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/samaj/3699 DOI: 10.4000/samaj.3699 ISSN: 1960-6060

Publisher Association pour la recherche sur l'Asie du Sud (ARAS)

Electronic reference Aminah Mohammad-Arif and Blandine Ripert (dir.), South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, 10 | 2014, « Ideas of South Asia » [Online], Online since 25 December 2014, connection on 03 March 2020. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/samaj/3699 ; DOI:10.4000/samaj.3699

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction. Imaginations and Constructions of South Asia: An Enchanting Abstraction? Aminah Mohammad-Arif

‘India, that is Bharat…’: One Country, Two Names Catherine Clémentin-Ojha

India in the Muslim Imagination: Cartography and Landscape in 19th Century Urdu Literature Faisal Devji

A Strange Love of the Land: Identity, Poetry and Politics in the (Un)Making of South Asia Sudipta Kaviraj

Poetics and Politics of Borderland Dwelling: Baltis in Kargil Radhika Gupta

Impasse and Opportunity: Reframing Postcolonial Territory at the India-Bangladesh Border Jason Cons

Anthropology, Politics, and Place in Sri Lanka: South Asian Reflections from an Island Adrift Jonathan Spencer

Thinking India in South Africa: Gandhi’s Conundrum Claude Markovits

The Construction, Mobilization and Limits of South Asianism in North America Anouck Carsignol

From South Asia to Southasianism: A Nepalese Activist’s Perspective An interview with Kanak Mani Dixit Blandine Ripert

Afterword. On Region and Nation Sanjay Subrahmanyam

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Introduction. Imaginations and Constructions of South Asia: An Enchanting Abstraction?

Aminah Mohammad-Arif

Introduction1

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1 The idea for this special issue of SAMAJ2 came up in 2010 when the Directorial Committee3 in charge of France’s largest research centre on South Asian studies tried to change its name from Centre d’Études de l’Inde et de l’Asie du Sud (Centre for Indian and South Asian Studies) to Centre d’Études Sud-Asiatiques (Centre for South Asian Studies). Our institutions, the EHESS and the CNRS, as well as a number of colleagues, objected to the change of the name, arguing that ‘Asie du Sud’ was too unfamiliar a term in France. The proposal was dropped but the objections triggered a curiosity to know more about the history of the name, its multiple meanings and uses, and the notion(s) behind it.4

2 The term ‘South Asia’ is indeed interesting for several reasons. First, it refers to a region5 where several religions, that may be identified with different ‘civilizations’, have been interacting, potentially challenging the idea that a region forms a cultural realm. Second is the ambivalent role of British colonization, which on the one hand laid the foundations (partly started by the Mughals) for a mental representation of the region, through its unification policies, and on the other contributed to create divisions between distinct states and across common cultures at the time of Independence. Third, the Indian Subcontinent, a more familiar term for ‘South Asia’, has been characterized by a tragic history that witnessed several partitions rendering notions of ‘region’ and ‘regionalism’ particularly sensitive. Fourth is the peculiar dominating position of a single country, India, and the specific nature of another one, Pakistan, which is the only country, along with Israel, established in the name of a religion (see Devji 2013). This gives both region and regionalism a unique flavour as compared to regional constructions in other parts of the world. 3 In this introduction, I will focus on the polysemy of the term ‘South Asia’, and the notions behind it. To highlight some of the underlying debates behind the politics of naming and the formation of a region(alism), I will take as entry points the multilayered processes of construction, and deconstruction (through contestations), by various actors. I will thus try to answer the following questions: what does the expression ‘South Asia’ convey that ‘Indian Subcontinent’ does not? In other words, as a term, is ‘South Asia’ systematically interchangeable with ‘Indian Subcontinent’? The name ‘South Asia’ is only a few decades old, but how new is the process of imagining and constructing the region as a common cultural space? What are the underlying stakes and ideologies behind such constructions? In the process, different meanings of regionalism will be examined: first is the top-down construction of a series of economic and political institutions, whose aim is to foster collaboration between the different states of the Subcontinent; second is a bottom-up construction nurtured by a sentiment of belonging, which is expressed at the level of both emotions and practices. 4 Given the multiplicity of constructions, this special issue has been entitled ‘Ideas of South Asia’ but I will sometimes use the singular (‘idea’) whenever I mean South Asia as

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a civilizational entity. It should be noted that I am borrowing the phrase ‘idea(s) of South Asia from Sunil Khilnani’s The Idea of India (1997) not only because of its conceptual relevance but also because, as we shall see below, there may be some significant similitudes between both ‘ideas’. Since the use of the term ‘South Asia’ is at the core of the discussion here, I will use ‘Subcontinent’ to refer to the region in descriptive terms without endorsing it with any particular meaning (however the use of the word ‘Subcontinent’ will also be discussed in the conclusion). 5 The number of publications dealing with the notion of South Asia is fairly limited. This lack of reflective research work on South Asia as a category could be interlinked to the fact that most scholars work on a single country of the region. However, a few projects have emerged, almost simultaneously, in the past few years, as if time had come to reflect upon South Asia in its multiple dimensions, the name itself, the notions behind it, the issue of regionalism and so on. Among these projects is a book entitled South Asia 2060 (2013), in which the authors (academics, journalists, policy-makers, etc.) mostly express their views about the chances of success of ‘South Asia’ as an expression of regional construction. The journal Seminar (2012) has also published a special issue entitled A country of our own: A Symposium on Re-imagining South Asia which includes essays reflecting on the notion as a civilizational entity defined by historical and cultural continuities. But as interesting as these essays are, they do not fully address the category ‘South Asia’ as such (see infra). A book published by David Gellner (2013) does deal with South Asia as an analytical category but limits itself to the (admittedly stimulating) notion of ‘northern South Asia’, and focuses on ‘borderland lives’. Last but not least, the non-academic magazine Himal Southasian is devoted to publishing articles related to South Asia (see infra), including some that tackle the notion directly. The August 2008 special issue, entitled Southasian Exists, is a case in point, as several authors (including scholars, writers, journalists, human rights activists) comment on the notion of South Asia in short essays. Some of Himal Southasian’s most significant articles have been assembled in a book edited by Kanak Mani Dixit, The Southasian Sensibility. But although Himal Southasian’s articles are usually very articulate, they are not academic sources as such. This special issue will therefore attempt to partly fill the gap, although doing it is no easy chore. 6 Writing this introduction indeed turned out to be a difficult task for at least four reasons. First, the subject requires a constant shift from etymology to social sciences (see Emerson 1984: 14), i.e. from the name ‘South Asia’ to the multiple notion(s) behind it (region, regionalism, civilizational entity and so on), necessitating a constant vigilance so as not to confuse both. Second, it demands a multidisciplinary approach, including disciplines other than mine (anthropology), such as history and political science. Third, the magnitude of the task is such that some angles have been privileged (constructions from below, brief comparisons with Europe), while other aspects, which would have been interesting, have been left aside (such as the comparison with South America6) or only alluded to (like the geopolitical dimension). Fourth, the subject would necessitate thorough knowledge of several countries and parts of the Subcontinent whereas most of the empirical examples I have taken are only about India and Pakistan. The co-editor of this special issue, Blandine Ripert, and I have however solicited authors capable of covering other countries of the region (although unfortunately not all).

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7 In this introduction, I will first examine the emergence of the category ‘South Asia’ by tracing the history of the term. In the process, without neglecting top-down constructions (as embodied by SAARC), I will pinpoint some of the contestations around the expression and the notions behind it, in order to highlight the limitations of the category, externally as well as internally. I will then show that, despite these caveats, ‘South Asia’ may not be a mere abstraction, by examining how the notion is constructed from below. In order to give anthropological substance to the argument, I will first study the everyday constructions of the notion and then focus on ‘conscious’ and more politicized constructions.

Tracing the genealogy of the name

8 It is not easy to determine who first coined the word ‘South(ern) Asia’. The earliest occurrence I could find7 is mentioned in the title of a book by Horace Bleackley about a region that would correspond today to… Southeast Asia (except Ceylon): A Tour in Southern Asia: Indo-China, Malaya, Sumatra and Ceylon, 1925-1926, published in London in 1928.

9 There is however consensus that the word ‘South Asia’ officially emerged as a category to divide the Asian continent, in the wake of the establishment of area studies in the United States.8 This emergence was the outcome of two interlinked concerns: one was the development of scholarship on the ancient Indic civilization; the second was a strategic interest in the study of contemporary Asia as the Second World War had highlighted the shortage of specialists capable of dealing with economic, social and political issues in the region. As Nicholas Dirks (2003) explains, Norman Brown, a professor of Sanskrit at the University of Pennsylvania, was particularly instrumental in establishing this conjuncture and in subsequently shaping South Asian area studies between 1926 and 1966. Drawing from a book published by Brown in 1953, entitled The United States and India and Pakistan, Dirks points out that although Brown’s endeavour to establish departments of South Asian studies in the United States was rooted in the aspiration to promote understanding and exchange between India, Pakistan and the United States,9 his own sense of Indian history was shaped by a vision whereby Hinduism and the Sanskrit language represented exclusively the cementing forces of Indian civilization, while Muslims were considered as the disruptors of India’s cultural unity (2003: 7-10). As a result, Brown analyzed the partition of India in essentialist terms, as the following excerpts from his book show: ‘the basis of Hindu-Muslim communalism lies in cultural differences’, (Dirks 2003: 9). While this vision of Indian civilization was to have significant repercussions on the development of South Asian studies in American universities (Dirks 2003: 9), it also implied that the use of the word ‘South Asia’ was not necessarily associated with a conceptualization of the region as a civilizational entity. Yet, the very fact of establishing interdisciplinary research centres on the Subcontinent, named after the term ‘South Asia’, has endorsed the region with some unity in academic circles and beyond. Similarly, the creation of journals, entitled South Asia(n)…, such as SAMAJ, contributes to construct the region as a cultural entity. That, in reality, India occupies centre stage in most area studies departments and publications is symptomatic of a peculiar feature characterizing the Subcontinent, mentioned above, i.e. the ‘asymmetrical’ presence of India in the region, an issue to which we will return later.

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10 To come back to the history of the name ‘South Asia’ as such, the word was also used from the 1940s to the 1970s by policy-making institutions such as the American State Department, which published in 1959 a briefing document entitled The Subcontinent of South Asia,10 and international organizations like the United Nations and the World Bank. 11 The genealogy of the word thus shows that it was officially conceived and used outside the Subcontinent testifying to its exogeneity. Although this fact can hardly be disputed, it is however worth mentioning that there was an earlier occurrence of a close word to name the region and which was used by a person from the Subcontinent, Aga Khan III, the spiritual leader of the Khoja Ismailis. Thus, according to Ayesha Jalal and Anil Seal (1981), Aga Khan III, used ‘Southern Asia’ in a letter in English that he wrote in 1935 from London to Fazl-i Husain (1877-1936), the leader of the Punjab Unionist Party, before the emergence of the idea of separate sovereign-states. Concerned about the unity of Muslims which was hindered by the provincialism of the regions where they were in a majority, Aga Khan wrote: […] to 'make India what she is, i.e. a United States of Southern Asia', where the Muslims would work for all they were worth the majority provinces against the new federal centre. But 'our Indian patriotism, of course, should never leave any doubt and our Hindu countrymen must realise that the welfare of India as a whole… is as dear to us as it is to them… (Jalal & Seal 1981: 449) 12 In the 1980s, the word ‘South Asia’ was given a new impetus with the creation of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). The idea of regional cooperation, stemming from the conception of the region as an entity, had been discussed in various conferences, before and just after Partition.11 It was not however until the 1980s that the first concrete proposal came up, leading to the creation of SAARC in 1985. With the formation of SAARC various agreements were established, such as the South Asia Free Trade Area, and events, such as the South Asia Youth Award or a South Asian Car Rally in 2007, starting from Bangladesh and ending in Maldives, that were meant to convert the idea of South Asia into ‘living practices’. Another major symbolic step was the creation in 2007 of the South Asian University, a non-state, non- profit, self-governing international educational institution, based in Delhi.12 As per the agreement signed by all the member states, the objectives stated in article 2 include not only the bringing together of students and faculty from all the countries of SAARC (and beyond) but also the creation of ‘a South Asian community by strengthening regional consciousness’.13 The creation of SAARC and of its affiliate institutions thus endowed the term ‘South Asia’ with an official public meaning embedded in the local context while pressing forward the regional idea. In the process, the notion that South Asia refers to a region bound by history and culture was given an official and endogenous impulsion, as attested by point 2 of SAARC’s charter.14

The Aporias of ‘South Asia’

13 Several decades after its appearance and increasing use in regional and international institutional circles, the term ‘South Asia’ remains however largely debated and often contested as an artificial and exogenous category. It does not have a mythical tale, such as the story of Europa who gave her name to Europe.15 Nor does the name have a ‘sentimental force on its own’ the way ‘Hindustan’ (in its broader meaning16) used to

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have from the 18th century onwards (Bayly 1998: 39-44). The word exists in vernacular languages but only as a direct translation of the English term (Dakshin Asia in Hindi, Janubi Asia in Urdu, Dokkhin Ashia in Bengali, Dakunu Asiyawa in Sinhala, etc.). It is so rarely used in vernacular daily conversations that the mention of the word Dakshin Asia in a Hindi movie, Dhobi Ghat (Kiran Rao 2011), was highlighted for its unusualness in an article published in Himal Southasian (Dixit 2011a). Some even see ‘South Asia’ as an empty category, whose sole heuristic value might be that the word is politically neutral (Bose & Jalal 1999: 3), as opposed to the ‘Indian Subcontinent’ which includes the name of one of the countries of the region. In this special issue, Sudipta Kaviraj questions the relevance of the notion of ‘South Asia’ when confronted with the challenges posed by the two political processes of modernity, nationalism and state-formation: the state formations of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh thus make it difficult ‘to think of South Asia as a space of emotional inhabitance’.

14 In any case, the use of terms for the sake of political neutrality is not new in the history of the Subcontinent: Barrow notes for instance that while the British cartographers, initially associating the Subcontinent with the Mughal Empire, used the term ‘Hindustan’, to designate the region, the word ‘India’ imposed itself from the late 19th century onwards, not only because ‘Hindustan’ had several meanings, either covering entire India or referring only to northern India, but also because the word had a Muslim connotation (and Bharatvarsha and Jambudvipa had a Hindu one) whereas ‘India’ was a more ‘neutral’ category that would better convey a meaning of the Subcontinent as a ‘single, bounded and British political territory’ (Barrow 2010: 40). The use of words, such as India or South Asia, mainly for the sake of neutrality has thus been a recurrence, which has continued after independence and has been used by individuals and groups well beyond official political and academic circles: in an article published in The Hindu, Bernard Haykel, commenting on the new branch created by Al-Qaida in South Asia (AQSA), whose Arabic name literally translates as ‘The Base for Armed Struggle in the South Asian Subcontinent’, writes for instance: The Base for Armed Struggle in the South Asian Subcontinent is an odd name because the purist jihadis prefer traditional geographical labels, such as al-Sham for Syria, Khorasan for Iran and Central Asia, Bilad al-Haramayn for Arabia, al-Hind or Hindustan for India, and not those of British vintage such as ‘the South Asian Subcontinent.’ One suspects the choice has to do with the jihadis not wanting to use anything that approximates the word Hindu, or a name that would offend radical Pakistani sensibilities, and thus opted for the British designation instead (The Hindu, 11 Sept. 2014). 15 In addition to being perceived as an artificial or empty category, ‘South Asia’ as a term and a notion raises a number of problems externally as well as internally. I will address here only those at the core of the original project of naming and constructing the region, leaving aside for instance academia’s critique of ‘area studies’, as these debates have been well covered by scientific works (see in particular Sanjay Subrahmanyam’s notion of ‘connected histories’, Subrahmanyam 1997).17 In this special issue, Jonathan Spencer, taking the example of Sri Lanka, interrogates the very notion of place as it does not reflect the movement and connection characterizing the island for centuries.

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A persistent invisibility

16 Among the limitations of South Asia as a category is first the low intelligibility of the word. While the term ‘South Asia’ is gaining visibility in Anglo-Saxon countries, its use remains limited to academic and political circles: in the UK, for instance, which among Western countries has the greatest familiarity with India because of the colonial past, the word is largely accepted to name research centres, but ‘Asian’ rather than ‘South Asian’ is used to label the people of the Subcontinent. In France, the word is virtually inexistent (‘Asie du Sud’ made its official entry in the most consulted online dictionary, Wikipedia, only about a year ago) and is often confused with ‘Southeast Asia’. This widespread confusion, much beyond France, between ‘South Asia’ and ‘Southeast Asia’ may take its roots in the fact that the first occurrence of ‘Southeast Asia’18 appeared a century before ‘South Asia’ and included then, according to several authors, all or much of India.19 This low level of awareness about the very existence of the word and its meaning seems to be equally widespread among the populations of the region it designates. Admittedly, attempting to determine empirically the level of basic awareness, not to mention any sort of attachment or identification, about the notion of South Asia, at the level of both individual and collective representations, raises serious methodological and epistemological questions. Yet a field survey conducted in Bangalore in August 2012, among a small sample of middle-class and educated people, to gage their awareness of the category, their identification with the region and so on, did yield some interesting clues. It hinted at a fairly fuzzy knowledge of the word itself, the region it encompasses, etc.; like elsewhere in the world, the term ‘South Asia’ was often confused with ‘Southeast Asia’, some included China in the region, others Saudi Arabia and so on…

Fluctuating boundaries

17 A second limitation is the highly fluctuating definition of the geographical extent of ‘South Asia’. Admittedly, this trait is not specific to the region as in other parts of the world debates and contestations also run high on geographical delimitations. Europe is a case in point: ‘Europe was, and always had been, a highly unstable term. No one has ever been certain quite where its frontiers lie’, thus notes Pagden (2002: 45). However, in comparison to the continents of Africa or South America, South Asia, as a Subcontinent, only has a partially immediate identifiable shape. Besides, even after the word got increasing international legitimation, its range was not fixed so much so that a general consensus over which countries ought to be encompassed in the definition of South Asia applies probably to only one country of the region… India! Even in that case, if South Asia is defined as a historical and cultural entity, the inclusion of some regions located in India’s margins, like the Northeast, raises questions among scholars, some suggesting that the Northeast should be classified in alternative entities like Zomia.20 This questioning, when coming from laypeople, can take on racial overtones as suggests the use by so-called ‘mainland’ Indians of derogatory terms against northeast people, such as ‘Chinkis’, suggesting an association with Chinese rather than Indians/ South Asians.21 It is however with Southeast Asia that Indian northeast people have mainly been associated (Emmerson 1984).

18 In any case, whether in South Asia itself or in international institutions or research centres outside the region, there is no general consensus over which countries the

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notion encompasses: SAARC has included Afghanistan among its members while the World Bank has left it out. Some research centres have included Burma, as it was a province of British India till 1937 (testifying to the role of colonization in shaping the region much before the establishment of area studies in the United States), and Tibet, but leave Afghanistan and the Maldives out. The politics of naming can also be prone to a form of competition, including in research centres and universities, between the terms ‘India’ and ‘South Asia’, the latter term progressively taking precedence over the former term or coexisting with it: the French Centre d’Études de l’Inde added to its name ‘Asie du Sud’ (South Asia) in 1970 but chose not to remove ‘Inde’ (India), and thus became the Centre d’Études de l’Inde et de l’Asie du Sud. Conversely, the countries included in South Asia as per the SAARC definition may be listed elsewhere as per other classifications: hence Ceylon/Sri Lanka used to be frequently considered as part of Southeast Asia by scholars of the region (Emmerson 1984), probably as a result of colonization (the island was controlled in the 19th century by the British who ruled Fiji and New Zealand, but not by those who governed Madras and Bombay, see Spencer in this special issue and Sivasundaram (2013); it is also worth consideration that Sri Lanka has a university called Southeastern created in the mid-1990s, see Spencer in this special issue). As for Pakistan, the Washington-based Middle-East Institute for instance includes a Center for Pakistan Studies, suggesting that it sees it as part of the Middle East. In both cases, religions, Theravada Buddhism (Emmerson 1984: 11) and Islam (Laurens 201322) have respectively been/were the uniting principle in the search for appropriate boundaries. However the perception of religious or cultural continuities has not always been the guiding principle as testifies the choice of the Pakistani State (including East Pakistan, later on Bangladesh) to be part of the now defunct South East Asia Treaty Organization (1954-1977), an organization born out of an Anglo-American initiative to counter communism: the conflicting relations with India had indeed contributed to Pakistan’s decision to join SEATO.23 19 The fluctuation of boundaries when delineating a region is of course not new in the history of the Subcontinent, as Catherine Clémentin-Ojha’s paper shows in this special issue, in which she discusses the words historically used in different languages to designate the region or parts of the region. Worth mentioning are also the discussions about the delineating and naming of regions that were under way during the movement for the creation of Pakistan. Admittedly, this comparison has its limitations since on the one hand the discussions encompassed the regions at a much smaller scale, while on the other hand they were to have much more dramatic political repercussions on the region. Yet, the idea of lumping together some areas, on the basis of religion or culture, or on the basis of some other considerations is entrenched in historical continuity. According to Ayesha Jalal, Choudhary Rahmat Ali (1897-1951), who famously coined the name ‘Pakistan’, had also proposed the creation of a ‘Bangistan’ or a ‘Bang-i Islamistan’ by grouping Bengal and Assam, and an ‘Osmanistan’ for a would-be sovereign state of Hyderabad; he had also invented colourful names like ‘Faruqistan, Mappalistan, Nasiristan’ to cover several parts of British and princely India as well as present-day Sri Lanka (this meaning that, interestingly, Sri Lanka was also included in the imaginary Pakistan, see Jalal 2001: 392-393).

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The asymmetrical presence of India

20 A third limitation is the perception that the term ‘South Asia’ is actually another name for India, leading thereby to political contestations at the scale of the region. The central and asymmetrical presence of India in various domains, including geography (except for Afghanistan,24 none of the SAARC countries can interact with another without crossing Indian territory) is such that India’s neighbouring countries tend to perceive the category ‘South Asia’ as Delhi-centric. The issue is probably the most sensitive in Pakistan as behind the name lies the notion that the region forms a historical and cultural entity. In a way, to consider the region as an ‘entity’ calls into question the very foundation of the country which was born as an outcome of the idea that Hinduism and Islam formed two separate civilizations, a belief also shared by Hindu nationalists in India. In this special issue, Faisal Devji discusses the notion of ‘Muslim community’, as conceptualized by the intellectuals gathered in the Aligarh movement, who were struggling to find their place in the upcoming new political space. The use of the word ‘South Asia’ was thus banned in the department of international relations of Karachi University until 1989 as it was ‘thought to be part of an India-centric thinking’ (Zaidi 2009: 61). The contestation of the notion should also be seen in the light of the Pakistani State’s own quandaries about the definition of its identity, at the crossroads of South Asia and the Middle East. The shift from South Asia to the Middle East started particularly after the breakaway of Bangladesh. Thus, one of the constant themes’ of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s regime was ‘the need for Pakistan to develop closer links with the Islamic world and to look towards the Middle East rather than elsewhere in Asia’ (Talbot 1998: 235). That said, the visibility in Pakistan of the term ‘South Asia’ is not necessarily insignificant as suggests for instance the name of a university specialized in computer science in Lahore: the University of South Asia (which uses USA as an acronym!). In any case, the perception that ‘South Asia’ is synonymous with India is, of course, not confined to Pakistan and can be encountered in other South Asian countries as well, testifying to a fear, largely shared in the Subcontinent, of the domination of India over its neighbouring countries. It should be however noted that the opposite argument is sometimes put forward, i.e. India might neglect the regional construct because it does not feel the need for it. According to Dixit, some claim that India ‘does not need Subcontinental regionalism because by itself it incorporates much of South Asia by economic strength, geopolitical prowess and miscellany’ (Dixit 2013: 32), while other countries will take greater economic and political advantages of regionalism. Whatever be the case, two countries neighbouring India have been particularly instrumental in promoting endogenous ideas of South Asia: Bangladesh, whose President, Ziaur Rahman, is believed to have initiated the proposal for the creation of SAARC; and Nepal where SAARC’s headquarters are located.

The limited success of top-down political constructions

21 A fourth limitation is that the abstract nature of the notion of ‘South Asia’ is reinforced by the ambiguous place of political cooperation in the institution, namely SAARC, that is supposed to embody the endogenous political project of South Asia. The organization, created mainly to ensure peace in the region that had been prey to several internal conflicts, enounces among its objectives the acceleration of ‘economic growth, social progress and cultural development in the region’ along with the

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promotion of ‘an active collaboration and mutual assistance in the economic, social, cultural, technical and scientific fields’.25 In that, the major objectives of SAARC are not specific to the Subcontinent as for instance they bear a resemblance with the original aim of the European Economic Community when it was created in 1957 by the Treaty of Rome, i.e. to use the unifying power of commerce as a tool to bring peace between its members in the wake of World War II. But there are key differences between SAARC and the then EEC (today’s European Union), a major one being that political cooperation has been at the heart of the European project from its inception: rooted in ancient times and in a long history,26 it found inspiration in the Duc de Sully’s ‘Grand Design’ as early as 1620, gaining further salience after Saint-Simon presented a proposal at the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815) in which he stressed the need to ‘unite the peoples of Europe in a single political body while still preserving their individual nationalities’ (Chebel d’Appollonia 2002: 180).27 The European project eventually materialized through the establishment of a Parliament in the 1950s.28 As far as SAARC is concerned, although the very process of forging a project to overcome a shared history of discord and conflict is in itself an eminently political initiative, there is some ambiguity in the way political cooperation is treated in the objectives and principles of its charter. Indeed, there are only two occurrences of the word ‘political’ in the charter: one calls for cooperation within the political system of each state, and the other reasserts the respect for the political independence of each state member. Although not surprising given the post-colonial history of the region, composed of new nation- states including two born out of the breaking up of a single entity, it does not contribute to consolidating the idea of South Asia in the absence of a binding political identity. And this not only in the sense of a common representative political body (like a Commission or a Parliament) but also in the sense of a common political culture, as conversely, the diversity of regimes has been a dominant feature in the political landscape of the Subcontinent. This contrasts once again with Europe where a binding ideology defined by Pagden, as ‘some kind of republicanism’ has existed since early modern Europe (2002: 5). Secularism could have been one such common ideology but it has been increasingly undermined throughout the Subcontinent (Jaffrelot & Mohammad-Arif 2012). To further extend the comparison with Europe, the latter has institutionalized the freedom of movement through the Schengen Agreement (implemented from 1995 onwards), while in South Asia, it is rather the obstruction to movement, through travel restrictions between state members, that has been institutionalized, thereby thwarting any notion of South Asian ‘connectivity’.

22 After this brief survey of top-down constructions of South Asia, both exogenous and endogenous, and their caveats, I shall now take a different lens by turning to a bottom- up perspective, which includes first a description of a shared culture that contributes to everyday constructions of the region and, second, an analysis of ideological constructions.

A shared culture: everyday constructions of South Asia

23 Needless to say, the Subcontinent is characterized by tremendous socio-cultural diversity, which, in the first place, is observed within each country of the region. Yet people of the region share social, cultural, linguistic and religious practices across

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national boundaries. These two assertions are so true that one could be tempted to use the metaphor of the half-empty glass vs. the half-full glass: either one can see the diversity as too overwhelming to see any relevance in the region as a civilizational entity or one can point out the similitudes and see them as symptomatic of cultural continuities across the Subcontinent. For the sake of remaining coherent with the argument of the construction of South Asia, but also because there are enough elements to support the contention of cultural continuities, be they only ‘instinctively, routinely shared’ (Vajpeyi 2012), I will choose here the second option. Except for the example of cricket, only commonalities that are specific to the region will be examined here.

24 Commonalities in social and cultural practices find their roots in centuries-long cultural encounters,29 but also in quests for status and power.30 Such commonalities are numerous and varied, ranging from marriage customs31 to material culture and culinary habits (such as eating with fingers32). Cultural continuities may not be observed throughout the whole Subcontinent (although there are a few exceptions such as the emblematic shalwar kameez, some common blend of spices, like garam masala, some common dishes—notwithstanding the different recipes—such as kichdi and kheer prepared and consumed from Afghanistan to Sri Lanka 33), but largely cross the national borders between, for instance, both sides of Punjab, Sindh and Rajasthan, West Bengal and Bangladesh, Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka, and so on. Cultural similarities are thus shared by segments of regional populations. Similitudes are also observed in the social realm as people from the Subcontinent also share analogous hierarchical conceptions of society, with the caste system largely replicated by non-Hindus as its epitome: ‘Southasia is a wonderland in which we have managed to introduce caste into all religions, be it Christianity, Buddhism, Jainism or Islam’, writes Panneerselvan (2008).34 25 On the religious level,35 the situation is peculiar for Hinduism as it is both so consubstantial to the region, and internally so diversified, that there would not be much relevance in pinpointing South Asian specificities across nations. Nonetheless, common practices, related to specific traditions such as Tantric practices and Bhakti, observed across the Subcontinent, could be meaningfully mentioned here. As far as Islam is concerned, similitudes in practices across nations relate both to inclusivist traditions, like Sufism, which, integrating features from other religions (as shown by the dargah-related practices), has spread to the whole Subcontinent from the medieval period and continue to be followed in various forms in the contemporary period; and to more exclusivist traditions, such as the Indian born and flavoured reformist Islam (e.g. Deobandi movement and its affiliate, the Tablighi Jama‘at, the Jama‘at-i Islami,36 etc.), which has expanded to most countries of the Subcontinent, including Afghanistan (as is well known, the Taliban are ‘products’ of Deobandi seminaries), influencing the socioreligious practices of the followers across the region. So much so that despite the great internal diversity of Islam the phrase ‘South Asian Islam’ would not be a misnomer as it remains both specific to the region and has spread throughout the Subcontinent. 26 On the political level, despite the intermittent difference in regimes, some practices are strikingly similar, such as the ‘dynastic’ tradition that has enabled women to occupy the highest position in several countries of the Subcontinent (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka), notwithstanding the fact that discrimination against women can reach high levels in these societies (so much so that most countries from the

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Subcontinent also share an unbalanced sex ratio resulting from female foeticide via sex selective abortions, unequal care provided to boys and girls, and infanticide). More fundamentally, the major communities of the region, be they Hindu, Muslim, Sikh or Christian have historically ‘coexisted with contiguous and overlapping, though not assimilable, political ethics’ (Bayly 1998: 121) based on a common vision of good government. Chris Bayly (1998: 15-17) demonstrates for instance that although the ethical systems of Hindu and Indo-Muslim traditions did not completely merge, there were similitudes between the principles of government in Hindu classical texts, like the Laws of Manu (ca. 2 nd century A.D., see Olivelle 2004: xii-xxiii), and their Indo-Muslim equivalents, such as Abu Fazl’s Ain-i-Akbari (1590). In the colonial period, their ‘sentiments of attachment [to the patria] and political norms had been homologous and complementary’ (Bayly 1998: 115-116). 27 Borders are among the most emblematic and visible symbols of the delimitations of a nation-state. In that, the Subcontinent represents a real laboratory as political frontiers have been a major, and often tragic, issue in the history of the region. Their crossing represents another form of everyday constructions of South Asia. It can occur on an almost daily basis, as shown by the circulation of Bangladeshi and Nepali workers between India and their home countries, erasing the very idea of nation-bound delimitations.37 Beyond physical circulation as such, the Subcontinent is a very interesting case-study of transborder populations that are not only numerous but spread across different regions of this part of the world: Punjabis, Pashtuns, Kashmiris, Baloch, Bengalis, Assamese and so on. Their interest lies not only in the fact that the very existence of a few of these groups contributes to the debate on the question of the geographical extent of South Asia (like the Baloch who live across Pakistan and Iran), but some of these communities (such as the Tamils for instance) also form family networks through matrimonial practices, while others, who are separated by uncrossable boundaries, have recourse to other vectors like poetry to keep the memory alive of their common cultural and historical heritage: in this special issue, Radhika Gupta thus examines through the example of the Baltis of Kargil the circulation of cultural forms between India and Pakistan, ‘sustained by shared linguistic and religious histories’. Worth mentioning is also the intriguing phenomenon of chhitmahal, the series of enclaves situated along the India-Bangladesh border, studied by Jason Cons in this special issue: focusing on Dahagram, the largest of these enclaves, Cons emphasises the need to reconceptualize the postcolonial territory of South Asia which, in its present form, does not faithfully reflect the lived realities at the margins, characterized by everyday negotiations that challenge nationalist and communal geographies. 28 Art is another case in point. Some genres in music and dance (qawwali, bhangra, kathak, bharatanatyam, etc.) have endorsed a pan-South Asian character as they are practiced and appreciated much beyond the national scale. Similarly, a rich literature in vernacular languages, far from being confined to a single region/nation, is part of a poetic and literary culture transcending communities and state boundaries, from Amir Khusrau’s iconic poetry and ballads (14th century) to the Kabir Panth (16th century) and to Waris Shah’s Heer Ranjha38 (18 th century) and Bullhe Shah’s poetry. 39 As Manan Ahmed (2013: 49) notes, these narratives and stories ‘combine orality, practice and daily rituals where various strands of spiritual knowledge make new forms—deeply- rooted in the local, from Punjab to Awadh to Deccan, to Bengal’. Modern literature also offers scriptural illustrations of a cultural heritage that bind people of the Subcontinent, through their shared appreciation and ‘consumption’, beyond frontiers.

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Remarkable examples include Saadat Hasan Manto (1912-1955), one of the iconic writers on Partition whose 100th birth anniversary was celebrated in 2012 in Lahore, Karachi, Bombay and New York40; Allama Iqbal (1877-1938), the spiritual father of Pakistan, whose Saare Jahan se Accha Hindustan Hamara is the national marching song for India; Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), whose songs have been used as the national anthem in two countries, India and Bangladesh, and have inspired a third one, Sri Lanka’s; Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976), the national poet of Bangladesh, who is the only person to appear on the stamps of Bangladesh, India and Pakistan41 (Mohaiemen 2012); or Subramania Bharathi, ‘whom Tamils in India and beyond [i.e. Sri Lanka and the diasporas] continue to look upon as the nationalist bard par excellence’ (Mangala-Frost 2006: 150). 29 In the everyday constructions of South Asia, some platforms operate as cementing vectors between countries of the Subcontinent: Bollywood movies represent an iconic example as they provide a sense of ‘community’ through the ‘formation of a common public that coheres around Bombay cinema’ (Ahmed 2012) and a common language that keeps the memory of historical ties vibrant: ‘it enables the creation of new cultural referents, provides a common vocabulary, and most crucially, maintains long-standing historical and cultural thematics within living memory’ (Ahmed 2012). As Manan Ahmed (2013: 51) emphasizes, the shared appreciation of Bollywood and its songs takes its roots in a common regional imagination of love and friendship dating back to the epics of the 17th century. Bollywood also offers a platform for interaction among artists not only across regions and religions but increasingly across borders as well.42 Songs are particularly reflective of this close interconnectedness beyond borders: songs inspired by Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s poetry are thus part of the repertoires of both Indian and Pakistani singers. 30 Some Bollywood movies directly address the issue of cross-border relations (particularly between India and Pakistan): they either demonize the Other43—but, as Manan Ahmed (2012) states, demonization still ‘showcases the capacity to imagine the Other’—or they find ways, sometimes amusing ones, to highlight commonalities beyond borders and/or try to erase lines of difference.44 This suggests that temporalities are also important in the way South Asia is constructed, as discourses about the Other are particularly volatile, shifting, almost overnight, from bhai bhai (such as during the ‘reconciliation’ period between India and Pakistan in 2004-2008) to sheer antagonism and vice-versa. However, whereas tense relationships between countries used to manifest themselves over the ways the ‘Other’ was portrayed in Bollywood movies till the early 2000s, economic considerations have since come to prevail over ‘parochial nationalism’: the different South Asian countries and the respective diasporas of each nation of the Subcontinent represent such huge markets that the demonization of the Other, even during periods of tension between South Asian countries, might lead to backlash in financial terms. Beyond the issue of imagining the Other, economic benefits at large are a main driving force behind the circulation of cultural products (essentially from India to other South Asian countries but reverse circulations also occur45) and participate in their own ways in the construction of ideas of South Asia.46 31 In popular perceptions, cricket is, along with Bollywood, the other binding vector between people of the region. While this can hardly be denied in terms of the comparable craze it generates among people in most South Asian countries, cricket is a double-edged sword: the similitude in emotions is observed not only in the sheer

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common fun of watching a match but also in the nationalist passion aroused by the game. These nationalist feelings may come along with an open antagonism against the rival South Asian team when two teams from the Subcontinent meet: as if they were fighting proxy wars (except in Test matches47). But just like the demonization in Bollywood movies implies a capacity to imagine the Other, negative emotions, such as antagonism, expressed during cricket matches or on other such occasions, also participate in their own ways, in making the regional idea exist as they take their roots in a shared history of conflicts. 32 In sum, looking at cultural continuities not only contributes to the notion of a South Asian cultural space but these continuities are also related to practices that generate everyday constructions of South Asia. Moreover, they provide to the builders of South Asia from below, whose role will be addressed in the following section, the material and symbolic resources on which to construct their imagination of the region as an entity.

‘South Asia’ Revisited: (Re)Constructing the region from below

‘South Asia’, a binding name and notion for social struggles

33 While the description of historical and cultural commonalities may convey anthropological substance to the idea of South Asia at the level of ground reality, some individuals and groups do not see ‘South Asia’ as a mere geographical expression or as an emotionally-cum-commercially productive platform of interaction. Rather in the wake of tense relations between the countries of the region, they deliberately engage in discourses about South Asia as an entity (as loosely and heterogeneously as it might be defined). This is illustrated, for instance, in the declaration of the ‘People’s SAARC’, a forum created in the mid-1990s, composed of a network of organizations from regional ‘civil societies’ (peasant movements, trade unions, women’s and feminist groups, anti- caste movements and so on): We, the people of South Asia, not only share a contiguous geographical space but also a social and cultural history that shapes our life styles, belief systems, cultural particularities, material practices and social relationships. Our natural environments are related, interdependent, and form elements of a common eco- system. There is a similarity in our life practices. Our belief systems and cultural practices influence/complement each other, thus exhibiting distinct similarities. On the other hand, the unique diversity of our region in all aspects has enriched the common heritage, and we celebrate a sustained history of mutual respect for one another.48 34 In a similar vein, Aunohita Mojumdar (2013), a journalist from the team of the magazine Himal Southasian, one of the major platforms, as mentioned before, for the construction of ideas of South Asia from below, writes: We share rivers, forests and monsoon patterns and are impacted by deforestation, landslides and flooding, but lack awareness about what exists across the border. We have intricate trade relations that help and curb the transit of goods, but are completely ignorant about the economies of our neighbours. We have massive migration within the region but know little about the peoples of other countries. We have a large portion of our region beset by conflict but little more than a jingoistic appreciation of these. The information and awareness that is needed in

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the region in order to foster tolerance and build the idea of a cooperative ‘southasianess’ is missing. 35 Beyond the rhetoric, the core agenda of these individuals and groups includes the promotion of cross-border practices along with appeals for regional cooperation at the grassroots level, as an alternative to compensate for the perceived failures of top-down initiatives (by SAARC in particular). In their view, the deflation of political tensions and the promotion of peace and demilitarization are closely interlinked with the social, economic and political advancement of the region. These groups occasionally undertake collective mobilization through the Internet or regional meetings. They take place around a vast array of issues of common concern, across borders, such as democracy, globalization, food sovereignty, debt cancellation, trafficking of women and children for prostitution, gender-based violence, caste discrimination, religious extremism and communalism, environment, basic health needs, etc.49 Admittedly, these initiatives have been largely hampered by cross-border travel restrictions (Ramachandran 2012). Yet these discourses and practices remain essential elements in the creation of emerging ‘ideas of South Asia’ from below.

36 In migration, ideas about South Asia have surfaced as a result of two processes. First is the awareness of cultural and social commonalities resulting not only from direct interactions with people from different countries of the Subcontinent, but also from categorizations imposed by host-societies on migrants from the region (census, university admission forms, the names of research centres and so on). Second are ‘pro- active’ constructions of South Asia, enounced in discourses and put into practice through the establishment of organizations, in North America in particular, that are deliberately named South Asian, as a political statement. As a matter of fact, more than ‘South Asia’, the term ‘South Asian’ has been increasingly meaningful in the diaspora, as a means of self-identification (although, as Anouck Carsignol indicates in this special issue, competing names, such as desi, have also emerged). Beyond the politics of naming, which can also take place in constructions from below, interlinkages are established, as Carsignol shows, between constructions of South Asia that are mainly relevant for the Subcontinent (peace, denuclearization, development, etc.) and those that are more specific to the diasporic context (common concern over stigmatization, racism and marginalization experienced in host-societies). 37 Whether in the Subcontinent or in diaspora, these grassroots activists thus essentially see mobilizations around the notion of South Asia as the most efficient way of combating all kinds of social and political evils but without necessarily ‘thinking’ the category ‘South Asia as such.

Ideologizing South Asia

38 Another group, which connects the construction of South Asia with social struggles and which includes people hailing mostly, if not from the elite, at least from educated backgrounds, goes a step further by addressing the category as such, and by doing so in a way that ideologizes ‘South Asia’. This is not to say that other constructions of South Asia (strategic ones for instance) are deprived of ideology, far from it; this is not to say either that imaginations of South Asia can only take form in the minds of the elites. But we do observe specific forms of endogenous ‘ideologization’ from below initiated by people comprising mainly intellectuals (academics, journalists, writers and artists)

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based in the Subcontinent or in diaspora, particularly in Anglo-Saxon countries. Their major mode of expression is online media (blogs, journals, listservs). The names of the websites are in themselves revealing, and partake of a politics of naming from below: Himal Southasian (Mani Kanak Dixit, the editor and one of the leading and most committed supporters of the idea of South Asia as an entity, explains, in this special issue, how the name of his magazine was changed from Himal to Himal Southasian in a single word in order to indigenize a name given by outsiders),50 One South Asia, TheSouthAsianIdea Weblog, South Asian Citizens Web, TVSouthasia, PanosSouthasia, and so on. It is as if the questioning of the existing borders represented their very raison d’être, and as if there was a rethinking of the region along pre-Partition borders. This can also be inferred for instance from the title of an issue mentioned above and published in the journal Seminar in April 2012: A country of our own: A Symposium on Re- imagining South Asia. The issue gathered several academics from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, with the following objective stated by Ananya Vajpeyi (2012): We meant to provoke an audacious, imaginative projection of South Asia that actively militates against the pain, loss and grief of our burdened and compromised histories, that restores and heals, that allows Hindus-Muslims-Sikhs-Indians- Pakistanis-Bangladeshis or whatever other categories of people to come back into a degree of intimacy, familiarity, trust and reconciliation with one another. We tried to say: let’s dream of a history not as a series of wounds, but as a set of limitless possibilities for flourishing, for dialogue, and for human intertwining. […] Our nation-driven geopolitical and historical predicaments are ridiculous and untenable in their own ways, as we are all more than aware. We were willing to entertain the wildest imaginings for a better South Asia—truly a country of our own. 39 These ideological constructions of South Asia, challenging existing borders, raise a series of questions. The first set is related to the mental geography of the supporters of the idea of South Asia.51 Are ideas of South Asia confined to India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, leaving aside other countries which were not part of British India, and which hence did not go through the painful process and experience of partitions? The idea of a reunification, different from that of an ex-nihilo unification (such as the project of the European Union), is indeed a major aspect of these constructions of South Asia, although its supporters do not necessarily dream of a territorial reunification but rather of an ‘ideational’ one, to quote from Tagore.52 The issue of Seminar mentioned above partakes of this logic as it only addresses questions related to India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

40 However the example of Himal Southasian, based in Nepal, which regularly gathers contributors from all over the Subcontinent, and contains articles about all the States including Bhutan, the Maldives and Afghanistan, implies that some constructions of South Asia from below are inclusive of other countries of the region as well. For some, Burma and Tibet are also thought of as part of the entity (see Dixit in this special issue). 41 These multiple and overlapping constructions of South Asia interrogate once again the geographical delimitations of the notion as it may comprise not only the countries that once were one but other states as well, including those which do not necessarily share many cultural similarities with the core countries, such as Burma, and this in the name of a shared colonial past. Conversely, cultural definitions can take precedence over geographical ones when the notion is applied to people living outside the physical limits of the Subcontinent, i.e. diasporas. In this special issue, Claude Markovits shows how Gandhi (1869-1948) constructed a notion of India (and not of South Asia, of course,

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as it would have been anachronistic), when he was in South Africa, that enabled him to inhabit both spaces at the same time, thereby mentally blurring the boundaries of the Subcontinent. 42 A second set of questions is linked to the underlying ideological principles in this (re)imagination of the region, beyond the overlapping layers of construction of South Asia. Are these activists primarily rethinking the past by interrogating the frontiers put into place at the time of the Partition? Or are they imagining a different future? The combination of emotions, such as nostalgia and hope, perceptible in their writings, suggests an interdependency between both, and resonates with discourses on Europe. Chebel d’Appollonia thus writes: ‘Even today the champions of the Maastricht Treaty justify their position in the name of a reconstructed past and an idealized future’ (2002: 179). 43 What kind of political principle is pervading the goals and initiatives of the activists? The answers are not easy to provide as we lack thorough research on these questions. Moreover, the phenomenon is fairly difficult to analyze as it is not embodied in an organized movement; neither does it have ideologues formulating ideas or projects for the region comparable to the European philosophers or political writers who laid down the ideological grounding for the construction of Europe.53 44 Nevertheless, a number of points can be inferred from the activists’ writings. First, they do not reject the nation-state, far from it, most subscribe to the basic principle that there should be no obliteration of national identities: In the new and effective regionalism that we seek, the idea is not to supplant the nation state but to complement it by giving the people and the polities an additional dimension to their identities—a dimension that is both historical and psychologically energizing (Himal Southasian 2011). 45 It is worth consideration that these views are reminiscent of the European nationalism from the Enlightenment to 1848, based on the perception that ‘there was […] no contradiction between Europeanism and national sentiments when these sentiments were not exclusive’ (Fontana 2002: 174).

46 Second, they seem to be sharing a sense of an imagined community bound by a specific ‘sensibility’. It is defined as follows in Himal Southasian: If Southasian-ness is a sensibility, then anyone can be a Southasian. The requirement is having respect for the history of the Subcontinent and empathy for its people. You can be a native or a non-native. Of course it helps to be born in any one of the countries of the region, but you can also be a naturalised Southasian due to the empathy you develop for this region and its populace (Dixit 2011b). 47 The concept of a South Asian sensibility, which has given its name to a book edited by Kanak Mani Dixit that compiles some of Himal Southasian’s most significant articles, rests upon the notion of the experience of feeling borrowed from T.S. Eliot. Commenting on the ‘Bengali sensibility’ perceptible in Amit Chaudhuri’s (b. 1962) works, Arun Kumar Yadav (2012) defines regional sensibility in ways that could be applied to South Asia as well: In the 20th century the term ‘regional sensibility’ has been used to denote an intellectual and emotional perceptiveness, the sense employed by T.S. Eliot when he described the ‘Dissociation of Sensibility.’ Regional sensibility means characteristic ways of responding in perception, thought, and feeling to experience. It emphasizes the setting, speech, social structure and customs of a particular locality. It manifests not only the local colour but also an important condition

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affecting the temperament of the characters and their ways of thinking, feeling and interacting. […] Thus, regional sensibility means the cultural and moral attitude of people, their overall characters, and customs and the way of life. 48 In Himal Southasian’s text (Dixit 2011b), this sensibility, which embraces people across nations, is interlinked with empathy, seen as the core emotion to build solidarity in the region across nations, or, in other words, to build regionalism. Needless to say, since the need for South Asia as a category partly came up as a result of a violent history marked by several partitions, a vast array of emotions, displayed like a Janus face (hate vs. love, fear vs. hope, etc.), has been playing a dominant role in the constructions and deconstructions of the region. But some specific emotions can be mobilized in order to participate in the more deliberate construction of the region, such as empathy here. In another text published in a recent book compiling several articles, mostly oriented towards the path the region will take in the next 50 years, Dixit (2013: 29-30), defending the idea of regionalism, thus writes: At the start of the second decade of the twentieth century, we are still in the process of evolving as Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Sri Lankans. This is of course not a bad thing, but in acquiring the exclusive identity of the nation-state we have lost touch with the overarching quality of empathy - external and internal. This has left us with a South Asia battered with animosities, where a united front has failed to develop to check the blundering or the malevolent overseas players. These animosities have, most importantly, affected economic advancement in the poorest, most densely populated parts of the region. […] Ultranationalism is what renders heartless when horrors happen across the border, generating an empathy deficit that prevents a response when floods or earthquakes ravage contiguous regions. 49 It is worth consideration that the author does not frame the empathy leading to solidarity in ‘humanistic’ or romantic terms but, as noted above, in the language of mutual interests with the pragmatic recognition of the economic advantages that solidarity, via empathy, could bring to the entire region.

A post-colonial patriotism?

50 In order to frame this ‘sensibility’ in the language of social sciences, we may formulate here a few hypotheses by briefly drawing comparisons with, on the one hand, processes that have been historically at play in the Subcontinent, and on the other, with similar projects that have emerged in other regions of the world, such as Europe. Is this a new form of nationalism without nation-states? Or, as embryonic as it might be, is this a new kind of post-colonial patriotism presenting some similarities with the patriotism of the pre-colonial past which went ‘beyond simple chauvinism’ and was characterized by ‘cultural mixing and the forging of hybrid identities’ (Bayly 1998: 54-55)? In keeping with Bayly’s conceptualization of pre-colonial patriotism, it is as if South Asia had replaced ‘Hindustan’, ‘as a value-laden word which afforded an ideological symbol and a historical memory […]’ (Bayly 1998: 44; see also in this special issue Kaviraj, who examines the notion of South Asia from a ‘vestigial pre-modern’ perspective). In this ‘ watanization’54 process, the scale has changed, encompassing a vast region with fluid geographical boundaries.

51 The mention in Dixit’s text of ‘overseas players’ is also worth noticing as in the formation of patriotism the reference to the ‘Other’ or to ‘Others’ is usually energizing. 55 However, there is no formation of a common outside ‘enemy’: it can be the West for

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some and/or at times, China for others and/or at other times, with a different rhetoric accordingly: resistance to domination (anti-imperialism has replaced anti-colonialism, except that ‘the outside enemy’ remains the same) vs. collaboration-cum-competition for domination in the larger region (Asia). 52 But more significant is the fact that in this ‘patriotism’, it is as if South Asians were imagined as a single community bound by a shared morality (combining, broadly- speaking, pacifism and secularism) and a composite culture overriding potentially divisive affiliations like religion or caste and stemming from the idea that ‘civilizations don’t have to be built on a single principle’ (Khilnani 2004). This is reminiscent of Nehru’s views on composite culture: By this [composite culture] he meant the continual presence and processes of reciprocity; mutual sharing and overlap of cultural practices; styles of life; a technological and economic worldview of the relationship between nature and culture; shared practices of economy and technology; values and belief systems cutting across the divides of space; and religious belief systems and specificities of community differentiations. (Singh 2008: 195) 53 So much so that this may suggest a conflation between the idea of India and the idea of South Asia. In any case, the salience of the notion of composite culture can also be inferred by the type of ‘cultural heroes’ that the activists mobilize or refer to: Ghalib (1797-1869), Tagore, or writers from the Progressive Writers Movement such as Faiz Ahmad Faiz (1911-1984).56 However, while these poets used vernacular languages as vehicles of expression, the language that the activists mostly use to convey their ideas about South Asia is English. Unlike Hindustani, English may not be endorsed with an ideological meaning (see Bayly 1998), and has a function of neutrality in a region characterized by a huge diversity of languages, which even compete at times. Yet English is ‘the link language’, to borrow from Bayly’s analysis of Hindustani (1998: 43), which allows cross-border and cross-region dialogues and interactions, with the difference, however, that there is no conflation here between language and ethnicity, as there might have been at some point between Hindustani language and ‘a latent Hindustani identity’ (Bayly 1998: 40). But it does remain that if the idea of South Asia has a language, it is probably English, all the more so as English websites represent a major medium of communication for the activists. This implies that such constructions from below remain confined to elite circles. As if they were forming an avant-gardist enlightened community of postcolonial intellectuals, journalists and artists, based in the Subcontinent or in diaspora, and united by the basic principle of believing that the region, loosely defined as per one’s mental geography, forms an entity (‘Read against this long history—of intersectarian, interreligious politics, rooted languages, nested stories, entangled everyday lives—civilizational difference is impossible to argue,’ writes Manan Ahmad (2013: 50)), while acknowledging altogether the variety of the peoples, histories and cultures that coexist in the Subcontinent: ‘unity in diversity’ in other words, but at a larger scale than pre-colonial and post-colonial India. It is worth consideration that, with all the nuances such an assertion requires given both the difference of contexts and influence at this stage, this phenomenon is somewhat reminiscent of the République des Lettres in Europe, composed of ‘educated aristocrats, writers and scientists’ (Fontana 2002: 118-119), who emerged as a proto-European community during the Enlightenment period and laid the intellectual foundations for the future European Union.

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54 However, among the supporters of the idea of South Asia, there can of course be considerable variation not only in their mental geography of the Subcontinent as mentioned above but also in their imaginations and priorities, their ideas and projects for the region. Some, expressing their ‘sensibility’ in their writings, stick to viewing the region as an ‘enchanting abstraction’; others formulate more precise viewpoints. Let us mention a few examples. Tariq Ali (2008) imagines a South Asia ‘based loosely on the model of the European Union’. Conversely, Partha Chatterjee (2008), who does not see Europe as ‘a proper model for emulation’, believes that only ‘collective, non-official, cultural’ efforts will help ‘a shared regional consciousness’ to emerge. As for Dixit (2013), he goes a step further by proposing a federalist project at the scale of the whole Subcontinent through devolution of power within each country (see interview in this special issue).57 55 Now, to assess these ideas—are they purely utopian or do they have a degree of influence—is beyond the scope of this introduction as this would not only be too challenging methodologically speaking, but it would also correspond to a more prospective-oriented analysis, whereas we are only concerned here with the multiple ways a region is imagined and constructed. Admittedly, it would not be highly risky to assert that these ideas are limited to a vocal but still very small elite, whose opinions are not widely circulated in the mainstream media, not even the English ones. Some of them even willingly acknowledge the utopian dimension of their views. Yet, it does remain that these people act as agents of the awareness of South Asia, and, in the process, participate in constructing and politicizing the term and the meaning behind it.

Conclusion

56 In this introduction, I have tried to highlight different processes of construction at play in the ideas about South Asia: top-down and bottom-up, exogenous and endogenous, everyday ones and ‘deliberate’ ones. The various constructions show that the notion of South Asia refers to two different logics depending on the actors and the context in which they use it: one is the formation of a region, the other is the emergence of regionalism. Exogenous constructions mostly lead to the creation of a region, with varying, and sometimes overlapping, objectives depending on the actors involved, such as knowledge production or mapping of the world driven by strategic concerns. Endogenous constructions, whether top-down or bottom-up, tend to go a step further by leading to the invention of a multi-faceted regionalism. While peace represents the basic common goal of the actors involved in such constructions, other purposes come into play, such as the social, economic and cultural development of the region, the interlinking of South Asia as a category symbolizing cultural entity, with particular struggles in both home-societies and in the diaspora. In between these two lie non- deliberate practices, which also contribute to the construction of the region and provide the ‘builders’ with the necessary historical and cultural resources to promote regionalism. In the process, there seems to be a close inter-connection between regionalism and creative forms of patriotism, the latter ideologically nurturing the former.

57 It is also worth consideration that if the perceptions and the subsequent debates and stakes about South Asia as a category may compete with each other (strategic designs

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of Western policy-makers vs. anti-imperialist discourses of activists from the Subcontinent), they can also overlap: both academia and grassroots activists can share the characteristic of viewing South Asia through the lens of a civilizational entity, except that the former submits the idea for debate, while the latter may endorse it without much questioning. International organizations, like the UN, may not be particularly concerned with the debates over whether the region represents a civilizational entity, but they can share common goals with grassroots activists, such as the promotion of peace in the region. Bollywood, for its part, is not primarily bothered with the civilizational debates, neither is it with peace as the ultimate goal in the region, but takes advantage of cultural commonalities between the countries of the region to attract a larger market. These multiple and multi-layered constructions lead to the polysemy of the word and the concept. As Hasan Altaf (2012) notes: South Asia, like any other such grandiose idea (‘Islam’, ‘America’, ‘Europe’, take your pick), is not static, an object to be passed from parent to child, like a jadanagam58—it’s something that we make, something that we create and modify and reshape. 58 Beyond the multiplicity of constructions and meanings of South Asia, the very notion can be called into question, highlighting a number of stakes and underpinning debates, some covered in this introduction, some in the papers and some others that have not been dealt with in this special issue. As in a mirror game, counter-arguments are used by multiple actors invoking various reasons: socio-cultural (the notion does not reflect and leave much space to the strong heterogeneity of the region—an argument also used by some ‘progressists’, see Carsignol in this special issue—; it can be perceived as an attempt at reviving British Empire (see Spencer in this special issue); economic (e.g. if the notion is correlated to the idea of regionalism, it is eschewed by the Indian middle- classes as they do not see any benefit in helping the ‘impoverished neighbourhood’59); political (South Asia is another word for India or the notion only addresses the relationships between India and Pakistan); scientific (critical vision of the very concept of area studies); essentialist (reluctance to see the region as a civilizational entity, shared by a section of the so-called Orientalists, the supporters of the two-nation theory, the defenders of Hindutva, and stemming from the belief that Hinduism and Islam form two incompatible civilizations). It should be noted however that the detractors of the notion of South Asia as a ‘coherent’ region may not necessarily oppose South Asia as a category defining regionalism: the academic critics of area studies, and hence of South Asia as a (well)-delineated region, may not for instance object to regionalism as such, if understood as a political project designed to ensure peaceful relations between the countries of the region and to contribute to its socio-economic development.

59 These construction and deconstruction processes have in turn implications for South Asia as a name, calling into question three related criticisms. One is that it is an empty name. While this assertion cannot be fully refuted, constructions from below show that the name is closely associated with ideas of pacific coexistence, mutual tolerance, composite culture, etc. Two is that the name is only politically correct. Again, this statement cannot be totally challenged as the word does have a ‘neutral’ value since, as mentioned above, it does not include any of the names of the countries of the region, as opposed to ‘Indian Subcontinent’. However, not only does the political contestation it faces show that it cannot be only understood as a politically correct word, but the word has been assigned political significance as it has been ideologized by activists in home-

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societies and in the diaspora. Three is that ‘South Asia’ is interchangeable’ with ‘Indian Subcontinent’. This assertion raises at least two problems: one is directly related to the first point, i.e. that ‘Indian Subcontinent’ is politically and historically loaded; the other is more geographical: the notion of ‘Subcontinent’ technically excludes islands (Sri Lanka and Maldives). It could also be worth considering that the word ‘Asia’ in ‘South Asia’ enlarges the horizon, in comparison with ‘Indian Subcontinent’, as it nominally puts the region in a larger continent. In return, it may contribute to ‘fluidizing’ boundaries, building bridges with Southeast Asia, West Asia or Central Asia, and, in the process, more easily accommodate ‘margin areas’ like the Northeast or Afghanistan.

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NOTES

1. Although ‘Enchanting Abstraction’ is first and foremost the name of a painting by Yoshida Shizuko, I am borrowing the phrase from the British born Ghanaian philosopher and cultural thinker, Kwame Appiah (1997: 617), who used it to describe the relation of his father to Africa. 2. My grateful thanks to Gilles Dorronsoro, Grégoire Schlemmer and Sanjay Subrahmanyan for their useful comments on this project at an earlier stage and to the anonymous reviewers of my paper. My heartiest gratitude also goes to the SAMAJ team. 3. The Directorial Committee (2010-2013) was composed of Blandine Ripert, Loraine Kennedy, Stéphanie Tawa Lama-Rewal and Aminah Mohammad-Arif. 4. This curiosity led to the organization of a conference at the CEIAS in November 2012 on ‘The Idea of South Asia’, bringing together scholars from various disciplines. This special issue of SAMAJ is the result of those reflections, which Blandine Ripert and I have extended by soliciting other scholars to address issues not covered in the conference. 5. The region primarily refers to India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, the Maldives, as per the definition of the SAARC (South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation), which has however included Afghanistan lately (2007) among its members. See below. 6. This comparison could have been stimulating given the similar gap between state spaces and cultural continuities across frontiers, resulting from colonization. 7. This book is mentioned in Emmerson’s article (1984). 8. See Szanton (2004: 1-33). 9. As a specialist of Sanskrit studies, Norman Brown was above all a classical scholar, but he was interested in contemporary issues as well, including political developments in the Subcontinent. See Dirks (2003). 10. United States Government Printing Office (1959). 11. For example, the Asian Relations Conference in Delhi in April 1947, the Baguio Conference in the Philippines in May 1950, the Colombo Powers Conference in April 1954, etc. 12. Although the construction of the campus will start in 2014, the university has started offering courses to students since August 2010 in a temporary campus in Chanakyapuri. Degrees and certificates delivered by the SAU are recognized by the University Grants Commission in India and by other SAARC member states. 13. See http://sau.ac.in/downloads/accredit/Inter-Governmental-Agreement.pdf. 14. Point 2 reads: ‘Conscious that in an increasingly interdependent world, the objectives of peace, freedom, social justice and economic prosperity are best achieved in the SOUTH ASIAN region by fostering mutual understanding, good neighbourly relations and meaningful

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cooperation among the Member States which are bound by ties of history and culture’. See: http://www.saarc-sec.org/SAARC-Charter/5/. 15. She was the ‘daughter of Agenor, King of the city of Tyre, on the coast of Sidon […] carried off by Zeus and transformed into a white bull’ (Pagden 2002: 34). Interestingly, Pagden stresses that there is mundane version of the story, suggested by Herodotus, whereby Europa was an Asian woman abducted by Cretan merchants, this implying that ‘not only were the origins of Europe non-European, but that no one could establish with any precision where Europe stopped and Asia and Africa began’ (Pagden 2002: 34-6). 16. Hindustan had two overlapping meanings, one was the equivalent of all-India (Sara Hindustan), the other was restricted to the heartland of Hindustani-speaking North India. But in the 18th century, Hindustani culture expanded to the south so much so that ‘it was now possible to identify the cultural term Hindustan with the greater part of the Subcontinent’ (Bayly 1998: 43). 17. See also Szanton (2004). We may also mention the (unpublished) debates about area studies that took place at the EHESS, in 2002 and 2003, in which two of the contributors to this special issue, Claude Markovits and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, participated. 18. About the different ways of spelling ‘Southeast Asia’, see Emerson (1984). 19. It was however during World War II that the word ‘Southeast Asia’ became popular (Emmerson 1984). According to Emmerson (1984: 5), although the actual identity of the name’s inventor is not known for sure, the first use of the word ‘Southeast Asia’ may have occurred in 1839, the year the travelogue of an American cleric, Howard Malcolm, was published under the title Travels in South Eastern Asia, but Malcolm himself may not have used the word or explain it. As for its scholarly usage, it may date back to 1847 when a British anthropologist, J.R. Logan, inaugurated it in a series of articles published in The Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia. 20. Zomia is a term coined by van Schendel in 2002. He challenged the boundaries as fixed by ‘standard’ Area Studies, and proposed an alternative entity that initially encompassed the Himalayan Range, the Tibetan Plateau and the Southeast Asian highlands. In 2007, he extended the zone northward and westward to include southern Qinghai and Xinjiang in China, and the highlands of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan (Michaud 2010). Zomia is ‘an area marked by a sparse population, historical isolation, political domination by powerful surrounding states, marginality of all kinds, and huge linguistic and religious diversity’ (Michaud 2010: 188). 21. Related to this issue, a dramatic event took place in India in August 2012, the exodus of Northeast people (including Nepalis and Tibetans) by train from some South Indian cities after (mostly false) rumours about possible attacks from Muslims on Northeast people in retaliation for the violence in Assam between Bodos and Muslims. The event was not only reminiscent of scenes from the Partition but also revealing about the perceived foreignness of people from Northeast India by other Indians. 22. I thank Hamit Bozarsalan for drawing my attention to this interview. 23. In any case, only two countries that were part of the SEATO were actually Southeast Asian countries: the Philippines and Thailand. The rest included countries like Australia, France, the UK, the US, and so on. 24. And Pakistan can directly interact with Afghanistan. 25. See http://www.saarc-sec.org/SAARC-Charter/5/. 26. According to Pagden (2002: 9), ‘a vision of a future in which ‘Europe’ would acquire some kind of unity’dates back to the days of the Emperor Augustus’s new Rome. 27. See also Biancamaria Fontana (2002: 128) who notes that, ‘with the settlements of the Congress of Vienna, the modern idea of Europe had reached a point of no return. From now on the European identity would no longer reside in shared traditions, in religious and cultural

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affinities. It had become a distinctive political reality, the privileged framework within which single nations had to find their place and a mode of coexistence’. 28. Whether Europeans see the European Union as a political entity is of course another story. See for instance ‘L’Europe au tableau noir: comment les instituteurs français enseignent-ils l’Europe aujourd’hui’, in which Géraldine Bozec (2010) shows that the school curriculum does not present the EC as a political community but as a collection of countries without a specific meaning; ‘Europe between Integration and Globalization’, in which Sophie Duchesne et al. (2010) show the indifference of working class people towards European integration in France, Belgium and the UK; ‘European Identity and European Citizenship’ in which Adrian Favell (2010) shows that a majority of highly mobile Europeans who live and work in another country of the EU remain mainly interested in the politics of their home countries. 29. For a brief but beautifully written summary of these encounters from 750 to 1947, see Manan Ahmad (2013). 30. Bayly (1998: 38) suggests for instance that in order to give legitimacy to his Empire, the Emperor Akbar adopted Indian food and manners. 31. Not only are most marriages arranged but, even on the affectual level, if we are to believe the recently created website, indirom: romance for the South Asian soul (the website has changed its name to Indireads, http://www.indireads.com/), there are commonalities in the way romance is imagined and lived in the Subcontinent. See http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-21449819. Bollywood movies have probably played a major role in the process (see below). 32. There are however variations along regions and classes about the parts of the fingers that can be ‘dirtied’ by the food. 33. Afghanistan shares some historical and cultural commonalities with the Subcontinent, particularly with the border zones of Pakistan, but also with more central parts of the region. See for instance Green (2011) on the intellectual interactions between Afghans and Indian Muslims. However, as compared to the other main countries of the region (with some exceptions, like the Northeast), cultural continuities have been overall limited. 34. See http://old.himalmag.com/component/content/article/794-being-south-southasian.html. 35. I will restrict myself to the two major religions of the Subcontinent although there would certainly be interesting aspects to mention about other religions. 36. While the Tablighi Jama‘at has spread worldwide, the Jama‘at-i Islami has remained a purely South Asian movement, which has expanded only in the South Asian diasporas. 37. With a difference though between Nepal and Bangladesh in the fluidity of the borders with India: while India and Nepal share an ‘open’ border as per a bilateral treaty signed in 1950 (Indians and Nepalis can accordingly travel and work across the border), the border between India and Bangladesh has been decreasingly porous with the setting up of a fence that now covers half of the 4,200 kilometre-long border. See the very interesting book edited by Gellner (2013). 38. See in particular Mir (2012) on practices binding communities across religions. 39. See in particular Matringe (1992). 40. See Tiwari (2013). 41. See https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a. 189113434445210.38678.148938045129416&type=3. 42. For instance, a few Nepali, Pakistani and Sri Lankan actors and singers can be seen and heard in Bollywood movies. 43. See movies like Mission Kashmir (Vidhu Vinod Chopra 2000) or Gadar: Ek Prem Katha (Anil Sharma 2001) for instance. 44. The Indian film-maker-cum-journalist, Kabir Khan, excels in that: in Kabul Express (Kabir Khan 2006), there is a scene in which two Indian journalists, a Pakistani driver and a terrorist sing together a Hindi song. Another of his movies, Ek tha Tiger (Kabir Khan 2012), banned in

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Pakistan, is about the love story between an Indian secret agent (RAW) and a Pakistani secret agent (ISI). 45. To remain with the example of cinema, some Pakistani movies for instance were able to make their ways into the Indian market, like Khuda ke liye (Shoaib Mansoor 2007) or Bol (Shoaib Mansoor 2011). 46. The issue of cross-border relations, and the subsequent construction of South Asia, is also addressed by art cinema, and in usually less ambivalent ways than Bollywood movies, as illustrates the Pakistani movie Ramchand Pakistani (Mehreen Jabbar 2008), which was granted two awards by the SAARC Film Awards. Starring an Indian actress, Nandita Das, Ramchand Pakistani relates the true story of a little Pakistani Hindu boy, from a Dalit family, who inadvertently crosses the border between India and Pakistan, and the consequences of this action for his family. 47. Before the 26/11 Bombay attacks, India and Pakistan used to play regularly in Test Matches which were organized on the mutual initiative of the cricket Boards of both countries. This explains Mukul Kesavan’s statement (2008) that ‘every time a Test cricket match between India and Pakistan goes well we’re all (temporarily) Southasian.’ 48. See the proceedings of the 2008 meeting that took place in Colombo ( http:// www.peoplesaarc.org/index.php/publications). 49. See http://www.peoplesaarc.org/index.php/publications. 50. See also Dixit (2004). 51. As mentioned in the introduction, I use the singular form as I mean here people who endorse the idea that the region forms an entity. 52. Quoted in Khilnani (1997: 198). 53. See Pagden (2002). 54. Patriotism can be translated by wataniyyat. 55. Not as much as in nationalism though, as Romain Gary (1965: 371) puts it: ‘le patriotisme, c’est d’abord l’amour des siens, le nationalisme, c’est d’abord la haine des autres’ (patriotism is above all the love for one’s people, nationalism is above all the hatred of others). 56. See Rimal (2011). 57. For other such ideas, see in particular the August 2008 of Himal Southasian. 58. A plait ornament traditionally worn by South Indian brides. 59. See Mehta (2008).

INDEX

Keywords: South Asia, area studies, Indian Subcontinent, patriotism, region, regionalism, SAARC

AUTHOR

AMINAH MOHAMMAD-ARIF

CNRS Research Fellow in anthropology at the Centre for South Asian Studies (CEIAS), EHESS, Paris

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‘India, that is Bharat…’: One Country, Two Names

Catherine Clémentin-Ojha

Introduction1

1 In The Discovery of India, a book that he composed in the Ahmednagar Fort during his years of captivity (1942-1946) and published in 1946, Jawaharlal Nehru (1946: 38-39) wrote: Often, as I wandered from meeting to meeting, I spoke to my audiences of this India of ours, of Hindustan and of Bharata, the old Sanskrit name derived from the mythical founders of the race.2 2 When The Discovery of India was published, these names, Hindustan, Bharat (also Bharata), India, coexisted in the subcontinent. Of constant usage also was Hind, as in ‘ Jai Hind’ (Victory to Hind), the battle-cry that Nehru, like several other political leaders, liked to proclaim at the end of his speeches.3 To capture these various meanings today is not an easy task. It entails being aware of the simple and yet too often forgotten fact that words have a history of their own; they do not maintain the same signification throughout time. The terms with which we name reality participate in the construction of reality, in the perception that we have and give of it.

3 Take the name India. Since its ancient use by Greek (Indikê) and Latin (India) authors, it has been applied to a variety of territories as, for example, Yule and Burnell remind us in their famous Hobson-Jobson.4 Or take the word Hindustan, which was already used in Persia in the third century B.C. to refer to the land lying beyond the Indus River.5 Its definition too has always been accompanied by some confusion. A comparison of 18th and 19th century British maps shows that the size and political designation of the territory corresponding to Hindustan changed over time along with historical developments (Barrow 2011). It was associated with the land of the Moghuls as, for example, in The History of Hindostan by Alexander Dow (1792) or in the Memoir of a Map of Hindoostan or the Mogul Empire (1793) by Rennell.6 Did it then refer only to North India (the South being called Deccan) or was it equivalent to the whole subcontinent as in the

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maps of the British Empire by the 1840s?7 And then in the compound of Hindustan the word ‘Hindu’ itself raised a difficulty of interpretation. It too had changed as everything changed around it. From being a geographic and ethnic term, it became a religious term, as in the late nineteenth century slogan ‘Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan’ that linked national identity to one language, one religious denomination and one territory or, as we will see later, in the sanskritized Hindusthāna (the Persian -stān and the sanskrit -sthāna both mean ‘place’) of the radical political activist Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s Hindutva, published in 1923, which referred to the land of the Hindus, to a people therefore, and not to a river.8 4 At the time of independence then, the names Bharat, India, Al-Hind and Hindustan coexisted to designate the Indian subcontinent. Those who, like Nehru, used them side by side understood their differences and knew how to interpret their contrasting usages, even if, given the complicated history of each, they did not agree on the nature of their differences. What they all agreed upon was that their meaning and usage were context—and language—sensitive. 5 In 1950, four years after the publication of Nehru’s Discovery of India, the drafters of the Constitution of the larger of the two successor states of British India decided how the country should be known. In the opening article of the Constitution of India they wrote: ‘India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States’.9 Two names: one, India, associated with the foreigners whose rule was coming to an end; the other, Bharat (skt. bhārata, also bhāratavarṣa), perceived as native because it was found in ancient Sanskrit literature. Henceforward no other name besides these two was to be used legally. In this juridico-political conception, India and Bharat were to be interchangeable terms.10 6 What are we to make of the equation of Bharat and India in the Constitution? How did such a double-name formula come about? This is the main question dealt with here. My argument is that the Constitutional assembly’s decision should be understood as the outcome of a long historical process with deep cultural roots. I will also make the point, though more briefly, that this process did not stop with the promulgation of the Constitution. 7 Critical to an enquiry of how Bharat could be equated with India at all, I contend, are preexisting definitions of Bharat, and also of Hindustan, found in different textual sources. I present some of them in the first part of the paper, focusing more particularly on the definition of Bhārata given by the Purāṇas. Then I consider the shift from the Puranic Bhārata to the colonial Bharat, when the old toponym became the ‘indigenous’ name for a budding nation exposed to the imported political and geographical conceptions of (British) India. I also briefly examine the pre- independence destiny of the word Hindustan. In the next part of the paper I analyze the arguments exchanged by the members of the Constitutional assembly when they adopted and discussed the double naming of the new nation. For this section I rely on the official recordings of the debates (in English) found on a website maintained by the Indian government.11 Finally I thought it interesting to give a sample of contemporary reactions on the basis of information published in the printed press and on the internet. These indicate that to this day the Constitutional Assembly’s decision to give their country two names remains a baffling subject for Indian citizens.

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Bhārata is a native name, but a native name for what?

8 Bhārata is indeed an old name. In the Purāṇas and other Sanskrit texts of the first centuries of the Christian era, it refers to the supraregional and subcontinental territory where the Brahmanical system of society prevails. It seems to have absorbed the older and spatially narrower toponym Ᾱryāvarta (the land of the Ᾱryas) described in the Laws of Manu.12 We have hardly any historical evidence of the way in which the name Bhārata was used in actual life, in what circumstances and by whom. We are more assured in our knowledge of its religious and cultural imagination since we can rely on textual sources. We also have reasons to believe that the traditional depiction of Bhārata was transmitted over many generations down to the colonial period thanks to the fact that the recitation of the Purāṇas was part of the spiritual education sponsored by temples, and not only for the literate circles, since the Purāṇas were not meant to be their exclusive prerogative.

9 The main feature of Puranic Bhārata is its insularity. This insularity has two dimensions: one is spatial, the other is social. The territory of Bhārata is situated on Jambudvīpa or the ‘apple-tree island’ (Jambosaeugenia). Annular in its form, the island of Jambudvīpa is itself surrounded by six other similarly annular-shaped continents that are concentrically organized around Mount Meru, the axis mundi situated just beneath the polar star.13 Bhārata is said to be situated between the sea in the south and the ‘Abode of snow’ (himālaya) in the north (see for example Viṣṇupurāṇa 2. 3.1-2). 14 Its shape cannot be clearly determined for it varies from text to text. It is described as a half-moon, a triangle, a trapezoid, or a bended bow, as in Mārkaṇḍeyapurāṇa, 57.59, for example (Ali 1966: 109). In this Purāṇa, Bhārata is said to be surrounded by the ocean on the east, west and south and by the Himalaya (himavant) in the north, a description evoking a familiar shape. However geography is not the main concern here: the text also compares Bhārata to a tortoise floating on water and looking towards the east.15 Though in the Purāṇas Bhārata is not per se an island but a section of the island of Jambudvīpa, it is nevertheless fairly isolated, being cut off from the main land by a high mountain and surrounded by seas. In some other ancient Indian texts it is coextensive to Jambudvīpa, as in the inscriptions of King Ashoka, and in the Buddhist (and Jain) literature.16 10 From the spatial perspective, Bhārata is thus a naturally bounded territory. It is also a territory on which a specific social order prevails. As a socialized territory it shelters an organization of time and modes of living whose specificities are essentially expressed in soteriological terms. We get some idea of what Bhārata represents by examining the notions with which it is correlated. It is on its territory alone, not in the other regions of the world, that time is properly divided into cosmic ages (yuga), that humans who celebrate rites (karman) correctly can expect appropriate consequences: there and there only can they reap the fruits of acts (also karman) committed in previous births; there and there only can they strive to obtain the permanent release from transmigration (saṃsāra), which entails the cessation of karman. Such considerations are summarized in the well-known classical characterization of Bhārata as the ‘land of works’ (karmabhūmi), as for example in the Viṣṇupurāna.17 11 In Brahmanical literature Bhārata is moreover associated with an internal principle of unity. Its naturally bounded territory is unified by a network of pilgrimage sites (tīrtha). It is organized around some key natural sites found within it. Its mountains and rivers

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in particular are made objects of worship. Therefore one also finds the idea that the land of Bhārata itself is sacred.18 12 Bhārata then refers to a spatially delimited social order, but not to a politically organized entity.19 In this respect, it differs from Hindustan, at least since Moghul times, and from (British) India, two toponyms correlated with political regimes. Nobody puts it better than P.V. Kane. In the third volume of his opus magnum the History of the Dharmaśāstra (which was also published in 1946, like Nehru’s Discovery of India), after reviewing the definitions of Bhārata in their original Sanskrit, this well- known historian of Hindu codes of law (Kane 1973: 134, 137) observed: The Viṣṇu (II, 3, 2), Brāhma, Mārkaṇḍeya (55, 21-22) and other purāṇas proudly assert that Bharatavarṣa is the land of action (karmabhūmi). This is patriotism of a sort but not of the kind we see in western countries. Bharatavarṣa itself has comprised numerous countries from the most ancient times. […] There was no doubt a great emotional regard for Bharatavarṣa or Ᾱryāvarta as a unity for many centuries among all writers from a religious point of view, though not from a political standpoint. Therefore one element of modern nationhood viz. being under the same government was wanting. 13 And yet… Kane introduces a caveat: ‘But it must be noted that from very ancient times there was always the aspiration among great kings and the people to bring the whole of Bharatavarṣa ‘under one umbrella’ (Kane 1973: 137).

14 And yet… Bhārata is said to be named after King Bharata, one of the ‘mythical founders of the race’ mentioned by Nehru. And yet…the king who conquers the whole of Bhāratavarṣa is styled samrāṭ, universal sovereign. 20 Such conceptions contrast with most descriptions of Bhārata as having natural borders—borders of the sort not likely to move under the control of humans. They do raise the question of the immutability of its limits. Moreover, one important law code at least mentions the spatial expansion through conquest of Ᾱryāvarta, the older and smaller Brahmanical territory. The often quoted 9th century commentary on Manu by Medhatithi (2.23) says: If a kṣatriya king of excellent conduct were to conquer the Mlecchas, establish the system of four varṇas (in the Mleccha country) and assign to Mlecchas a position similar to that of cāṇḍālas in Ᾱryāvarta, even that (Mleccha country) would be fit for the performance of sacrifice, since the earth itself is not impure, but becomes impure through contact (of impure persons or things).21 15 There is undoubtedly here an idea that the size of the Brahmanical territory can expand as more and more people are integrated into its settled social order and made to accept its norms of conduct. But besides telling us that the world is divided between the pure Ᾱrya and the impure Mleccha and that the earth is not per se impure (two key Brahmanical representations), it is open to debate whether this commentary on Manu offers sufficient evidence for the historian to explain the actual extension of the hierarchical social system of the varṇāśramadharma in political terms. 22 The notion of samrāṭ offers another ground for debate depending on its translation and interpretation. In its original context, it refers to a universal sovereign. A samrāṭ is the ideal ‘Hindu’ king who maintains the cosmic order (dharma), and whose ambition is to take the whole (Hindu) world under his unique umbrella so that dharma may prevail. In royal eulogies this goal is rhetorically claimed to have been achieved.23 But in practice Bhārata was never politically unified by any known samrāṭ. It was never co-terminus with a political regime.24

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16 ‘Bhārata’, then, as found in the Brahmanical tradition, belongs to a cosmological discourse that inscribes human activity within a grand spatio-temporal frame (dvīpa, yuga). It is associated with a vision of human beings, of their condition and experience and of their interpersonal relationships within a given social structure. Outside its territory non-order prevails. Nowhere does it refer to a country in the modern sense.

Bhārata becomes India’s ancient name

17 Bhārata is a discourse on space, but a discourse that does not allow a visual representation of that space. It is not possible, on the basis of that discourse, to draw a map in the modern sense of the word. To say that Bhārata denotes all regions comprised between the sea and the mountain range of the Himalaya is not to describe the shape of India as we know it from modern maps. The maps that associate India with a given space, that is to say with a precisely bounded space, are so familiar to us that we might easily forget that they were not introduced to the educated Indian public before the 1870s. By then, moreover, what became represented was not only a geographical space but also a political space enclosed in boundaries or administrative units drawn by the colonial power.25 This new national space was inseparable from the equally new idea of ‘country’.26

18 Manu Goswami has written eloquently on the conditions that allowed the emergence of new ways of viewing Indian past and has shown how the old Puranic conception of Bhārata acquired a new meaning for the Hindu intelligentsia during the colonial period. 27 Whereas Bhārata was conceived as a social order, a space where specific social relations and shared notions of a moral order prevailed, (British) India referred to a political order, to a bounded territory placed under the control of a single centralized power structure and an authoritarian system of governance. By the mid-nineteenth century what educated Hindus called ‘Bharat’ was the territory mapped and organized by the British under the name ‘India’. 19 The old and native name Bhārata became a workable concept for the national cause despite the forcefulness with which the British conception of ‘India’—and all it entailed in terms of spatial and political unity—was propagated and imposed. Now the reason why it retained its prestige for the educated Hindus is not only to be found in the uninterrupted transmission of the Puranic conception within their class. It is also due to the fact that from the mid-nineteenth century Orientalists gave ‘Bhārata’ a very special place in their discourse. Thus in the first volume of his Original Sanskrit Texts on the Origin and History of the People of India published in 1858, John Muir, while describing the geographical conceptions of the Purāṇas, equated Bhāratavarṣa with India as a matter of course; needless to add that he made no attempt to identify the other equally fabulous varṣas of Jambudvipā with any region of the world as we know it.28 20 To project Bhārata as the ‘ancient name’ of India was to transform it into a political conception. Muir was quite aware of the implications if one is to judge by what he wrote in 1860 in the preface of the second volume of Original Sanskrit Texts: My primary object in this volume, as in its predecessor, has been to produce a work which may assist the researches of those Hindus who desire to investigate critically the origin and history of their nation, and of their national literature, religion, and institutions; and may facilitate the operations of those European teachers whose

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business it is to communicate to the Hindus the results of modem inquiry on the various subjects here examined. (Muir [1860], 1890: vii). 21 In 1893, the German Orientalist Gustav Oppert went one step further than Muir when he declared that Bhāratavarṣa was the only relevant national designation for India: I prefer as India’s name the designation Bharatavarsa, or land of the Bharatas. […] Such a name will bridge over the great social chasms, which divide at present the Hindus, and perhaps bring together in union the two great antagonistic sections of the original inhabitants, which since the earliest times of antiquity have lived estranged from each other [i.e. what he calls further ‘Aryanised and non-Aryan Indian clans’]. […] by accepting such a time-honoured and honourable name as their national designation, a great step towards national unity would be taken in India (Oppert 1893: 621-23). 22 Bhārata was now fully prepared to embark on a career on the political stage, as politics had become ‘the unavoidable terrain on which Indians would have to learn to act.’29 In The Soul of India published in 1911, Bipin Chandra Pal (1858-1932) proclaimed it to be the only real indigenous name for India. The Bengali nationalist and social reformer, well- known for the part he had taken in the organization of the swadeshi movement after the Partition of Bengal, wrote (2010 [1911]: 65): We never called her either India or Hindoostan. We knew her of old by quite a different name (p. 57). […] The fact of the matter really is, that as long as you look upon our country as ‘India or the Land of the Indus’—you will get no closer and truer view than the foreign officials and students have been able to do (p. 62). […] Our own name was, and is still today, among the Aryan population of the country, Bharatvarsha. 23 In this language of ‘you’ and ‘we’, whereas ‘you’ refers to a young foreigner desirous to understand India with whom Bipin Chandra Pal is supposedly corresponding (The Soul of India is in the form of four letters), ‘we’, which includes the author himself, is associated with ‘Ᾱrya’. At a time when the definition of one’s nation was woven into the self-definition of Indian, Ᾱrya appears to have been the best ‘non-foreign’ word at Bipin Chandra Pal’s disposal. The ethnonym was popular both with the representatives of the orthodox Hindu set-up—against whom Bipin Chandra Pal stood squarely, and with the Ᾱryasamāja, the religious organization that claimed India as the natural homeland of the Ᾱryas—whose views he did not espouse either. Like many Hindu reformists of his days, he combined nationalism with religious symbolism taken from Hinduism with outright rejection of basic aspects of that tradition.

Bhārata? Hindustān? Hindusthāna?

24 Supported from all sides as it was, then, not only had the old name Bhārata not fallen into oblivion, but it had been invested with a new meaning and was ready to serve the emerging country. But Hindustan remained a worthy candidate for the same cause, as, among other reasons, it could claim a political career that was associated with the Moghul Empire and therefore predated the colonial period.30 It is noteworthy that although Bipin Chandra Pal stigmatized Hindustan as ‘foreign’, he was keen to draw the attention of his young correspondent to the contribution of the Moghuls to the development of an Indian national consciousness. For unlike Puranic Bhārata, Hindustan had been associated with political sovereignty and administrative

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centralization, two dimensions, he stressed, that were ‘foreign to the genius of the Aryan people of India’ (Pal 2010 [1911]: 67): The unity of India was […] neither racial nor religious, nor political nor administrative. It was a peculiar type of unity, which may be best described as cultural (p. 69) […] at a very early period of our history we had fully realized a very deep, though complex, kind of organic unity at the back of all the apparent diversities and multiplicities of our land and people. (p. 87) […] The Moslem rulers of India came into these invaluable inheritances of the Hindus. (p. 89) […] To the old community of socio-religious life and ideals the Mahomedans now added new elements of administrative and political unity. (p. 90) […] all irrespective of castes or community, became equally subject to certain laws and obligations, known only to Islam. (p. 90) […] Thus we had, under the Moguls [sic], a new and more united, a more organic, though not yet fully organized, national life and consciousness than we had before. The British came to this India; and not to an unorganized, unconscious, and undeveloped chaos, having simply a geographical entity. And in view of this, it is unpardonable ignorance to say that […] the Indians have always been and still are a chaotic congregation of many peoples, an incoherent and heterogenous collection of tribes and races, families and castes, but not in any sense a nation.’ (p. 93) 25 It was during Moghul rule rather than during British rule, at a time when India was called Hindustan, that political unity had been achieved and added to the already existing cultural unity of Bhārata, allowing Indians to develop a complete sense of belonging together, irrespective of their religions.

26 In 1904 when he penned his famous patriotic poem in Urdu Hamārā deśa, ‘Our country’, Mohammad Iqbal (1877-1938) also associated Hindustan with Indians at large and with a composite religious culture: Sare jahāṃ se acchā Hindustāṃ hamārā Ham bulbuleṃ haiṃ us kī, yi gulistāṃ hamārā […] Mażhab nahiṃ sikhātā āpas meṃ bair rakhnā Hindī haiṃ ham, vatan hai Hindūstān hamārā The best in the whole world is our Hindustan We are his robin, he is our rose-garden […] Religion does not teach mutual hatred We are Hindī, Hindustān is our native country31 27 The sense of belonging to a country (vaṭan) here overrides other loyalties. It is with this nationalist understanding of Hindustan that Iqbal’s song, which became immediately popular in anti-British rallies, was solemnly chanted on 15 August 1947, the day of the proclamation of India’s independence, along with Jana Gana Mana, composed by Rabindranath Tagore.32 Iqbal’s song is still widely sung in India today.

28 The attempt by Savarkar to hinduize the name Hindustan was another crucial moment in the naming of the budding nation.33 Whereas Iqbal called the inhabitants of Hindustān by the old appellation Hindī, which signifies ‘Indian’ in the ethno- geographical sense,34 Savarkar called them Hindus, and reserved the term only for those Indians who considered Bharat both as their Holy land (puṇyabhūmi) and as their fatherland (patṛbhūmi), by which he meant the Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs but not the Muslims and Christians.35 It is not, therefore, that Savarkar did not think of Bhārata as a suited designation for the country of his dreams. But he found the name Sindhusthāna (or Hindusthāna, given the phonetic evolution) more ‘authentic’, and he also preferred it to Ᾱryāvarta, a notion that he found too ‘parochial and narrow- minded’.36 It was more authentic, he argued, because Hindusthan was not, as was

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commonly held, a foreign term, but a purely Sanskrit term, just like Hindu and Sindhu. 37 Hindu was the name by which the Hindus had always referred to themselves, Sindhu the name they had given to the Indus River and Hindusthan, the name they had given to their nation. Thus Savarkar constructed the genealogy of Hindus, demonstrating the autochthony of the three terms with due etymological and phonetic explanations.38 In his conception, the key element was Sindhu: the Indus River was made ‘the vital spinal cord that connects the remotest past to the remotest future’.39 To territorialize Hindu identity, Savarkar needed to associate the territory with the word Sindhu even when he called that territory Bharat. Under his pen Bharat becomes the land delimitated by the Indus River (sindhu) and by the sea (also sindhu in Sanskrit), an unheard of definition in Brahmanical literature. 29 With Hindusthan, Savarkar produced an exclusive Hindu vision of India. This vision that stressed religious differences was to remain influential in the Hindu nationalist milieu and beyond. It also left its mark on those Sikhs who from the 1940s onwards had begun visualizing the Panjab as their natural homeland and who were heard demanding in the early 1950s: ‘the Hindus got Hindustan, the Muslims got Pakistan, what did the Sikhs get?’40

The Constitutional debates on the naming of the nation

30 On 14 August 1947 at midnight, India became independent. Two weeks later, on 29 August 1947, the Constituent Assembly, that had been meeting since December 1946, set up a Drafting Committee under the Chairmanship of B.R. Ambedkar. From February 1948 to November 1949, the members of the Constituent Assembly examined the draft, moving and discussing in the process almost 2,500 amendments.41 On 26 November 1949, they finally adopted the Constitution of India and signed it on 24 January 1950. On 26 January 1950, the Constitution of India officially came into force, and the Constituent Assembly became the Provisional Parliament of India until the first general elections of 1952.

31 As we know, the Constitution was drafted under the extremely difficult circumstances of the immediate post-partition period, just two years after horrendous chaos and bloodshed. It was a time, then, when the unity and stability of the new born country were in doubt. Was it because it was linked to its identity or for another reason that the question of its naming is found to have come relatively late in the long process of the adoption of the Constitution? Whatever the case, the section ‘Name and territory of the Union’ was examined only on 17 September 1949. The very touchy nature of its first article was immediately perceptible. It read: ‘India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States’. A division arose among the delegates between those who, like B.R. Ambedkar, wanted it to be adopted within the half an hour that was left for the meeting of the day and those who wished that it be discussed at length the next day. At the risk of taxing the patience of the main author of the Draft Constitution, there followed the next day a thorough examination of the implications of the first article. It bore on two points: 1) the relationship between the two words ‘India’ and ‘Bharat’, 2) the political and administrative implications of the terms ‘Union’ and ‘States’. The second point was by far the most hotly debated one (not only during that particular session but throughout the long Constitutional proceedings). Here I will deal only with the arguments

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exchanged about the first point. As we can expect, they illustrated contrasting visions of the budding nation.42 32 The main speakers (recorded) were Seth Govind Das (‘C.P. [Central Province]’ & Berar: General’) and Kamalapati Tripathi, two Congress leaders, Shri Ram Sahai (‘representing Madhya Bharat’), Hargovind Pant (‘United Provinces’), and Hari Vishnu Kamath, a leader of the All India Forward Block, a party then situated to the left of the Congress Party. Introducing the first amendment, P.V. Kamath proposed that the sentence ‘India, that is Bharat shall be a Union of States’ be replaced by ‘Bharat, or, in the English language, India, shall, be and such’.43 He explained that he had been inspired by the Constitution of ‘the Irish Free State’ (1937), Article 4 of which read: ‘The name of the State is Eire, or, in the English language, Ireland.’ A while later, Seth Govind Das proposed: ‘Bharat known as India also in foreign countries…’. He was followed by Kamalapati Tripathi who wanted ‘Bharat, that is India’ (instead of ‘India, that is Bharat’), and by Hargovind Pant according to whom the people ‘of the Northern part of India’ that he represented ‘wanted Bharatvarsha and nothing else’.44 None of these proposals were accepted by the Assembly. The above named delegates nonetheless made their point, which was to dwell at length on their ‘satisfaction’ that the word Bharat had been at all retained by the drafters. As Ram Sahai observed: it had ‘been felt that this name may lead to some difficulties’ and it was therefore ‘a matter for pleasure that we are going to accept the name Bharat without any opposition [emphasis added by the speaker]’. 33 The ‘opposition’, it is safe to guess, would have been to a vision of the new India that could not be shared by most delegates of the Constitutional Assembly because it clashed with their understanding of what the emerging secular state ought to be. Kamalapati Tripathi’s declaration of ‘satisfaction’ left little doubt that Bharata could indeed be associated with a conception of the nation that was potentially divisive: When a country is in bondage, it loses its soul. During its slavery for one thousand years, our country too lost its everything. We lost our culture, we lost our history, we lost our prestige, we lost our humanity, we lost our self-respect, we lost our soul and indeed we lost our form and name. Today after remaining in bondage for a thousand years, this free country will regain its name and we do hope that after regaining its lost name it will regain its inner consciousness and external form and will begin to act under the inspiration of its soul which had been so far in a sort of sleep. It will indeed regain its prestige in the world. 34 This one-sided history, containing a distinctly anti-Muslim tone, came from an important North Indian leader of the Indian National Congress: a reminder of the fact that this party was not of one mind regarding India’s past and future.45 K. Tripathi’s vision of the new India did demonstrate the presence of near-communalist concerns. Such an understanding of Bharat was likely to be seen as undermining national unity. What seems to have been at work with the other delegates equally keen on the name Bharat was the Hindu rhetoric of the more traditionalist sort. See, for example, the statement of Seth Govind Das, a Congress fellow of Kamalapati Tripathi. The name Bharat, he said, was ‘befitting our history and our culture’, because it was found in the old Hindu literature, whereas the ‘word India does not occur in our ancient books’, adding, to stress his point: ‘We fought the battle of freedom under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi by raising the slogan of ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’.’ A statement like that could be said to be parochial perhaps, but was it necessarily divisive or potentially

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detrimental to the interests of non-Hindus? In any case, it was not completely without political acumen: We should indeed give such a name to our country as may be befitting our history and our culture. It is a matter of great pleasure that we are today naming our country as Bharat. I said many a time before too that if we do not arrive at correct decisions in regard to these matters the people of this country will not understand the significance of self-government. 35 A point of view shared by Hargovind Pant: So far as the word ‘India’ is concerned, the Members seem to have, and really I fail to understand why, some attachment for it. We must know that this name was given to our country by foreigners who having heard of the riches of this land were tempted towards it and had robbed us of our freedom in order to acquire the wealth of our country. If we, even then, cling to the word ‘India’, it would only show that we are not ashamed of having this insulting word which has been imposed on us by alien rulers. Really, I do not understand why we are accepting this word […]. 36 Pritam Singh has recently argued that ‘the symbolic significance of ‘Bharat’ in the opening article [of the Constitution] was meant to suggest a sense of Hindu ownership of the new India—the India which was perceived to have achieved self-rule after many centuries of foreign rule. The name Bharat signified the birth of a new India, with whose government and state the Hindus felt a sense of identification.’46 The basic question at stake here is how to separate religion from culture when one speaks from within one’s own tradition, as had been the case for most Hindus during the national struggle. It had been the case even for Gandhi, as his use of the expression Bhārata mātā kī jaya testified.47 Smith raised this very question when he wrote that: Nationalism inevitably drew part of its inspiration from India’s ancient cultural traditions, and these were mainly Hindu. India was the only home of the Hindus, and whatever patriotic demands were made in the name of the majority would naturally appear to be expressions of Indian nationalism. (Smith 1963: 455) 37 This was never more obvious than at the time of choosing the name of the nation despite the fact (but also thanks to the fact) that the delegates whose words I have quoted functioned within the secular framework of politics.

38 At this point, the reader who has not forgotten that Iqbal’s Sare jahāṃ se acchā Hindustāṃ hamarā was sung on 15 August 1947 may well wonder about the whereabouts of the name ‘Hindustan!’ ‘Hindustan’ received different treatments during the Constituent Assembly. Let us start by quoting the observation that Mohammad Tahir (‘Bihar, Muslim’) made on 24 November 1949, two days before the final adoption of the Constitution: I would like to submit that it is a matter of shame that our Constitution could not fix a name for our country. This is a proof of the intelligence of Dr. Ambedkar that he suggested a hotch-potch sort of name and got it accepted. Well, if somebody would have asked Doctor Saheb about his home land, he could have replied with pride that he belonged to Bharat or India or Hindustan. But now the Honourable Dr. will have to reply in these words: ‘I belong to India that is Bharat’. Now, Sir, it is for you to see what a beautiful reply it is. 39 Here was a subtle way of saying that three names had been at the start of the race, but at the end two had been placed on equal footing and one dropped. And the absentee was staring them in the face. But the very next day, ‘Hindustan’ reappeared. At that point of time, however, the discussion did not bear on the name of the whole country

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but on the demand made by certain Provinces (such as Orissa) to change their own particular names.

40 The name Hindustan popped up again when from there the discussion shifted to the naming of the United Provinces. At some point, R. K. Sidhva (‘C.P. [Central Province] & Berar, General’) recalled that there had been a serious objection when ‘the U.P. [United Provinces] Government and U.P. Assembly decided that the name should be changed into Aryavarta.’ But now, since Aryavarta had not been accepted, he feared that they might take the name Hindustan, as he recalled that in 1938: ‘when the Indian National Congress held its session in Cawnpore in the All-India Congress Committee my friends from U.P. brought a resolution that the name of the U.P. Congress Committee should be changed into Hindustan Congress Committee.’ So the prudent R. K. Sidhva had another suggestion: Why not U.P. be called Samyukt Pradesh? If that is not acceptable there are other very fine names like Avadh, Ayodhya, Ganga, etc. Why should they usurp the name of the whole of India and tell us they are the people who are the only custodians of India? I strongly resent their monopolising the name of India. 41 Mohan Lal Gautam (‘United Provinces, General’) equally strongly objected to this: I assure you that U.P. has a gift and it is perhaps the only province in the country which can claim that it has no provincialism. […] This function of Brahmins—of giving names ought to have some background. You say why not give it the name of Avadh. Avadh is one of the very important parts of U.P. but it is only a part. Avadh has a tradition of Nawabs and feudal lords which we do not want. […]. The solution is that the Provinces must be consulted and it must be acceptable to all-India authority and the all-India authority is the President and the President means the President and the Cabinet. 42 But for Shri R.K. Sidhva, this solution was no guarantee: The purpose of consulting the legislature also will not be served because the majority of the Members there would say, ‘Have it Aryavarta or Hindustan’. Supposing they change it to Hindustan, what will be the remedy if the Provincial Legislature also says that U.P. will be known as Hindustan? India in future will be called Bharat but that does not mean that we discard the name Hindustan. Therefore you must tell me Sir how to safeguard the interests of the country in seeing that this word Hindustan is not adopted by the U.P. as they did make a venture in the past unofficially to introduce it in the Congress Committee but in which they failed? 43 Pandit Balkrishna Sharma (‘United Provinces, General’) had the last word when he said: ‘If it will satisfy my honourable friend, I may say I hate the word ‘Hindustan’.

44 What was the gist of this exchange about the proper naming of U.P.? Was it that Hindustan is ‘the name of India’? This was known already. No, what was said here with force was that it is not because the Constituent Assembly had decided to name India ‘Bharat’ that Indians were going to discard the name Hindustan. 45 Now anyone who reads carefully the proceedings of the Constitutional debates will come to the conclusion that ‘India’ and in second position ‘Hindustan’ were the two names that came most naturally to the delegates when speaking about their country as long as they were not debating the issue of its name.48 These two names kept reappearing throughout the debates for the simple reason that the country whose Constitution was being written had to be constantly referred to in one way or another. But when it came to the naming question, Bharat was the first name to appear.

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Bharatvarsh, Aryavarta and Hind were but marginally mentioned. Hindustan was never considered in this context. 46 On 24 January 1950, the Constituent Assembly held its last meeting. The delegates rose to sing solemnly Jana Gana Mana, Tagore’s hymn to Bharat. Then instead of singing Iqbal’s Sāre jahāṃ se acchā Hindustāṃ hamarā, as they had done two-and-a-half years earlier, they chanted Vande Mātaram, ‘Mother I bow to thee’ written by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee (1882) in honour of the Mother land identified with the Goddess. On that same day, Tagore’s composition was chosen as new India’s ‘national anthem’ and Bankim’s song was given an ‘equal status’ because it had ‘played a historic part in the struggle for Indian freedom’.49 Meanwhile Iqbal had been (posthumously) declared the national poet of Pakistan.

Naming the nation: a complex and sensitive issue to this day

47 The processes of construction and reconstruction of the meanings of the nation’s names have been uninterrupted since the adoption of the first article of the Constitution. The task of describing them is enormous in scope and would require consulting an immense variety of sources. In this final section I merely look at some of the prevailing demands and statements at the time of writing this article. I do so on the basis of information found on internet (blogs, personal pages and also printed materials appearing on the net such as newspapers, all in English).

48 A first type of demand one comes across is to altogether do away with ‘India’ in the Constitution. As one would expect, the most likely place where this occurs is the Hindu nationalist milieu. A case in point is the article published in July 2005 by V. Sundaram, a retired member of the IAS and a freelance journalist known for his Hindutva leanings. According to V. Sundaram, it is because ‘Bharat’ was thought to be too Hindu by the drafters of the Constitution that they introduced ‘India’ as a guarantee to the minorities that they would not be Hinduized. But, he argued, this was a misconception: the word Bharat carries no communalist overtones and therefore it should be the sole official name of the country. However, this Hindutva sympathiser also wants to keep ‘India’, for which he has in mind a usage presently given to ‘South Asia’: […] it will not be historically or culturally or geographically correct to call our country by the general name India. Pakistan is also India, Bangladesh is also India, our country India is also India—all these three Indias together can legitimately be called India in the larger geographical sense. […] It is quite possible that in the future countries like Pakistan, Ceylon, Bangladesh, India and Burma may get together and form themselves into an Indian Federation. We can possibly think of the name India as being appropriate for such a Federation if and ever it becomes relevant in the future. 50 49 According to Hindu nationalists there is a basic philosophical difference between India and Bharat. This point was never made so clear as in December 2012, when commenting on the appalling gang rape that had just occurred in Delhi Mohan Bhagwat, the RSS chief, said: ‘Such crimes hardly take place in Bharat, but they frequently occur in India’.51

50 But Hindu nationalists are not alone in thinking that Bharat is the only legitimate name for the Republic of India. There is at least one Congress MP (Goa) who entertains the

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idea, if one is to judge by the Bill Shantaram Naik introduced on 9 August 2012 in the upper house of parliament (Rajya Sabha) to amend the first article. He proposed three main changes: 1) that in the Preamble to the Constitution the word ‘Bharat’ be substituted for the word ‘India’; 2) that for the phrase ‘India, that is Bharat’ the single word ‘Bharat’ be substituted; 3) that wherever the word ‘India’, occurs in the Constitution, the word ‘Bharat’ be substituted. Stating his reasons, the Member of Parliament declared: ‘India’ denotes a territorial concept, whereas ‘Bharat’ signifies much more than the mere territories of India. When we praise our country we say, ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ and not ‘India ki Jai’. There are various grounds for changing the name of the country into simply ‘Bharat’. The name also generates the sense of patriotism and electrifies the people of this country. In this regard it is relevant [to recall] a popular song: ‘Jahan dal dal par sone ki chidiyan karatin hai basera wo Bharat Desh hai mera’ [‘where marvellous birds sit on every branch, this is Bharat my country’]. 52

51 Finally, the argument that ‘India’ should be replaced by ‘Bharat’ is not encountered only within the political frame of ‘communalist versus secular’. It also finds its way in a context of anti-English or rather anti-Western crusades. For example in April 2004, the Samajwadi Party proposed to adopt the sole name ‘Bharat’ in the Constitution ‘as a step to protect the identity of the country’, to ‘ban the import of luxury goods’ and ‘to take other suitable economic and political measures to end the cultural degeneration being encouraged by the Western consumerist lifestyle.’53 In October 2012, the Chief Minister of Karnataka, B. S. Yeddyurappa, proposed to amend the Constitution to rename India as ‘Bharat’, and announced that ‘programs will be launched to promote Kannada as a classical language, at a cost of Rs 50 crore.’54 Here the ethical dimension of the argument comes with a chauvinistic stance, the implication being that the domestic product is morally superior to anything that is imported.

52 Equally relevant to this section of our enquiry are arguments in favour of or against the use of the name Hindustan. Some reject ‘Hindustan’ as being too offensive to ‘minorities’ (read non-Hindus). ‘Bharat’, they argue, is to be preferred to ‘Hindustan’ because it is less divisive. Here ‘Hindustan’, even with the Persian suffix, is understood with Savarkar’s meaning of ‘land of the Hindus’—with Hindu receiving a religious signification. In contrast, ‘Bharat’ is associated with the capacity to generate and tolerate internal differences. Words do have a life of their own! Some argue that ‘Hindustan’ should be avoided by Indians because it is being used in Pakistan to refer to India. Some tribals from Gujarat have declared preferring ‘Bharat’ to ‘Hindustan’ because they are not Hindus.55 On the opposite side, there are those who argue that ‘Hindustan’ should be used precisely to stress the Hindu character of India. Thus in February 2003 the VHP demanded that India be renamed as Hindustan in order to restore ‘the honor of the Hindu rashtra (nation)’.56 And in July 2011, Dr. Subramanian Swamy, the president of the Janata Party who was then teaching economics at Harvard, made the same demand. He also recommended that a civil code be implemented, the learning of Sanskrit and singing Vande Mātaram be made mandatory, and non-Hindus be allowed to vote only if they acknowledged Hindu ancestry.57 These demands reflect the legacy of Savarkar, even though they overlook that he spoke of Hindusthan.

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Conclusion

53 The politics of naming is part of the social production of the nation. Its processes are shaped by broad socio-political conditions and can be studied from several angles. In this paper I have adopted a cultural history perspective. My purpose has been to look at some of the inherited discourses on ‘Bhārata’ both prior to and at the time of its official equation with ‘India’ in the Constitution of 1950. To begin with I attempted to characterize the memory that was taken in by those who in the 19th century used the name Bhārata to refer to the geographical, political and administrative entity that the colonial power called ‘India’. The evidence presented shows that it was the Puranic memory of a naturally bounded (sea, mountains) and specifically socially organized territory where human beings could fulfill the specific sets of socioreligious duties required to maintain their cultural identity. That Bhārata—a cultural space whose unity was to be found in the social order of dharma—was a pre-national construction and not a national project. Then I argued that at the time of independence, India and Bhārata were equally worthy candidates to baptize the newly-born nation, along with ‘Hindustan’. But the opening article of the Constitution discarded Hindustan and registered the nation under a dual and bilingual identity: ‘India, that is Bharat’. One name was to be used as the equivalent or the translation of the other as exemplified on the cover of the national passport, where the English ‘Republic of India’ corresponds to the Hindi ‘Bhārata gaṇarājya’, or, perhaps even more telling, on India postage stamps, where the two words Bhārata and India are collocated. Pursuing the history of the reception of the Constitutional equation of Bharat and India in all its social and political complexities was beyond the scope of my enquiry. I have merely pointed to two contemporary phenomena: the name Hindustan has continued to be widely used in spite of, or may be thanks to, its plurality of meanings and the implication of the equivalence of Bharat with India has remained a subject of debate. It is likely that all these names will continue to be interpreted to fit new circumstances, to give new meanings to India’s national identity, an ongoing, open-ended process.

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NOTES

1. This paper is an extended version of a communication delivered on 13 November 2012 in the workshop on ‘The Idea of South Asia’ organized by the Centre d’Etudes de l’Inde et de l’Asie du Sud, Paris. I am grateful to four anonymous SAMAJ reviewers for their close reading of the manuscript and to Aminah Mohammad-Arif and Blandine Ripert for their editorial assistance. Their suggestions were very helpful. Responsibility for the content of my article is entirely my own. 2. ‘Often, as I wandered from meeting to meeting, I spoke to my audiences of this India of ours, of Hindustan and of Bharata, the old Sanskrit name derived from the mythical founders of the race. […] I spoke of this great country for whose freedom we were struggling, of how each part differed from the other and yet was India, of common problems of the peasants from north to south and east to west, of the Swaraj that could only be for all and every part and not for some. I told them of my journeying from the Khyber Pass in the far north-west to Kanya Kumari or Cape Comorin in the distant south, and how everywhere the peasants put me identical questions, for their troubles were the same—poverty, debt, vested interests, landlords, moneylenders, heavy rents and taxes, police harassment, and all these wrapped up in the structure that the foreign government had imposed upon us—and relief must also come for all’ (Nehru 1946: 38-39). 3. The expression is a hybrid, it associates a Sanskrit word (jaya-hail) with an Arabic word (Hind- India). It was coined by Chempakaraman Pillai (1891-1934), a revolutionary from Kerala who went abroad during the First World War to organize an armed resistance against the British; it was later used by Subhas Chandra Bose as the battle cry of his Azad Hind Fauj (literally ‘Army of Independent India’—rendered as ‘Indian National Army’). 4. 4 The name given by Yule and Burnell (1996) to their dictionary of Anglo-Indian terms. See also the entries for ‘Deccan’ and ‘Hindustan’. 5. The Persian Hindustān, the Greek Indikê, the latin India, and the Arabic Al-Hind are all derived from the old-Persian hindu (found in an inscription in Persepolis which mentions the 20 th province—satrapy—of Darius’ empire, the country of the Lower-Indus). Hindu is the Persian for Sindhu, the name for the Indus River in ancient Sanskrit literature. The Persian Hindustān got introduced in India and became very commonly used in the Moghul period. Notwithstanding their diverse linguistic forms, all these terms share the same etymology and connect an inhabited land with the Indus River. 6. See Barrow 2011: 41. I am grateful to Aminah Mohammad-Arif for this reference. 7. See Barrow 2011: 47. In 1894 Strachey (1894: 2), then member of the council of the Secretary of state for India, observed: ‘The name Hindustan is never applied in India, as we apply it, to the whole of Indian subcontinent; it signifies the country north of the Narbada River, and especially the northern portion of the basins of the Ganges and Jumna.’ 8. Savarkar wrote Hindutva (in English) during his imprisonment in Andaman and Nicobar Islands between 1911 and 1921, but it was only published in 1923. On the semantic history of the word ‘Hindu’, see Lorenzen (1999); Sharma (2002). On the import of the slogan ‘Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan!’ raised to mobilize the Hindus of Northern India at the end of the nineteenth century, see Dalmia (1997: 27 sq.). 9. The First article reads: ‘(1) India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States. (2) The States and the territories thereof shall be the States and their territories for the time being specified in Parts I, II and III of the First Schedule.’ For the text of the Constitution of India, see http:// india.gov.in/my-government/constitution-india.

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10. The Hindi translation reads: ‘ bhārata arthāt indiyā, rājyoṃ kā saṅgha hogā.’ See http:// bharat.gov.in/govt/documents/hindi/part1.pdf, retrieved 27 September 2012. 11. Reports of the Constituent Assembly Debates (Proceedings) (9 December 1946 to 24 January 1950) published online on http://parliamentofindia.nic.in/ls/debates/debates.htm. 12. Manu 2.21-24: ‘The land between the Himalaya and Vindhya ranges to the east of Vinashana and west of Prayāga, is known the ‘Middle Region’. The land between the same mountain ranges extending from the eastern to the western sea is what the wise call Ᾱryāvarta—the region of the Ᾱryas’ (translated from the Sanskrit by Olivelle 2004). 13. Taken together the seven islands constitute the world. They are separated from each other by oceans of different composition (saltwater, syrup, wine, ghee, milk and fresh water), a configuration that suggests that they are mutually inaccessible and reinforces their insularity. Each island is divided in varṣa—a word meaning ‘rain’, hence it is usually understood as a climatic zone. Jambudvīpa (which of the seven islands is the only one inhabited by human beings) is divided in 9 varṣa, and Bhārata lies on its most southern section. See Rocher 1986: 130-131; see also Rocher 1988: 3-10 and Pollock 2006: 193ff. 14. ‘The country that lies north of the ocean, and south of the snowy mountains, is called Bharata, for there dwell the descendants of Bharata. It is nine thousand leagues in extent, and is the land of works, in consequence of which men go to heaven, or obtain emancipation.’(Viṣṇupurāṇa, 2, 3, 1-2, translated from the Sanskrit by Wilson 1840). 15. See Ali 1966: 109. 16. See Renou & Filliozat, 1947-1949: 547. 17. ‘In the Bharatavarsha it is that the succession of four Yugas, or ages, the Krita, the Treta, the Dvapara, the Kali, takes place; that pious ascetics engage in rigorous penances; that devout men offer sacrifices; and that gifts are distributed; all for the sake of another world. […] Bharata therefore is the best of the divisions of Jambudwipa because it is the land of works: the others are places of enjoyment alone.’(Viṣṇupurāna III, 2, 19-20, 22, translated from the Sanskrit by Wilson 1840). See also Kane (1974: 17), Kane (1973: 137). 18. See Bhardwaj (1973: 7). 19. In a way, contemporary orthodox Brahmans still mentally reside in Bhārata, as their ancestors did: at the beginning of their daily rituals when they express their intention (saṃkalpa) and identify themselves, they not only give their name, caste, lineage, etc., the period of the year, the date, but also their location in space, and this they do by using the word Bhāratavarṣa; see, for example, Miśra (2000:19). See also Pollock (2006: 190). 20. In the Matsyapurāṇa 114, 9-10, see Kane (1973: 67). 21. Quoted by Kane (1974: 16). 22. See Halbfass (1988: 178). 23. See for example Pollock (2006: 572). 24. Killingley (1997:126) compares Bhārata to dār al-islām, the territory where according to Islamic juridical theory Islamic law is protected. 25. Edney (1997) explores the relationship between cartographic knowledge and power, showing how map making accompanied empire building and was fundamental to the creation of British India. 26. See Embree (1977: 256, 259); Cohn (1996: introduction); Khilnani (2003: 21). 27. See Goswami 2003. 28. See Muir [1858] 1890: Chapter 6. He also equates Bhāratavarsha with Hindustan, Muir ([1861] 1890:148). 29. See Khilnani 2003: 17. 30. ‘Some pre-requisites of nationhood had […] been achieved by the time that the British conquests began: in 1757, the year of Plassey, India was not only a geographical expression, it was also seen as a cultural entity and a political unit. It is, however, important to realise that, notable

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as these advances were in the long process of the formation of India, these did not yet make India a nation’ (Habib 1997: 8). Curiously, Hindustan is outside the enquiry of Goswami (2004: 1). Her quotation of Nehru’s text even omits the word: ‘Often, as I wandered from meeting to meeting, I spoke to my audiences of this India of ours, of Bharata, the old Sanskrit name derived from the mythical founders of the race.’ Compare with note 2 above. 31. On the history of the song and on how it was rewritten by Iqbal, see Pritchett (http:// www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00urdu/taranahs/juxtaposition.html); on the evolution of the political vision of the poet, see Matringe (2011). 32. Jana-gaṇa-mana adhināyaka jaya he/Bhārata bhāgya vidhātā: Thou art the ruler of the minds of all people/ Dispenser of Bhārata's destiny. See http://parliamentofindia.nic.in/ls/debates/ debates.htm on 14 August 1947. 33. On Savarkar, see note 8. Savarkar wrote Hindutva in English but he gave the Devanāgarī spelling of words he deemed important in footnotes. Those words have been rendered with diacritical marks in what follows. 34. In the Saṃkṣipta hindī ṣabdasāgara (‘Abbreviated Dictionary of Hindi’), hindī as an adjective is defined as ‘hindustān kā [of Hindustan], bhāratiya’, as a masculine substantive as ‘hind kā rahanevāla [inhabitant of Hind], bhāratavāsī [dwelling in Bharat]’; in the feminine the substantive means the language: ‘hindustān kī bhāṣā’ [language of Hindustan]. 35. āsindhu sindhu-paryantā yasya bhārata-bhūmikā/ pitṛbhūḥ puṇyabhūścaiva sa vai hindur iti smṛtaḥ: ‘He is known as a Hindu he whose Fatherland as well as Holy land is the land of Bhārata that goes from the Indus (sindhu) to the Ocean (sindhu)’ (Savarkar 1969: 116). Let it be kept in mind that for Savarkar (1969: 80) a Hindu is not to be identified by religion alone. Hindu does not mean a believer of Hinduism, it is a national and cultural designation. Jains, Buddhists and Sikhs too are Hindus. However, not all Indians are Hindu because Hindus ‘are united not only by the bonds of the love they bear to a common ‘fatherland’ but also by the bonds of a common blood. They are not only a Nation (rāṣṭra) but also a race (jāti)’ (Savarkar 1969: 84). Hindus are also bound by their culture (saṃskṛti) (Savarkar 1969: 92, 100-101, 115-116). 36. ‘[…] we have left the thread of our enquiry at the point where the growing concept of an Indian nation was found to be better expressed by the word Sindhusthan than by any other existing words. It was precisely to refute any parochial and narrow-minded significance which might, as in the case of Aryavarta be attached to this word that the definition of the word Sindhusthan was rid of any association with a particular institution or party-coloured suggestion.’ (Savarkar 1969: 38-39). Here the accusation of narrow-mindedness is clearly aimed at the Ᾱryasamāja, whose founder, Dayananda Saraswati (1824-1883), had chosen Ᾱryāvarta as the only possible name for the nation in his Satyārthaprakāśa (1875), see Prasad (1908: 250, 291, 545). 37. ‘[…] the epithets Hindu and Hindusthan had been the proud and patriotic designations signifying our land and our nation long before the Mohammedans or Mohammedanized Persians were heard of […].’ (Savarkar 1969: 73). 38. The ‘h’ is dropped by most authors, academics or otherwise, who quote Savarkar, though he himself took great pains to justify the spelling Hindusthan rather than Hindustan. 39. (Savarkar 1923: 31). ‘Sindhu in Sanskrit does not only mean the Indus but also the Sea which girdles the Southern peninsula—so that this one word Sindhu points out almost all frontiers of the land at a single stroke […] the epithet Sindhusthan calls up the image of the whole Motherland: the land that lies between Sindhu and Sindhu—from the Indus to the Seas’ (Savarkar 1923: 32). 40. See Oberoi (1987: 38). 41. The Draft Constitution was being finalized when Gandhi was assassinated (31 January 1948). Its first reading was held from 21 February 1948 to 26 Oct. 1948, the second between 15 November 1948 to 17 October 1949 and the third between November 14 1949 and November 26 1949.

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42. The following quotations unless otherwise mentioned are from the reports of the debates mentioned in note 11. 43. He had in fact also proposed ‘Hind’ along with ‘Bharat’ but withdrew it when it was pointed to him that he had to choose one name only. 44. ‘I represent the people of the Northern part of India where sacred places like Shri Badrinath, Shri Kedarnath, Shri Bageshwar and Manasarovar are situated. […] I may be permitted to state, Sir, that the people of this area want that the name of our country should be 'Bharat Varsha' and nothing else.’ 45. On the presence of ‘Hindu traditionalists’ (whom he distinguishes from ‘Hindu nationalists’) in the Congress at the time of independence, see Jaffrelot (1996: 81-84); on the inner diversity or lack of coherence of the Congress, see Khilnani (2003: 26, 28, 33-34). 46. See Singh (2005: 911-912). As the debates on the name were going on, an unnamed female renouncer undertook to fast till her death unless India be renamed Bharat and Hindi adopted as a national language. Upon Nehru visiting her, she broke her fast on 12 August claiming that Nehru and other Congress leaders had assured her that Hindi would be adopted. See Austin (2004: 293). 47. Nehru was not adverse to using it either: ‘Sometimes as I reached a gathering, a great roar of welcome would greet me Bharat Mata ki Jai [sic]—Victory to Mother India! I would ask them unexpectedly what they meant by that cry, who was this Bharat Mata, Mother India, whose victory they wanted? […] And so question and answer went on, till they would ask me impatiently to tell them about it. I would endeavour to do so and explain that India was all this that they had thought, but it was much more. The mountains and the rivers of India, and the forest and the broad fields, which gave us food, were all dear to us, but what counted ultimately were the people of India, people like them and me, who were spread out all over this vast land. Bharat Mata, Mother India, was essentially these millions of people, and victory to her meant victory to these people. You are parts of Bharat Mata, I told them, you are in a manner yourself Bharat Mata, and as this idea slowly soaked into their brains, their eyes would light up as if they had made a great discovery’ (Nehru 1946: 39). 48. I have found this ‘search engine’ a very useful tool to look into the India Constitutional debates: http://viveks.info/search-engine-for-constituent-assembly-debates-in-india/. It should perhaps be observed here that outside Article One, ‘India’ is the only name for the country found in the Indian Constitution. 49. This proposition came from Rajendra Prasad, the President of the Constituent Assembly, see http://parliamentofindia.nic.in/ls/debates/debates.htm on 24 January 1950. 50. ‘India that is Bharath [sic]’ by V. Sundaram, IAS (July 14 2005), see http://www.ivarta.com/ columns/OL_050714.htm, retrieved in September 2012. 51. http://www.indianexpress.com/news/bharat-versus-hindustan/1065278/ 52. See http://164.100.24.219/BillsTexts/RSBillTexts/asintroduced/cons-peamble-E.pdf. The allusion is to a popular patriotic song written by Rajinder Krishan and sang by Rafi in the film Sikandar e Azam, 1965. 53. See http://www.hindu.com/2004/04/10/stories/2004041006051100.htm, retrieved October 2012. 54. http://www.deccanherald.com/content/101476/banner-300x250.swf, retrieved October 2012. 55. ‘We are all moolnivasis (original inhabitants) of this land and that is why we are called Adivasis. Indian civilisation is the oldest in the world but ours is older still. We belong to Bharat, not Hindustan. We should call ourselves moolnivasis, Adivasis [First inhabitants], Bharatvasis [Inhabitants of Bharat]. […] We are fragmented today by the different religious sects that seek our membership. We have our own religion. We are fragmented by different political parties. We need to become one. Religion is a private matter. We need to come together as Adivasis and not as Hindu or Christian, or Muslim tribals.’ See Lobo (2002). 56. See http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/feb/22vhp.htm, retrieved October 2012.

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57. ‘ How to Wipe Out Islamic Terrorism’, Daily News and Analysis, http:// jahnabibarooah.wordpress.com/. As a consequence he was expelled from Harvard Summer School, http://www.forbes.com/sites/harveysilverglate/2012/01/17/censorship-at-harvard- comes-as-no-surprise/, retrieved October 2012. On Subramanian Swamy, see http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subramanian_Swamy).

ABSTRACTS

The politics of naming is shaped by broad socio-political conditions and can be studied from several angles. Adopting a cultural history perspective, this paper considers some of the inherited discourses on ‘Bhārata’ both prior to and at the time of its official equation with ‘India’ in the Constitution (1950). It focusses on three successive definitional moments: the Puranic definition of Bhārata; the shift to its colonial definition, when the old toponym became the ‘indigenous’ name for a budding nation exposed to the imported political and geographical conceptions of (British) India; and, lastly, the choice of the Constitutional assembly to register the nation under a dual and bilingual identity: ‘India, that is Bharat’. The paper concludes with a sample of contemporary reactions that show that this double-name formula remains a baffling subject for Indian citizens.

INDEX

Keywords: cultural history, politics of naming, Indian Constitution, India, Bharat, Bharata, Hindustan, Hindusthan

AUTHOR

CATHERINE CLÉMENTIN-OJHA

Professor in anthropology, EHESS, Paris

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India in the Muslim Imagination: Cartography and Landscape in 19th Century Urdu Literature

Faisal Devji

1 The ‘Muslim community’ emerged in India in the latter half of the 19th century as a new kind of sociological category. This emergence was linked to the designs and exigencies of British rule in India, including its deployment of new forms of classification like cartography and demography to define subject populations (Cohn 1990). More interesting, however, was the way in which these designs and exigencies also provided Muslims with the opportunity to re-define who they were (Devji 2007a). One such definition of the Muslim community was that of the ‘modernist’ gentlemen gathered in the Aligarh Movement.1 Led by the influential writer and institution-builder Sayyid Ahmad Khan, the Aligarh Movement was made up largely of well-born North Indian Muslims. Named after the town in northern India that housed its most prominent institution, the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College, later Aligarh Muslim University, the Aligarh Movement was also primarily a North Indian phenomenon. Founded by a group of men who belonged to a class of professional or salaried gentry which had furnished administrators to pre-colonial states and now attempted to do the same for colonial India, the Aligarh group called itself a party or school in English, and a movement or tahrik in Urdu, and its important activities, the college apart, comprised the Muhammadan Educational Conference and voluminous writings, including a journal, the Tahzib-ul Akhlaq or Refinement of Morals. The birth of this new collectivity was signaled by its adoption of a name unknown to history, with Muslims in the 19th century calling themselves a qawm, an Arabic word meaning something like a tribe or people that had rarely been used to describe religious groups in the past. Eventually this word would become an equivalent for the equally novel term ‘nation’ in South Asia. Notwithstanding their reference to ties of kith and kin in other contexts, neither community nor qawm were names used to describe local forms of Muslim belonging, being deployed instead to represent the disparate, dispersed and merely demographic collection of Queen Victoria’s Muslim subjects.

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2 While its demographic boundaries may have been mapped by the colonial census and its juridical borders by Anglo-Muhammadan law, the Muslim community was occupied by Indians themselves in different ways. Indeed it soon became the site of great struggles between Muslim groups in northern India, primarily Sunni clerics and their relatives among the laity. Both these groups belonged to the same class of minor landholders, administrators and bureaucrats, all Urdu-speaking, who had been liberated by colonial rule from the kings and nobles they had once served. Fully conscious of their independence, these men called themselves sharif or wellborn, and set out to recast Islam in their own image, thus lending the qawm some substance as an ethnic category. It was the laymen who set the terms of debate in this struggle, and especially those who gathered under the pro-British sign of the Aligarh Movement. In this essay I want to look at the way in which the gentlemen who led Aligarh situated their community within India as a new kind of political space. What kind of geography, in other words, made the Muslim community possible?

Between Person and Place

3 In an essay dating from 1884, Sayyid Ahmad Khan defined territorial belonging in the following manner: You must have seen or heard in old histories and books, and (indeed) we see even today, that (the word) qawm refers to the inhabitants of one country (mulk). The different peoples of Afghanistan are called a (single) qawm. The different peoples of Iran are called Irani. Europeans are of different beliefs (khayalat) and religions. But all are counted as (part of) one qawm, (and) although people from other countries come and live among them, (still) they mingle and are called one qawm. Indeed from antiquity the word qawm (has) referred to the inhabitants of a country even if they possess many distinctions. O Hindus and Muslims! Do you live in any other country but India (Hindustan)? Do you not both live on this land (zamin)? Are you not buried in this earth or cremated on its ghats? If you die and live on this (land), then remember that Hindu and Muslim are religious terms, otherwise Hindus, Muslims, and Christians, too, who live in this country, constitute a single qawm for this reason. (S.A. Khan 1963 [1889]: 161) 4 The words for country (mulk, zamin, Hindustan) in this passage are all deployed ambiguously; one does not know if they refer to country as region, country as state or both. Given this, it is not surprising to discover that being Indian here is defined simply by habitation, with no idea of blood-and-soil belonging implied: thus Sir Sayyid’s inclusion of immigrants as countrymen, something that refers indirectly to the ‘foreign’ genealogies of the Muslim gentry. Yet this purely contemporary or non- historical way of being Indian, one that could include Indian and European Christians as well, has to derive its identity from such a genealogical term as qawm. Belonging as qawmiyyat presumes the prior and separate existence of such groups that are not tied to territory, which is thus vitiated as the foundation of a positive identity. After 1886, therefore, when the autonomy of the Muslim community was threatened by the representative claims of the Indian National Congress, it was easy for Sir Sayyid to discard the notion of belonging as qawm altogether, retaining only that of India as a site of habitation. It was this subordination of people to land that led to a new and widespread notion of Muslims as a community simultaneously trapped in and alienated from India:

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[W]hat especially has caused the decline of the unfortunate Indian Muslims has been their adoption of India as a homeland (watan), and their forsaking of their original (asli) homes. When the Muslims arrived in India they were very robust, rosy complexioned, strong and healthy. Their natures (tabiat) were free as well. There was some spirit (josh) in their hearts as well. They were ignorant of the ties of custom (rusum). But when they made India their homeland and joined with those nations (qawm) that were inferior to them in strength, courage, freedom, knowledge and livelihood, (nations) in whose veins flowed restrictions, slavery to custom, and narrow-mindedness, then they, too, became so. Their true condition was completely transformed. The blood of Abraham that was in our veins was transformed. That bone which was made of Ishmael’s blood was transformed. That heart which harbored the Hashemite spirit was transformed. Skin itself changed. Color changed. Appearance changed. Life changed. The heart changed. Imagination (khayal) changed. So much so that religion changed as well. All that energy (josh) which arose in the sandy wastes of Arabia to revive and delight Iran and the whole of Central Asia, arrived in India only to be washed away in the Bay of Bengal. (M.A. Khan 1904: 33) 5 Mahdi Ali Khan, who would become Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s lieutenant and successor at Aligarh, was the author of this passage from a lecture given at the Mirzapur Institute on 22 October 1873. His lament on the decline of the Indian Muslim plays to the vision of a corrupting tropical climate, whose preeminent victims are Hindus. But more than this, it betrays both a humiliation that seeks to dissociate itself from the scene of colonial conquest, and a sense of community that finds itself lost in India as a profoundly alien political space. The novelty and importance of such an idea of the community’s situation was remarked upon by another modernist, the mathematician and historian Muhammad Zakaullah: I cannot bear to hear Indian Musulmans speaking without reverence and affection for India. It is a new fashion, unfortunately springing up, which did not exist in my younger days. (Andrews 1929: 111) 6 Even if many Muslims spoke of India, but more especially of their watan or home districts, with affection, their community’s imprisonment in a new India continued to provide them with a peculiar mode of being that had to do with a state in which they had become a minority. This was especially the case once colonial policy started being informed by demographic statistics in forms like the census. So Hali, in a poem of 1888 entitled the Shikwa-e Hind (Complaint to India), represents the country as the typical cruel beloved of the ghazal lyric, who he interrogates as a lover seduced by her only to be destroyed. And this novel use of the beloved familiarizes the new India in terms of an old problematic, that of desire and seduction, thus establishing for the country a kind of continuity with the past while simultaneously illustrating the sheer novelty of its situation, which cannot be otherwise grasped. Hali’s attitude towards India here is far more complex than that of Mahdi Ali Khan: Rukhsat ay Hindustan! Ay bustan-e be khizan! Rah chuke tere bahut din bidesi mehman (Hali 1970 [1888]: 182) Farewell O India! O autumn-less garden! We have remained your foreign guests for many a day. Kar diya sheron ko tu ne gosfand ay khak-e Hind Jo shikar afgan the a kar ho gaye yan khud shikar (Hali 1970 [1888]: 182) You have turned lions into sheep, O soil of India Those who were hunters arrived here to become prey.

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Tha yaqin ham ko ke shamat rafta rafta aegi Humko tu ay khak-e Hind akhir yun hi kha jaegi (Hali 1970 [1888]: 187) We knew that absorption would come surely That you would finally devour us like this, O soil of India. Phir gai sarhad se teri fawj-e Yunan jis tarah Kash phir jate yun hi dar se tere nakam ham (Hali 1970 [1888]: 187) Just as the Greek army turned away from your border If only we too had turned away from your door unsuccessful. Par zamane men rahenge ta qiyamat yadgar Jo kiye bartao tu ne ham se ay Hindustan! (Hali 1970 [1888]: 195) But time will retain the memory until Judgement Day Of the treachery you have done us, O India! Sanp se jis tarah rahta hay sapera dur dur Hukmran tere yun hi tujh se rahenge bar kiran (Hali 1970 [1888]: 196) In the way that the snake charmer remains distant from the snake Your rulers will likewise keep their distance from you. 7 This last couplet plays upon a literary theme regarding the seductive power of India and the fear of going native, but in a very different way from similar sentiments in English literature. On the one hand Hali is trying to build a relationship between Muslims and Englishmen as conquering peoples, a relationship mediated by the sexualized figure of a female India; but on the other he recognizes that Muslims have collapsed into India as an object, one whose only subject is the Englishman. The community has been subordinated to a conquered territory and objectified with it. Hali’s uncertainty regarding India, however, is due to more than a simple unease in the face of the colonial state. His novel personification of the country as a cruel beloved indicates a struggle to place value on this new India. And valuing is something very modern in that it replaces metaphysical relationships with positivistic ones, since only an autonomous object can be valued by the equally self-subsistent subject who knows it.2 One way of describing such value is by connecting it to the commodity, which, as a product of abstract labor, ends up becoming a kind of object with which traditional relationships, genealogical ones, for instance, cannot be built. India, too, is created as a commodity (India as prostitute, for example, which is what she finally becomes in Hali’s Shikwa-e Hind) insofar as it faces its producers as an object with which no old-fashioned relationship can be established. In this sense India is an invention of colonial capitalism because it is deployed as an object with worth only as a value. Indeed Hali himself describes the enterprise of Muslim identity as a troublesome buying off or buying into an India as colonial commodity: Yan nikle hain sawde ko diram leke purine Awr sikka rawan shahr men muddat se naya hay. (Hali 1970 [1888]: 127) We have come out here to trade with the old dirham While new coin has been circulating in town for some time. 8 What this couplet does is to suggest that a native desire for the freedom of exchange- value has no currency in a situation where money itself belongs to the new colonial world that has to be bought out. That is to say Hali’s commodification of communal desire ceases to have purchase once it is realized that there is no freedom of exchange in an India that demands from her buyer a simulacrum of use-value as the price of

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ownership. And yet India’s value as commodity-fetish is not unproblematic, as Hali’s treatment of her/it illustrates. Indeed the kind of relationship which the Muslim gentry established with India, one in which she/it possessed them in both the natural and supernatural senses of this word, inevitably puts its value in doubt: Shikwa qismat ka hay jo yan khinch kar lai hamen Tujh ko ay hindustan kis munh se den ilzam ham (Hali 1970 [1888]: 197) (My) complaint is against fate, which pulled us here O India, how is it possible for us to blame you? 9 Hali’s personification of India might be an attempt at establishing a value-relationship with an alien space by humanizing it. But humanizing India as a cruel beloved, with the relationship of seduction and humiliation this implies, is more than slightly troubling. Hali’s India is not the asexual Mother India of a certain Indian nationalism, but a powerful, sexualized woman with whom it is very difficult to establish a positive relationship, or rather a masculine relationship of dominance. In effect, the emasculation of the Muslim gentry before a potent and seductive India as woman suggests that she could exist in a proper relationship with a masculine self only as Englishman.

10 Sayyid Ahmad Khan made use of a different image of India, as a bride whose two eyes were the Hindu and Muslim communities (S.A. Khan 1963 [1889]: 41-2). In employing this image to foster religious harmony, Sir Sayyid suggested that Hindus and Muslims were only related in terms of an India that somehow existed apart from them and in whose material weight they were in fact imprisoned, only in this way being forced into a relationship. As with Hali, therefore, Sir Sayyid’s attempt to establish a value- relationship with India as a sexualized woman ends up quite inadvertently in a feminization of the gentle-born Muslim man, for only the English self has the pleasure of a dominating relationship with India. The invention of India, in other words, is not simply the creation of a new political space and new political relations, but the invention of a whole new way of thinking and being. The question of value I have raised here consistently problematizes the Muslim gentry’s establishment in the colonial state. And this means that it becomes forever impossible to grasp India as such, or to make oneself at home in it.

Cartography of Conquest

11 One of the ways India was imagined by North India’s Muslim gentry was as landscape, which is to say as an empty, uniform object that presupposed the country as a cartographic image. How did this occur in their thought, and what did it mean in terms of inherited ideas of place? Perhaps we can find out by looking at the shift colonialism marks in geography. To begin with, pre-colonial geography was a human one, a discipline that included man at its center and even as its microcosm, something that made the landscape itself human and vital (Miquel 1967, v. 1: VIII). And this means not only that geography could not exist in a dichotomy of subject and object, but also that it could not exist as such, because if topographical features were not part of an alien unity but subordinated to human relationships, they could only be seen pointillistically (Miquel 1967,v. 2: 86). Pre-colonial cartography provides a point of entry into what geographical pointillism might mean as far as the representation of space is concerned. Mughal map-making, then, was of two sorts. First, medieval itineraries, guides, or

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route-maps based on travelers’ descriptions and on distances between points; and second, a cartography based on coordinates (latitudes and longitudes) that was introduced in the 14th century (Habib 1977: 122): ‘The former suited a flat surface framed by grids; and the later, a sphere encompassed by meridians and parallels’.

12 The first form, of the guide, disregards landscape in favor of the route, and as such is humanly or historically topographic, including buildings, animals, and people. Among such maps are those of the Ali Mardan Canal around 1760, at the Andhra Pradesh State Archives, Hyderabad (Gole 1989: 104-9), and more especially, military maps like that of Awrangzeb’s Afghan campaign (1674-77) (Gole 1989: 146). There is no single subject position, however, for this kind of cartography, in which images and lettering are aligned according to the topography itself as it would be seen from the ground, thus forcing the reader to adopt different postures with regard to the map. Good examples of such cartography are the plans for Surat in Safi bin Vali al-Qazvini’s Anis al-Hajj (1676), a guide to the Meccan pilgrimage commissioned by Awrangzeb’s daughter Zebunnisa and now at Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji museum (Gole 1989: 162). But the most splendid illustrations of such cartography are undeniably provided by scroll maps, where the reader is positioned inside the route itself, with prospects opening up on either side. Such, for instance, is the map of Shahjahanabad just prior to the 1750s, in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum (Gole 1989: 178-9). And this mode of seeing goes back to antiquity in that the visible presents itself not as a uniform object as canvas placed before a stationary subject according to linear perspective, but as a plurality of places or entities located in a concave space in which a moving subject sees them according to curvilinear perspective. It is angle, in other words, and not distance, that locates vision (Simon 1988: 67-9). 13 The second type of Mughal map, the table of coordinates, might be non-topographical and considerably vaster than the route map, but it is in fact not strictly geographical at all, which is to say not representative: The impulse for the compilation of these tables derived only secondarily from interest in geography. Astronomical observation demanded the determination of the latitude and longitude of the point from which observations were being made. The science of astrology, requiring the casting of accurate horoscopes, intensified the anxiety to have the terrestrial coordinates correctly determined. There was a religious impulse too: Muslims must pray facing Mecca, and the mosques must be aligned accordingly. The direction in which Mecca lay from any place could, however, be determined only if the latitudes and longitudes of both the places were known. Lists of places with their coordinates were thus compiled independently of the geographers. (Habib 1977: 128-9) 14 This lack of representativeness is emphasized when we consider that such maps do not normally mark the positions of towns with points, effectively transforming them into tables (Habib 1977: 125). Furthermore, they divide the world into seven latitudinal climes or iqlim, which destroy any idea of contiguous land masses by cutting them up into cross-sections in which, for example, India would be divided into four slices, each appearing in a different map. So in Sadiq Isfahani’s Shahid-i Sadiq, an encyclopedia completed at Jawnpur in 1647, what we take to be ‘India’ is never represented as such but appears only in fragments (Gole 1989: 82). This does not mean, of course, that India cannot be spoken of; indeed the Mughal writer Abul Fazl describes it in the Ain-i Akbari, but neither as a foundational space for politics, nor as a unit of representation.3

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15 The colonial invention of India meant its subordination to what Yves Lacoste, in his book Paysages Politiques, calls geographicity, a foundational space devoid of human relations. But such a landscape was not created overnight. It was thought through in ways that shelved older geographies in interesting ways. Nazir Ahmad, for instance, a prominent modernist writer, published in 1873 a novel, Banat un-Na’ash (Daughters of the Bier), promoting girls’ education. In it he preserved older conceptions of space within the new geographicity; a preservation that was only possible within the circumscribed pedagogy of women, and which so retained masculine meaning only as a domestic vernacular. Yet the novel’s very particular inclusion of older spaces seems to have posed a threat to geographicity that was barely obscured by its vernacular domesticity. Ahmad’s lesson on geography for girls, for example, begins with a representation of the Arabian Peninsula that simultaneously emphasizes and vitiates its geographicity by describing it as an inhuman emptiness that is filled with meaning because it happened to be the site of divine revelation (Nazir Ahmad 1967: 185-6). God, then, gives meaning to geographicity in a way that puts its foundationality into question without at the same time contesting it. But this is not all. Another contradiction arises in Ahmad’s attempt to relate geographical names and places. The litany of place-names that one of the novel’s characters reels off (Hindustan, Chin, Afghanistan, Arab, Iran, Turan) has its own non-cartographical logic, even though it is read off a modern map (Nazir Ahmad 1967: 188). In other words such a list is not only ordered in terms of homophony rather than cartography, it also includes places like Arabia, which is described as having a religious rather than political meaning, and Turan, which is a cultural area that does not fall within political boundaries. This naming, however, derives meaning from the very geographicity it calls into doubt. So when one of the book’s girl students tries to find Delhi on a world map, she is looking not for its location but its name. And her teacher emphasizes this dislocation of place and name by telling her charge that the map’s scale is too great to include this word. Delhi, in other words, never appears as a cartographical point on a map that presupposes such a location (Nazir Ahmad 1967: 189). 16 What I have been trying to demonstrate here is that the problematization of geographicity as a foundation for identification itself depended upon such a foundationalism in a fashion which made it part of an unresolved contradiction. And this might have been the case because the colonization of this geography resulted only in an imaginary exit from it. In other words, it resulted in an India as landscape that stood in perfect objectivity before an English subject even as it trapped the Indian within this objectivity defined by a colonial gaze. The Muslim community that was created in this space was both alienated from and imprisoned within it. But not quite, for the new India that opened up before the Muslim gentry was also a landscape of suspense, a faintly menacing country which had to be mapped by exploration rather than be navigated by a guide.4 That is to say an India that has become not only representable, but also something that has to be represented in order to eliminate the risks of the unknown. Such a grasping, however, was as contradictory as geographicity. It, too, depended on the systematic particularization or vernacularization of its opposite in a way that allowed representation to be thought as such, but not to be thought through. In his introduction to the first edition of the Musaddas, for example, Hali describes his youth as an aimless wandering in a deceptively pleasing landscape (Hali n.d. [1879]: 1-2). At the age of forty, then, the poet comes to realize that he is in

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the same place where he started, and suddenly a new landscape of anxiety opens up before him as a domain to be grasped: Raising my eyes, I saw on either side, ahead and behind, a spacious area (maydan) within which numberless paths opened up in every direction. [...] I wanted to set forth and explore (sayr) this area, but that step which for twenty years had not moved from one attitude to another, and whose range had been bounded by a yard or two of earth, was not easily put to work in such a wide space. Apart from this, the useless wandering of twenty years had made shirkers of hands and feet that had also expended their strength. But because there was (some) movement in my feet, sitting still became difficult. For some days such a situation subsisted that one foot would step forward and the other step back. But suddenly I saw a servant of God, who is a man of this place, proceeding upon a difficult path. Many people who were walking with him would tire and fall behind. Many others were falling and rising along with him. But their lips were blistered and their feet calloused. [...] However that honored man who was their guide appeared so fresh as to be neither weary from the road nor concerned with the loss of his companions. (Hali n.d. [1879]: 2-3) 17 Sayyid Ahmad Khan, who is the leader here referred to, goes on to take Hali by the hand and guide him through this landscape that is yet grasped as a totality. Exploration, in other words, is here forestalled by a guiding that nonetheless has meaning only in terms of the former. And how could it be otherwise when the colonial landscape still surrounded and fixed its Muslim subject in a way that allowed its objectivity to exist only as a presumption? Or as Hali puts it, paraphrasing a couplet of Hafiz to describe this new space: Khabaram nist ke manzilgah-e maqsud kujast In qadr hast ke bang-e jarasi miayad. (Hali n.d. [1879]: 5) I don’t know where the final destination might be It exists to the extent that the caravan-bell sounds back.

Literary Landscapes

18 Since the colonial landscape, then, is often contradicted by a colonized experience, its grasping becomes a matter of some anxiety. This is why India gives meaning to the modernist landscape, because it comes to represent the location of such anxiety. Thus the incredible panorama that opens Abdul Halim Sharar’s novel Firdaws-e Barin (Paradise on Earth), or the several landscapes depicted in Mirza Ruswa’s Umrao Jan Ada (the name of its heroine), panoramas which inevitably presage alarm or attack, and which, I want to suggest, are only made possible by the colonial invention of India. The former novel, first published in 1899, begins with the following description of an Iranian landscape: It is now the year 651 of the Hijri era, but (for) one-hundred and fifty years prior to this, that high and unpaved road which begins at the southern shore of the Caspian Sea and, going through the city of Amul, crosses the country of Mazandaran and the region of Rudbar, referred to in the Shahnamah as the abode of fairies, cuts through the mountains of Taleqan from north to south, (finally) proceeding to the city of Qazvin, had been considered extremely hazardous for travelers—and especially for pilgrims. For a long time the state of this road has been such that even in the daytime large caravans are looted and the bodies of their victims preserved for years by the snow and cold as signs of the (thieves’) tyranny, murder, and devastation.

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The days mark the beginning of wintertime. The previous year’s snow has not yet melted completely and a new layer is (already) beginning to set—but the freezing has still not reached such a level as to annihilate the signs of spring and the pleasures of blossom-time. A few flowers from late in the season remain, and here and there, their lover and connoisseur the Badakhshani nightingale can also be seen voicing his thousand-storied and melodious tune. This mountainous land is not naked and sun-scorched like the dry and virtuous hills of Arabia; rather, the shadowy trees and thick bushes everywhere have made (these mountains) into excellent hideaways and lonely dens for worshippers of nature and true connoisseurs of Providence. And wherever there are clumps of trees, there, under the blue tent of the sky, Providence has spread out a floor of green and velvety grass. Should someone sit and wish to sample the wine of Shiraz, he would find here, instead of the Ruknabad canal, the canal of Veranjan, which, in the passage of not even one and a half centuries, perhaps, has cut through the Rud-i Safed (highlands) and, coursing through different mountain passes, fallen into the Caspian Sea near the city of Khurramabad. Exactly these fascinating scenes, these enchanting views of Providence, have given birth to numerous stories about the mountains. Some people say that paradise is located in these very defiles, and some consider that although the force of arms of Kiyumarzh, Rustam, and Nariman have annihilated the ancient demons, many fairies still keep the old memory today, inhabiting these lonely places. Among good believing folk many have seen these fairies flying, and some travellers have even glimpsed great crowds of terrifying genii emerge from the passes. It is also thought that whoever comes upon these bands of fairies by himself dies immediately. (Sharar 1961: 1-2) 19 Now the novel character of this description resides both in its length and in its importance to the story. Previously, literary descriptions of nature had been brief and pointillistic, certainly not anything in the way of cartographic panoramas. What is more, they acted simply as settings for narrative; settings differentiated only on the basis of their symbolic appropriateness to the events related. Thus traditionally nature was full of stock images often described by anthropomorphic analogies: the proud rose, the languishing nightingale, the coquettish cypress, etc. Sharar’s landscape is not only panoramic and important in its own right, it also constitutes one of the major problems with which the novel’s characters have to grapple. The landscape has become here a subject, as much a character in the narrative as any human being.

20 But what kind of relationship can be established with such a character? One of cartographic knowledge, since the whole story is about discovering the secrets harbored by this landscape. Such a relationship is simultaneously one of control, because this landscape of suspense can only become a space of freedom once its secrets have not only been exposed, but destroyed as well. And indeed this is exactly what happens in the novel, where the fabulous castle of the Assassins, with its artificial paradise, is demolished to de-mystify the landscape that hid it as phantasmagoria. 21 Yet it is not simply what the landscape conceals that makes it a space of suspense. Rather, the very passage of nature, which seems to give the landscape a life of its own, compels its conquest by a humanity which first appears in the narrative in the form of beings lost in a panorama whose events mark a secret and autonomous existence. The progress of the story entails the complete subordination of this landscape, a dominion that is announced at its very inception as a space of suspense: The above-mentioned road is spread out over a long distance, but only that part (of it) which runs along the Veranjan canal is in our sight. From this place the plains of the region of Rudbar have ended and the hard, twisted, ups and downs of the

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mountains begin. Some distance ahead of here the road has taken another direction, and the canal, turning about in the valleys of the Elburz range, has disappeared in the difficult paths and convoluted defiles. Only a few hours, perhaps, are left of the evening; the sun has arrived close-by the peaks ahead. Its weak rays, which had produced a little heat, have gone, and the cold gusts of wind that are coming from the high ice-fields are enough to make humans shiver. At this place, and in such a condition, two travelers are slowly moving northwards, covered-up from head to foot and resembling a couple of large bundles. Both are astride their small and exhausted mules. From their lassitude and huddled state it appears that they are poor clerics or fakirs of some town who, separated from the lifestyles of both town and camp, are undertaking a pilgrimage from some religious necessity or for the glory of the sacred. But no, they have come close and it is evident that they are neither clerics nor dervishes, but both young gentlefolk, and what is more surprising, of the two one is a man and the other a woman. (Sharar 1961 [1899]: 3) 22 Let us stop where the adventure begins to point out that while India might be a prison for the Muslim community, insofar as it is created as a space of suspense, it also raises the issue of this community’s liberty. The freedom of the modernist Muslim subject as subject (which is to say as someone who knows by representing) in and over its inhuman, apolitical, completely naturalized vastness; a freedom from India’s oppressive alienation. Thus in the passages quoted above, the characters’ lack of freedom is illustrated by the fact that it is not they who see the landscape so well described by Sharar, but rather the landscape as a character with its own passage which sees and situates them. Only at the end of the novel, with the destruction of the Assassins who had controlled this landscape, who had indeed been part of it, do these characters look upon nature as controlling subjects. And this nature has now become merely interesting, part of the aesthetics of control. So the novel’s last chapter, which disenchants the landscape, begins with a significant line: ‘When Husayn and Zammarud [the story’s hero and heroine] emerged from their castles to see, a strange world appeared before them (Sharar 1961 [1899]: 158).’ This time, however, the strangeness had to do with the breaking of the landscape’s spell and the consequent shift of the characters from a kind of stupor of spectacular contemplation to the mastery of action: In the same state as they had first left home, Husayn and Zammarud set out for the earth of the Hijaz and left (behind) the ruins of Alamut and all its corpses to the (wild) asses and swarms of carnivorous birds. (Sharar 1961 [1899]: 175) 23 But how is this at all possible? How can the landscape be made innocuous so easily, especially in a colonial situation? Where do the problems go? Sharar’s novel, which ends with the repentance of all concerned, with the realization that it was they who were to blame for the landscape’s dread history (allowing themselves to be seduced by it), suggests that the problem of the landscape is displaced onto the subject as a kind of solution. And in fact a depoliticized, dehumanized India as landscape really does call forth a subjective relationship with itself. But this is not the relationship of citizen and state, something unthinkable in a colonial order. The Muslim subject, insofar as it exists as a subject vis-à-vis India (and we have seen that such a relationship is rather troubling), cannot be its citizen, but rather, paradoxically, India’s object. That is to say India can only become a space of freedom or agency if its object-hood is in a way neutralized or displaced onto the subject. In other words, the opening of India as a landscape of freedom implies the creation of a subjectivity that in grounding this object-hood also displaces its problematic character onto itself, thus transforming it

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into a space of agentive liberty. Insofar as India is naturalized by the Muslim gentry, they blame themselves for its loss, thus displacing politics from the world onto the self. As Hali puts it in the Musaddas: Jo kuchh hain woh sab apni halaton ke hain kartut Shikwa hay na zamane ka na qismat ka gila hay (Hali n.d. [1879]: 127) Whatever we are we are of our own making I neither complain against time nor do I blame fate. 24 India, therefore, remains unproblematized, or is rather questioned only in terms of subjective value, so becoming a space of freedom for this burdened self. Nevertheless, the effort to know India never quite releases it from phantasmagoria. Liberty is conceived of only in terms of the longing of a subject to situate itself in a territory whose colonial nature is more or less obscured, and which is therefore phantasmagoric. That is to say liberty is not seen as the union of subject and object in the way of Kantian or Hegelian philosophy, for the landscape does not pose a problem of knowledge here but one of mere situation. Instead, liberty means that the gentle-born Muslim subject is looking, as agentive subject, for a place in the naturalized if still problematic landscape of colonial India.

25 Situating oneself in India involves for the gentry novel questions of how to belong, or to belong in what capacity. For as the poet Salik remarks after the Mutiny of 1857: Zamin ho gai dushman, na pai ja-e sabat Thahr saka na kisi jae apna pae sabat (Naim Ahmad 1968: 251) The land has become an enemy no firm ground could be got My foot was unable to rest firmly in any place.

Beneath the Ruins

26 Let us try to find out what this belonging to India might mean by looking at the birth of a homogenous landscape in the Urdu elegy, the only poetic genre in the language to emphasize landscape at all. And what is more, to emphasize a landscape that is recognizably Indian, even though it happens to be located, by a fine irony, in Arabia and Iraq. The marsiya was typically a short devotional poem commemorating the martyrdom of the Prophet’s grandson Husayn and his family in a battle with Umayyad forces on the plain of Karbala. It was a ritual form associated with the Shia and meant to procure merit or sawab by eliciting tears from mourning assemblies. In the 18 th century, however, the elegy begins to be included within profane literature or adab and thus becomes separable from Shia ritual (Numani 1989 [1907]: 26). Furthermore, with the 19th century poet Mir Anis of Lucknow, it is fully transformed into a long narrative poem in the musaddas form, becoming the first poetic genre to abandon its particular function (mourning, in this case) in favor of a general representation. To this end it plunders the special characteristics of other poetic genres such as the qasida or ode, and ghazal or lyric (Numani 1989 [1907]: 26). The 19 th century marsiya, therefore, destroys the pluralism of pre-modern poetics, which had assigned particular aesthetic functions to each poetic genre, by combining them into a holistic representation standing outside the reader like a landscape. So Anis, for example, compares his art to a painting that manages to describe all the qualities of a landscape (Anis 1977: 60-5). Indeed the naturalism of the new marsiya becomes its greatest glory; Hali, in his

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important work of literary criticism, the Muqaddima-e Sher-o Shairi [Introduction to Verse and Versification], devotes six pages to lauding it (Hali 1988 [1879]: 183-8). And the historian Muhammad Shibli Numani (1989 [1907]: 146), who published the first serious study of the colonial marsiya, remarked upon the novelty of such manazir-e qudrat or scenes of providence. In fact the radical character of this landscape was such that even half a century after its appearance, Shibli Numani could not assume its wholesale naturalization, and had to define it for his readers by comparison with more traditional narrative forms. The word manzar, for example, he can only translate by the English ‘scene’ (1989: 152), which he familiarizes by calling it a form of waqea nigari, narrative of action, whose originality lies in the fact that while older narratives were concerned with separate human actions, the ‘scene’ constitutes their collective quality, majmui hesiyat (Numani 1989 [1907]: 152). But waqea nigari itself was rare in Urdu poetry (Numani 1989 [1907]: 174) because it had not really been considered literary at all, being narrated only in common or crude language (Numani 1989 [1907]: 176). Shibli Numani, then, was the first to theorize the newness of the marsiya’s landscape by defining the narrative of action as a total representation (Numani 1989 [1907]: 175) whose perfection approached the art of spectacle, muraqqa nigari (Numani 1989 [1907]: 176).

27 The old marsiya had been situated within a set of moral oppositions that it attempted to heighten. So the martyrdom of Husayn by Umayyad forces might constitute a condemnation of worldly power; the Shia devotion to Husayn’s lineage would be a denial of Sunni authorities; the tragedy of Karbala could negate officialdom’s rhetoric of victory and its history of virtue; and the elegy’s battlefield as a site of moral action stood opposed to such alternate sites as the city, the garden, or even the Sufi wilderness. What the new marsiya indicated was the disappearance of many of these associations in a homogeneous landscape. Thus the city, far from being the symbol of order and virtue that Husayn abandoned and so denied for the battlefield, now came to be included in the elegy as part of the same landscape as Karbala (Narang 1981: 154-9). Similarly, the marsiya’s oppositional intertextuality now lay not simply with Sunni histories of order and virtue, but increasingly with erotic poetry, towards which it adopted an ironic tone (Narang 1981: 166-70). In other words the new marsiya increasingly set itself off against the more general or secular space of the old regime instead of commenting upon the particular metaphysical places of Sunni officialdom. Thus Husayn is compared to the ghazal’s beloved, his battling companions to flower-like youths, the plain of Karbala to a garden, etc. And this irony, in addition, served more to problematize the symbolic domain of the old order than to contest it. 28 In replacing the old metaphysical places of the elegy with an actual and problematic landscape, the marsiya, we might say, has moved from myth to history.5 Which is to say it has moved from a universalized history to a very particular narrative of loss, the disappearance of a genealogical polity, the imamate, from a protesting landscape. This is in fact a major theme in the 19th century marsiya, the voiding or de-politicization of a landscape that cries out in horror but is finally reduced to silence: Yeh dasht-e holnak kahan, yeh chaman kahan Jangal kahan, batul ke gul perahan kahan Kunba kahan nabi ka, yeh dar-e mehan kahan Qabren kahan shikasta dilon ki, watan kahan Aye hain dhundhte hue is arz-e pak ko

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Sach hay ke khak khinchti hay apni khak ko. (Anis 1977: 131) Where this fearsome plain? Where this garden? Where the jungle? Where the virgin’s flowered garment? Where the Prophet’s family? Where this abode of troubles? Where are the graves of broken hearts? Where the homeland? They have arrived searching for this pure earth It’s true that the soil reclaims its own. 29 This empty landscape, which has buried its own history, then becomes a kind of ruin from which people excavate their identity, and with which they try to build a relationship, for as Walter Benjamin says of the baroque landscape, ‘(i)n the ruin history has physically merged into the setting’ (Benjamin 1990 [1928]: 177-8). This is the only way in which the Muslim community, too, can establish a relationship with India as a neutral landscape, one that exists only as the sign of its despoliation: ‘Because it is mute, fallen nature mourns. But the converse of this statement leads even deeper into the essence of nature: its mournfulness makes it become mute’ (Benjamin 1990 [1928]: 224).

30 To build a relationship with this bereft, de-humanized landscape by searching its earth for a history is a novel phenomenon. Previously, the earth, not the landscape, functioned as the great producer and destroyer of histories, as in the famous quatrains of Umar Khayyam, for example. And insofar as it constituted a ruin, the earth did so as a symbol of human vanity and not as a mystery, a kind of archaeological mystery, which is what the ruin becomes in Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s Asar us-Sanadid [Ancestral Traces], a description of the monuments of Delhi, first published in 1847, whose second edition of 1854 is particularly marked by an archaeological vision (Naim 2010: 669-708). This attitude is opposed to a more traditional conception of the land that is expressed in the following couplet by Sir Sayyid’s contemporary, the Delhi poet Mirza Ghalib: Sab kahan kuchh lalah-o gul men numayan ho gayen Khak men kya suraten hongen ke pinhan ho gayen (Ghalib 1990 [1863]: 118) Not everything has become manifest in the tulip and the rose What forms must there be hidden in the dust! 31 Unlike Benjamin’s baroque poetry or Khayyam’s verse, however, modernist Muslims could not turn the transitory character of life or the meaninglessness of nature into the desire for an afterworld or even for oblivion. They had to exhume a past because what was at issue was a very particular political relationship with the land and precisely not a general metaphysical one. So the poet Ikram has this to say about the destruction of Delhi in 1857: Khak men mil gaye almas-e hunnar Khod kar dekh to kan-e Dehli6 The treasures of artifice have fallen to dust Dig the mine of Delhi and see. 32 If the world has become a picture or representation, then the Muslim gentry’s task was to build a relationship with it as a finding of the truth behind its image; in this case the truth of a history which has left nothing but ruins on the Indian landscape. Now it is exactly such a denuded landscape that suggests subjective liberty, even if this freedom is nothing more than a quest for a different kind of relationship with the new country. After all, the subject who faces this landscape is always alienated, even if this alienation is simultaneously an imprisonment in India, and the panorama itself, void as it is of

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human relationships, is inevitably a lure for freedom as agentive belonging. The colonial marsiya repeatedly voices this predicament, to such an extent that when the Delhi poet Shefta, for example, heard the opening lines of an elegy by Anis which barely introduced the theme of a dislocated subject in an alien geography, he is supposed to have said, ‘why did Mir Sahib take the trouble to narrate a whole marsiya? This line itself is a marsiya’ (Masud 1981: 273). Here is the line: Aj shabbir pe kya alam-e tanhai hay (Anis 1974: 319) What a world of loneliness is upon Husayn today 33 This phrase derives its particular poignancy from the word kya, ‘what’, which expresses the strangeness of the world both as question and as emphasis. But Anis’s landscape was not entirely modern. It was certainly spread out like a canvas before a simultaneously alienated and trapped subject (the colonial marsiya replacing a narrative of temporal succession with a canvas-like simultaneity of action) (Masud 1981: 286-7), but this subject was also able to move about the landscape in a traditional way. Thus the elegies of Anis are peculiar in that they depict panoramas which can only be seen by what Nayyar Masud, in an essay on the poet’s scenography, calls ‘film technique’ (Masud 1981: 286-7), the zooming and focusing of a subject as camera into and out of the landscape as canvas (Masud 1981: 284). Although the concave space and angular vision of medieval optics has been replaced, therefore, by a flat canvas and a perspectival field of vision based on distance, the subject is still not confronted by a landscape as pure or impenetrable object. And so the elegies of Anis perhaps constitute a transition point from one kind of optics to another; the last moment where an object, India, in this case, while it is certainly neutral, homogenous, or de-politicized, has yet to confront an autonomous subject as its other.

Conclusion

34 I have sought to argue in this essay that the formation of the ‘Muslim community’ in colonial India necessitated a rethinking of the country itself in its physical and political geography. The Muslim ‘modernists’ of North India who were gathered in the Aligarh Movement struggled both to assimilate their qawm within the colonial cartography that was coming to define India as an idea, and, simultaneously, to inhabit it in distinctive new ways. Their efforts to ‘master’ a colonial cartography was constantly being thwarted by an unwillingness or inability to adopt the distanced perspective this required, with the Muslim community forever slipping into the position of an object rather than subject of knowledge. In the process India was often represented, by a creative adaptation of older literary tropes, as a powerful and sexualized woman, or as an example of the kind of body politic whose mastery had once been confined to the king. In either case the qawm was seen to be alienated from India newly conceived as a cartographic space, but also as being trapped within it in a way that made for literary descriptions dominated by notions of shame and humiliation.

35 Even when it was modern geography rather than the human figure that provided the subject of Muslim reflection, these men were able to presuppose the novel foundationalism of colonial cartography while at the same time operating within it in ‘non-modern’ ways. Rather than seeing in this situation merely their ‘incomplete’ modernization, however, I suggest that it represents a real impasse, with no colonized

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population able to assume a mastery over the country’s cartography that they did not in fact possess. Moreover the propensity of the Urdu writers I deal with to display a kind of epistemological double consciousness is interesting in its own right, not least because it allows us to undo the strict distinctions of a stagist history. Having looked at the way in which these writers understood ‘India’ in terms of the human figure, cartography and landscape, I go on to show how they transformed another pre-modern trope, that of the transitory world, in order to make themselves at home in the colonized territory of the Raj by digging underneath its surface and occupying the ruins of their past.

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Ahmad, Naim (1968) Shahr Ashub, New Delhi: Maktaba Jamia.

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Anis, Mir Babbar Ali (1974) Jawahirat-e Anis, vol. 2, Mirza Amir Ali Jawnpuri (ed.) (Lucknow: Urdu Publishers.

Anis, Mir Babbar Ali (1977) Anis ke Marsiye, Saliha Abid Husayn (ed.), New Delhi: Taraqqi-e Urdu Board.

Benjamin, Walter (1990) The Origin of German Tragic Drama, (Transl. by John Osborne), London and New York: Verso, [1928].

Cohn, Bernard S. (1990) ‘The Census, Social Structure and Objectification in South Asia’, in Bernard Cohn (ed.), An Anthropologist Among the Historians and Other Essays, Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 224-54.

Devji, Faisal (2007a) ‘A Shadow Nation: The Making of Muslim India’, in Kevin Grant, Philippa Levine & Frank Trentmann (eds.), Beyond Sovereignty: Britain, Empire and Transnationalism, 1860-1950, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 126-45.

Devji, Faisal (2007b) ‘Apologetic modernity’, Modern Intellectual History, 4(1), April, pp. 61-76.

Ghalib, Mirza Asadullah Khan (1990) Divan-e Ghalib, Aligarh: Maktabah-e Alfaz, [1863].

Gole, Susan (1989) Indian Maps and Plans, New Delhi: Manohar Publications.

Habib, Irfan (1977) ‘Cartography in Mughal India’, in Irfan Habib (ed.), Medieval India: A Miscellany, vol. 4, Bombay: Asia Publishing House.

Hali, Altaf Husayn (1970) ‘Shikwa-e Hind’, in Altaf Husayn Hali, Kulliyat-e Nazm-e Hali, vol. 2, Lahore: Majlis-e Taraqqi-e Adab, [1888].

Hali, Altaf Husayn (1988) Muqaddima-e Sher-o Shairi, Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh Urdu Academy, [1893].

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Hali, Altaf Husayn (n.d.) Musaddas-e Hali, Lahore: Taj Press, [1879].

Heidegger, Martin (1977) ‘The Word of Nietzche: ‘God is Dead’’, in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, (Transl. by William Lovitt), New York: Harper Torchbooks, [1943].

Husayn, Intizar (1981) ‘Anis ke marsiye men shahr’, in Gopi Chand Narang (ed.), Anis Shanasi, Delhi: Educational Book House.

Khan, Mahdi Ali (1904) Majmuah-e Lectures-o Speeches, vol. 1, Lahore: Nawal Kishor Printing Works.

Khan, Sayyid Ahmad (1963) ‘Ta‘alim awr itifaq’, in Shaykh Muhammad Ismail Panipati (ed.), Maqalat-e Sir Sayyid, vol. 12, Lahore: Majlis-e Taraqqi-ye Urdu, [1889].

Khan, Sayyid Ahmad (1963) ‘Hindu awr musalmanon men irtibat’, in Shaykh Muhammad Ismail Panipati (ed.), Maqalat-e Sir Sayyid, vol. 15, Lahore: Majlis-e Taraqqi-ye Adab, [1883], pp. 41-4.

Lacoste, Yves (1990) Paysages Politiques, Paris: Librairie Générale Française.

Masud, Nayyar (1981) ‘Mir Anis ke manzar name’, in Gopi Chand Narang (ed.), Anis Shanasi, Delhi: Educational Book House.

Miquel, André (1967) La Géographie humaine du monde musulman jusqu’au milieu du 11e Siècle, vol. 1 & 2, Paris: Mouton.

Naim, C. M. (May 2011) ‘Syed Ahmed and his two books called ‘Asar-al-Sanadid’’, Modern Asian Studies, 45(3), pp. 669-708.

Narang, Gopi Chand (1981) ‘Aslubiyat-e Anis’, in Gopi Chand Narang (ed.), Anis Shanasi, Delhi: Educational Book House.

Numani, Muhammad Shibli (1989) Mawazanah-e Anis-o Dabir, New Delhi: Maktaba Jamia, [1907].

Sharar, Abdul Halim (1961) Firdaws-e Barin, Lahore: Majlis-e Taraqqi-ye Adab, [1899].

Simon, Gérard (1988) Le regard, l’être et l’apparence dans l’optique de l’Antiquité, Paris: Éditions du Seuil, pp. 67-69.

NOTES

1. For an exploration of ‘Islamic modernism’ as an intellectual project, see Faisal Devji (2007b). 2. See for this Martin Heidegger (1977 [1943]: 71). 3. Abu’l-fazl Allami, The A‘in-i Akbari (1965 [1596]: 2). 4. I take this distinction from Yves Lacoste (1990: 5-15). 5. I take this distinction from Walter Benjamin (1990). 6. See Naim Ahmad (1968: 224).

ABSTRACTS

The formation of the ‘Muslim community’ in colonial India necessitated a rethinking of the country itself in its physical and political geography. The Muslim modernists of North India who were gathered in the Aligarh Movement struggled both to assimilate themselves within the

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colonial cartography that was coming to define India as an idea, and, simultaneously, to inhabit it in distinctive new ways. Rather than serving to demonstrate the ‘incompletion’ of their modernity, this made for a narrative illustrating an epistemological ‘double consciousness’, of which this essay explores the Urdu literary tropes of the human figure, cartography, landscape and the ruin.

INDEX

Keywords: Muslim community, Aligarh Movement, Urdu literature

AUTHOR

FAISAL DEVJI

Reader in Indian History and Fellow of St. Antony’s College at the University of Oxford

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A Strange Love of the Land: Identity, Poetry and Politics in the (Un)Making of South Asia

Sudipta Kaviraj

Introduction

1 In this paper I shall try to explore how the idea of space in what we call ‘South Asia’ today got reconfigured by modernity. I shall explore three spatial conceptions of South Asia—strategic, geographic and cultural; and I shall try to explain the patterns of space- thinking underlying each one of them, show their connection with modernity, and discuss why and how South Asia is still not a space that can be conceived as a space of belonging. I shall run two arguments together—the first about the historical transformations of identity in modern times, and the second about the poetic construction of affect for space-related terms like India, and Pakistan, but not South Asia.

2 Spaces or space-terms are constituted by specific purposes. South Asia emerged in the 1950-60s as an academic-governmental term of American coinage designating a spatial area of concern for American strategy and foreign policy. This was a typical external term: i.e. a term by which outsiders designated a territory for purposes significant to them, but devoid of any affective significance for its inhabitants. In British and European discourse, this term was relatively rare, or absent. They saw this area as primarily the space of two states, India and Pakistan, born out of a partition of British colonial India. But British colonial thinking would not have regarded this event as either surprising, or as a loss, because of their long-standing belief that nothing held India together from the inside. It was only the iron frame of the colonial state that made it a single political entity. 3 Two political processes of modernity introduce a new kind of space-making— nationalism and state-formation. Though these two processes are intertwined in the rise of nation-states, for analytical purposes it is better to see them as separate. In the

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paper, I shall follow some significant points of this dual process of emergence of new state structures in British colonial India and their animation by various emerging forms of nationalism. A sequence of nationalist ideologies appeared in this space—in 19th century Bengal, and eventually through the institution of state-nationalisms of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. These state forms and gestalts of affect make it impossible to think of South Asia seriously as a space of emotional inhabitance. 4 Yet, despite these state-nationalist borders of consciousness, there still exist long-term historical commonalities which people spontaneously practice and enjoy—in food, material culture, literature, art, music—which have a deep and long history. This endows peoples of this region (not states) by common structures of intelligibility, reflected in their easy commingling when they are outside their countries and free of the pressures of state nationalism, or gather in artistic public spheres. There is much to be said for a revival of this pre-modern world of frontiers, where people knew how to live their lives outside the coercive containers of nation-states, which unsuccessfully mimic forms of European modernity. 5 My primary argument will be that there are two ways of thinking about identities and connections. The first evolved through long gestation in pre-modern history. This pre- modern practice of identity was entirely exploded by modern political conditions and replaced by identities constructed by the boundaries of modern states; but paradoxically, these modern identities are politically more powerful yet historically more fragile. With the slow decline in the legitimacy of state-produced identities, I think we can see the persistence of the pre-modern identity of graded connections. Since modernity reconstitutes both individual and collective identities, it might be useful to start with a brief discussion of both these historical processes.

On Identity

Personal identities

6 In his work on identity and violence, Amartya Sen (2006) states that individuals have many identities; but that conflicts arise when some decide to ‘absolutize’ one of their identities over others. I agree with the political direction of Sen’s argument; but I would suggest a somewhat different way of conceiving personal identity. It is better to put it in a different way—an individual does not have many identities; rather each individual’s identity is complex. My identity is constituted by the combination of characteristics or attributes which individuates me, singularizes me against all other individuals. Of course this identity of mine is a combination of many features—which I would call identity-attributes. So my identity is constructed out of attributes like being male, Indian, Bengali, non-religious, a supporter of the left in politics, of Brazil in soccer, an admirer of particular types of paintings, poetry, music and many other things. All are my qualities as an individual; but these qualities fall into at least two categories; some are strictly individual like my taste in clothes, or my bodily features, but there are some like ‘being a Hindu/Muslim’ or a Labor Party supporter—which I can bear only because there are collective groups bearing those names. Though I can be the only living individual who loves chilly flavored chocolates, for me to be a Jew, a collective body—a Jewish community—must exist. I call these characteristics identity- attributes, rather than identity, because I believe there is another aspect to personal

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identity that is of equal conceptual significance. I have an identity-function—a capacity to select, emphasize and mobilize into appropriate social acts the congeries of attributes that I possess at any point in time. It goes without saying that these attributes can increase or decrease in number, or intensity. An individual’s identity function or what I could call the identity-verb can foreground and fade selectively different attributes in his/her social life. To say I have many identities is confusing; this elementary distinction between attributes and function allows us to save the correct intuition behind Sen’s argument. Personal identity is a fascinating subject in itself; but I do not want to pursue that theme here.

Collective identity

7 I have argued for some time that modernity deeply affects collective identities: it is not that collective identities did not exist in pre-modern times; but the character of collective identities changes as a result of two characteristically modern processes (Kaviraj 2010). The first of these are the distinctive cognitive apparatuses of modern societies; and the second are the peculiar features of modern state-power. This argument is misunderstood at times. Some suggested that I claimed pre-modern people had no collective identities, or did not have techniques for large counting. My argument was different. In pre-modern times states existed but they lacked both the incentives and the cognitive apparatuses to produce large projects of counting—like the modern census and territorial mapping. More significantly, the production of knowledge regarding spaces and populations seeped into ordinary people’s consciousness and everyday political conduct in modern times. Some people may be innumerate, but they would know of the existence of majorities and minorities, and more crucially, they would know about how to do politics with this knowledge. People do not need to possess the techniques of counting to be affected in their political and social lives by the consequences of political counting. Two other supplementary arguments were involved in the discussion. In pre-modern contexts, social agents would stress different attributes of their social selves context-dependently. In given contexts an individual might emphasize his identity as carpenter, or as a Bengali- speaker, or as a Vaisnava; and rarely would his inclusion in a particular political principality constitute a highly significant part of his identity. At least, it would not be the case that he would place this identity above all else— producing an inflexible ranking of his identity attributes and placing his state-citizenship at the top. Associated with this was another suggestion that some modern cultural processes—like the rise of print—produced a deep standardizing and homogenizing effect—erasing gradually a world of frontiers and replacing it by a world of linear boundaries. It can be pointed out, correctly, that a pre-modern world of frontiers, less categorical conceptions of political identity still lurks in the interstices of the social world; but there can be no doubt that the modern categorical identity produced by processes of enumeration enjoys a dominance in modern times. Large identities like the Muslim umma— the worldwide religious community of Muslims, or the Persianate literary culture inhabited by Persian, Indian and Central Asian literati, or sectarian identities like Vaisnavas or Saivas—of course existed in pre-modern times and were entirely intelligible to their inhabitants, but the main suggestion was that the enumeration processes initiated by the modern state converted them into more ‘objectified’ identity groups. Bernard Cohn (1996) suggested that this objectification meant fixing them permanently and clearly in

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the minds of their members; my concerns were more political. I stressed the fact that these identities became comprehensive, abstract and agentive. It became increasingly possible to conceive of these identities as comprehensive: when there was talk of Muslims, it more seriously included in its ambit literally all Muslims, not a local, specific, or contextually delimited group. Obviously, such comprehensive communities needed to be abstract in the specific sense in which Benedict Anderson (1991) spoke of nations as imagined communities. The most significant consideration for an understanding of politics is their agentive character. They designated not groups of people who could fall under some specific description, but groups which putatively acted as single collective actors. Under this altered optics of belonging, agency and responsibility, it becomes possible to be fluent in the deadly languages of modern hatred. Muslims are seen to have destroyed the towers at the World Trade Centre, in retaliation for indignities that Americans had heaped on the populations of the Middle East. It is pointless to show that this language uses an improbably expanded notion of political agency and moral responsibility, or that it does not allow for a slope of agency and culpability inside the hateful collectivities. It is the powerful, easy, incendiary, contagious prose of global politics; and it is a typical product of the cognitive, communicative, political conditions of modernity.

On Spatial Imaginaries

Politics

8 In this outline of historical change one highly significant element is missing. In this form, the story appears to be entirely one of explicit or subtle coercion—by states or elites who capture and control political power. But this is misleading: the power of elites, at least in the colonial and postcolonial historical worlds, is not simply the power of coercion. In colonial times, power is not in an unfragmented way in their hands. They certainly wield power in society, especially in non-political sectors of social life, and in cultural spheres; but overt institutional political power is not in their control. Indigenous elites certainly absorb and deploy what Charles Taylor (2003) has called an entire range of ‘modern social imaginaries’. In colonial historical contexts in particular it is crucial to remember that political power of the indigenous elites is initially constituted through the formation of a nationalist imaginary rather than institutional power of the state. It is the emergence of the ideal of modern nationalism that produces the strange love of the land that marks modern political discourse, and creates an entirely unprecedented connection between fixed political space and a powerful emotion of inhabitance. Poetry invariably plays a critical role in creation of this affect, reflected in the urge of all modern states to set their pretensions to glory to music in the national anthem. I shall now turn to the history of the creation of this unprecedented and quite unnatural emotion in colonial India. Despite the apparent naturalness of the uplifting gestures by athletes on the Olympic podium, of soldiers saluting their flags, and the ubiquitous display of this emotion in public stages, historically there was nothing ‘natural’ about the emotion that attaches people to space.

9 It follows from my previous argument that this emotion of attachment to a state could not arise in pre-modern conditions. States were often in control of spatially immense

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empires; but their territories were not sufficiently stable to even propose, let alone effectively create, this kind of emotional connection. Empire states, which were the common form of political organization before the European invention of the nation- state, simply could not produce a comparable emotion. Yet there were other conceptions of spaces and communities of people that were available for patterns of social action. Despite sharp sectarian divides, Hindu communities shared texts, styles of religious observance, pilgrimage circuits, which defined a recognizable space for them. Clearly, Muslim communities conceived of various kinds of shared spaces. They recognized an abstract Muslim world community confirmed by arrangements for haj pilgrimages supported by Islamic rulers, like the Mughals. Also the travels of individuals like Ibn Battuta (1304-1337) evidently showed they had a clear conception of an Islamicate world that stretched from North Africa to Java. We can find a sense of a similar ‘world’ in the sociological reflections of Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406). A Persianate cosmopolis flourished till the 18th century spanning Persia, Central Asia and North India through which authors, works and political adventurers travelled freely in search of fortune. This could not have happened if the relevant agents and social groups did not regard these as recognizable spaces where they expected to be understood, appreciated and welcomed. But the effective verb for their relationship with those spaces would be ‘to know’ rather than ‘to own’. Besides, the knownness of the spaces was related to specific functions or purposes. Sufi religious figures often travelled from Persia or Khorasan to settle down in India. Afghan military groups were involved in political warfare down to the times chronicled in the Seir Mutaqherin in the 18th century (see 2006 edition). There is however a fundamental difference between familiarity and ownership. Several features of this world are noteworthy for our analysis of spatial history. First, the spatial conceptions/pictures/images were frontiered, not bordered. One region of literary style or political control ended and another began rather approximately and tentatively; not like modern frontiers in linear boundaries across a map of objectified space. Bernier (2011 [1672]) records in his Travels his surprise at meeting ambassadors from the imperial Chinese court who were utterly vague about the precise limits of their empire and that of the Mughals. Second, this was itself partly due to the instability of political control over territory. By the fickle fortune of military conquests, territories of imperial states expanded and contracted like a concertina in very short periods. This instability denied the rulers the opportunity to establish a firmly common culture; and to the populace the time to develop intense political loyalty. In any case, the nature of pre-modern political authority precluded the possibility that people would regard this loyalty as a loyalty to their collective self—the crucial element in nationalist thinking. Ordinary communities in agricultural societies learnt the fine art of living with their heads down to allow the storms of political strife to pass overhead with minimal damage. Basically, the conditions of political life simply did not allow the kind of stable connection between bounded territories and identifiable sedentary populations required for the development of the poetry of spatial affection. Finally, and critically, the boundaries of spaces were not so final and impermeable. Boundaries of different types of spaces did not coincide—the spaces of culture, economic activity, political control, educational styles were not the same as the boundary of political power. Spaces of different activities were differently configured. Pre-modern political regimes did not produce the decisive container effect of modern sovereign states. Whatever is a significant form of social activity today, it is bounded by the borders of the sovereign state. Before modernity, societies lived in a fundamentally

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different configuration of spatial structures. An ancillary effect of this re-arrangement was the slow acknowledgement—not always without resentment and dissatisfaction—of the role of the state as the ultimate producer of rules and disciplines for all fields of social life. Emergence of sovereign states did not merely alter the nature of relations between states in the international arena; it was the most significant alteration of the relation between political power and the ‘internal’ spheres of social activities of all kinds. Consequently, the definition of politics changed: instead of being diverse patterns of activities by which rulers sought to keep and expand their power, and equally diverse ways in which ordinary people tried to cope with their exactions, it slowly turned into the name of the activity that dealt with a restructured form of power—with much tighter conceptions of the relations between the rulers and the ruled—keeping this container as an inescapable part of the furniture of social existence. The pre-modern configuration of non-coincident structures of space— whether the space of cultural connection, or of religious life, or economic or commercial regionality—passed irreversibly. In terms of the lives of ordinary people, it signaled the end of the pre-modern world of graded intensity of recognition, neighborliness and inhabitance.

Poetry

10 We tend to forget that living is a partly lyrical activity. It takes imagination to inhabit a space, not just a material submission to its brute-fact features. There is usually a subtle connection between the language of material necessity and the language of lyrical emotion: we should not forget again that the refinements of poetry become possible by working on distinctions that really exist. The Eskimos are said to have thirty-one different words for various kinds of snow. I realized only after coming to live in England why the English language had so many words for what we in our unrefined tropical language simply called brishti (rain). Given the historical conditions of pre- modernity it is not surprising that there were no anthems to the Mughal Empire, or a song celebrating the Persianate literary sphere, or a military tune taking pride in the very mixed soldiery of the Mughal or Sikh rulers. Soldiers laid down their lives in the service of the armies in which they fought; but it is doubtful they viewed this as sacrifice in the emotional cause of a watan, or an inviolable but imperiled motherland.1 Thus the emergence of this strange love of the land—which had no precedent in earlier history, or could not have been said to spring naturally from the human breast—is an interesting historical question. We have to provide an historical account of how something so utterly unnatural became so utterly taken for granted.

11 There is an unnecessary controversy about the historical sequence of the relation between the nation and the state; partly compounded by the fact that the nation is a sentiment largely intangible, and the state is a complex of institutions that are relatively easy to date with precision. It is correspondingly harder to decide when a sentiment of nationalism arose, much easier to date a process of state formation. Ernest Gellner (2006) contributed to this controversy by pointing out that although it is more reassuring to nationalists to think that a sense of nationalism arose first and demanded and realized a state, in fact, in European history generally sovereign states were formed by powerful rulers, and within those increasingly sturdy containers, a single education system slowly prepared a singular culture which self-celebrates its community as the nation. So there is an—almost necessary—inversion between the imagined sequence of

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nation > state, and the historical sequence of state > nation. The controversy was fuelled by his remark that the ‘historical sense’ that accompanies nationalism is usually ‘fraudulent’, which showed a glimpse of an excessively objectivist understanding of history. 12 In India, historical conditions proved more complex, giving some credence to both sequences. I have argued elsewhere that the idea of India in a political sense was not a discovery as Nehru’s titled implied (2002 [1946]), but an invention of the 19th century. It required as a condition the firm control over territories that British colonial rule established over the Indian subcontinent, though the concertina effect continued in territories that lay in the North-East, Burma, and North-West of the empire. Subjection to an identical administrative and political system of sovereignty was reflected in the creation of a common education system producing similar cultural effects. British colonial discourse of course stressed the indispensability of the colonial frame for this unity, and claimed that when this iron frame was removed, ‘India’ would fall apart reverting to its pre-modern plurality of political units. But slowly the experience of common subjection to colonial rule produced a sentiment of resentment among Indians. I have argued before that Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay’s (1838-1894) literary works played a defining role in the coalescence of this sentiment. Drawing from three entirely disjointed discursive traditions, he produced the defining figure of the Motherland worshipped with a new kind of emotion of tremulous intensity in his song Vande Mataram (1882). Pre-modern culture contained discrete discourses which celebrated the beauty of nature, illustrated by Kalidasa’s (5th century C.E.) poetry, the religious traditions of worship of the figure of Shakti in the beneficent form of Durga or the avenging form of Kali; and it also had purely mundane terms of desa or ksetra which referred emotionlessly to physical space or territory reflected in Sanskrit terms like Kuruksetra (the territory of the Kurus) or Sauviradesa (the country of the Sauviras) which contained no affective surplus beyond a simple physical reference. It is essential to point out, in analyzing this mixture, that although the two other discourses had association of distinctive affects, these were separate and unrelated. Kālidāsa’s nature poetry in the Meghaduta (‘The Cloud Messenger’) or the Rtusamhara (‘A Round of Seasons’) exhibited a highly sophisticated taste for literary presentation of nature— entirely literary, and entirely secular, without any hint of religious devotion. It lacked any suggestion of people belonging to the land or the land to the people. The devotional attitude towards Shakti—though intense—had nothing to do with a sense of space, territory, human inhabitance—not to speak of any form of political belonging. Thus, it is true that these three separate discursive elements existed in earlier culture; but Bankim’s combination of these three into a combustible fusion was an entirely innovative literary act. In the original song itself there is an innovative combination of redirection of worshipfulness towards the land. Now she is re-imaged as Mother-land to whom the fierce devotion appropriate to the Mother-goddess could be re-directed. The characteristics of this Mother are not the conventional godly qualities of sustenance, protective power, kindness and affection; but natural features—being endowed with ‘good’ water, ‘good’ fruits, cooled by the gentle breezes of spring, greened by abundant crops, whitened by nights of the full moon, ornamented by flowering trees—entirely ungrammatical qualities to attribute to a figure of traditional Godliness. The traditional Goddess was—in principle—a protector of all mankind, particularly of those who have sought her protection. The new Motherland deity is a fiercely parochial and partial goddess: she bestows her affection indiscriminately to all

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her children; not to others. The second unusual feature is the resonating emphasis on the inclusion of the population, her children, in herself, with a cascading repetition of large numbers. This is not merely true of the original song, Vande Mataram; numerous imitative compositions, which mirrored and multiplied this new sentiment, and quoted the phrase, stressed the same numerical and aggregative impulse. A Tagore song, composed soon after, went:2 Ek-i sutre bandhiyachi sahasra-ti man Ek-i kaje sanmpiyachi sahasra jivan Vande Mataram Vande Mataram We have stitched a thousand minds together in a single thread We have devoted a thousand lives to a single (common) task Vande Mataram, Vande Mataram. 13 Clearly, the song has succeeded in working an astonishing transformation: it is in the process of converting a religious chant into a political slogan.

14 After this first, founding moment, this new sentiment suddenly had acquired the initial elements of an affective language; and as political nationalism started to expand, literary productions in this language multiplied exponentially, with a wide range of poets of varying degrees of talent composing patriotic poetry. Audience response to this genre tended to not be exacting: what readers and singer wanted was more the intensity of patriotism than poetic quality. Within a surprisingly short time, this new genre developed an immense corpus. Two trends are notable in the further historical career of nationalist poetry. First, Bankim’s original composition was intense in its language, but it was not in every sense a poem of excess. It did not take long for nationalist poetry to find the path of exaggeration in celebration of the collective self. A song composed by a contemporary of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), Dwijendra Lal Roy (1863-1913), declared India, accordingly, the finest place in the world—a staple of all nationalist poetic tropes: Dhana dhanye pushpe bhara amader ei vasundhara Ihar majhe ache desh ek sakal desher sera Se je svapna diye tairi se desh smriti diye ghera. In this bounteous earth, filled with wealth, food and flowers, There is land that is the finest of all: That land is made of dreams and bounded by memory.3 15 Parallel to the poetic and lyrical elaboration of this image began a visual—iconic figuration of the Motherland by various schools of paintings. In paintings too we find an entirely parallel tendency towards excess and mood of suspended violence towards others. The gradual centrality of the trope of invincibility and a capacity for violence against enemies develops through an interesting process which requires separate elaboration. Initially, violence and brutality are seen as defining characteristics of the images of others—the enemies, oppressors and aggressors against the peaceable nation. Oppression requires rebellion, injustice requires requital, and these acts presuppose strength. Slowly, the Mother acquires features of violence to act against her assailants. Through the constantly transactive dynamic between the literary and visual arts, the initial visualization of the figure of the Motherland was portrayed by Abanindranath Tagore of the Bengal School. Influenced by techniques of Japanese painting, this early figure came out as ethereal, non-violent, carrying the associations of beneficence from the literary depiction by Bankim, entirely subtracting the militant, potentially violent features. As the visual image became more popular, it tended to incorporate more pronounced iconic features of Hindu martial goddesses, often riding an animal as a

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vahana (a deity’s vehicle or mount), and her warlike characteristics were correspondingly enhanced. In calendar art, which is a true mark of the popularization and simultaneous banalization of an image, the figure is often superimposed on a geographic map of India, and invested with features of grandeur and power—like an ostentatious crown and an array of weapons in her arms.4

16 Patriotic poetry soon became common in all Indian vernaculars, with compositions from a large number of political poets. Two of Tagore’s poems later became national anthems for India and Bangladesh. Other major poets too composed patriotic songs, most famously Mohammad Iqbal’s popular Tarana-i-Hindi [Anthem of the People of Hindustan; 1904]. Not surprisingly, figures like Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883-1966), the founder of modern Hindu nationalism, also composed similar poems to express more intense forms of the modern emotion. What was important in this wave of poetic composition was not the quality of the poetry, but the ubiquity of the sentiment. Poetry is the specialized language of the sacred, almost a dialect of sacrality. Prose could ordinarily present mere arguments; poetry elicited emotions. The nationalist sacralization of the land, its elevation, from a mundane expanse of material territory to the lyrical space to which people could attach with an intense filial affect, was accomplished primarily by the shift to the language of poetry and music. Despite the music and the poetry, however, nationalism remained a deeply political project with all the attendant difficulties of political power. Nationalist art expressed a dream of a nation, but in the colonial context, it was a nation that dreamed of becoming free, in less lyrical translation—of becoming a state. Thus this lyricism and poetry were always destined for eventual frustration, as ultimately, when political independence arrived, nationalist politics became inescapably involved in the deadly business of borders, and the finalist, decisive nationalist stamping of people as citizens. Particularly the brutal reality of partition devastated the tranquil symmetries of the lyrical idyll, and replaced it by a ferocious scramble for land. In a supreme irony, territorial divisions were often ultimately decided by low-level British officials untouched by the poetry of emotional inhabitance. Political reality made an utter mess of earlier dreams. Iqbal’s sare jahan se accha celebrated Hindustan hamara [better than the entire world is our India], though he later advocated a separate state of Pakistan, though the song continued to resound with the lines: mazhab nahi sikhata apas me bair rakhna [faith does not teach us to bear enmity towards each other]. Tagore’s Jana gana mana [Thou Art the Ruler of the Minds of All People, 1911], eventually the Indian anthem, included Sindhu, which incongruously formed an integral part of Pakistan. Even the bucolic invocation of Bengal in sarthaka janama amar janmechi ei deshe [blessed is this life that I have been born in this land] is troubled by the division of ‘my Golden Bengal’ being cut into two states. Dreams of a nationalist future and the reality of independent states collided without any resolution. Understandably, all states in the region set to the task of creating appropriate vehicles for their new politically inviolate territories by commissioning new poetry or editing old ones. Interestingly, in both India and Pakistan, songs to extol the sacrifices of martyrs in the repeated wars were composed—but these enjoyed more transient and fragile popularity. The spontaneous connection that dreams and poetry had with the futuristic nation could hardly be established with the institutional materiality of successor states.

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Vestigial presence of the pre-modern

17 Even in the period of high nationalism, there existed strands of thinking that were often sharply critical of militant patriotism. Authors have already noted that two of the great figures of Indian nationalism, Tagore and Gandhi, were deeply mistrustful of nationalist sentiment, as they observed development of nationalist paranoia in Europe and its slide into the utter inhumanity of warfare. Both men warned against an imitation of European-style nationalism centered on the state. On the Islamic side, Iqbal was alarmed by the prospect of an introduction of European-style nationalism in India’s highly diverse society; 5 and warned on the other side against what he called ‘Arab imperialism’.6 Alarmed by the strand of excess in Bengali patriotic poetry, Tagore began to compose some highly uncharacteristic ‘patriotic’ songs which deplored the nation’s ability to overcome deep exclusions. For example, the poem Bharat-tirtha said: Rana-dhara bahi jay-gan gahi unmad kalarabe Bhedi maru-path giri-parbat jara esechila sabe Tara mor majhe sabi biraje keha nahe nahe dur Amar sonite rayeche dhvanite tar-i bicitra sur All those who came down the runnels of wars, chanting songs of victory, amidst an insane tumult, making their way through mountains and deserts, they all exist inside me, there is not one who is distant; My blood throbs/resonates with the rich music of their diversity] (translation by the author). 18 In the 19th and early 20th centuries, a particular strand of nationalists began to argue that there was a long-term tendency in Indian history towards ‘unity in diversity’. This became, for understandable reasons, the state ideology of post-independent India, and degenerated inevitably into a cliché. For equally understandable reasons, initially Pakistan presented a self-image of a more united, homogeneous nation of South Asian Muslims. But the stubborn fact of the sociology of diversity against the integrationist demands of the modern state has remained an imaginative difficulty for both states. In both cases the actual politics of the everyday have deployed two kinds of political resources to deal with the problem of identity. State-nationalism everywhere is a daily referendum: so states need techniques by which they remind and exhort individuals to organize their identity-attributes in the ‘right way’, giving privilege to their attribute of citizenship, placing that identity-mark above everything. Despite the existence of explicit state institutions that emphasize citizenship, in actual social life both politicians and ordinary people depend on and return to the repertoire of graded connection and neighborliness inherited from a very long pre-modern tradition. We could probably advance a stronger argument. Through long periods of experimentation in Indian history, through a social learning process, empire states fashioned a logic of accommodative relation between political power and popular identities. Empire-states were primarily based on a logic of subsumption,7 allowing both identities and authority at a higher spatial scale to subsume those at lower levels. The Mughal Empire, the last instance of a pre-modern empire-state in South Asia, exhibited this logic in its states practices, and often, in public debates and statements, its leading figures sought to articulate a theory of this structure. Colonial history presented a fundamentally different model of the European nation-state to the imagination of local elites. Familiarity and desire for the quite different European model of sovereign nation-

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states instigated sections of these political elites to try to emulate that structure, based on the logic of sovereignty and cultural homogeneity. Conceptions of radical modernism in India, and of an Islamic state in Pakistan and Bangladesh have periodically mobilized that utopia of sovereignty. In actual political and social life, people depend much more on long-standing traditions of cultural pluralism—which deploys the pre-modern techniques of graded similarity and neighborliness. Social peace in the existing states of South Asia depends on practices of everyday life drawn from pre-modern times to a much greater degree than we ordinarily admit.

The ideas of South Asia

Statist conceptions

19 I would like to turn briefly to the ‘idea’ of South Asia and its discontents. The idea of ‘South Asia’ exists today in two very different versions. As academics we are familiar with an academic conception of South Asia which emerged typically in the 1950s American academia, driven by the requirements of US foreign policy in the postwar world. This optic aggregated spaces from a geopolitical point of view, disregarding political and cultural differences—which may be significant for their inhabitants, but unimportant for the framing of American strategy. There is considerable literature on the history of this notion which shows how a term prompted by military calculation slowly morphed into a respectable disciplinary entity in academic scholarship. Gradually its geopolitical connotation was replaced by a different content, as postcolonial states grew and required more serious academic scrutiny. There was a concern to avoid study of the region exclusively centered on India, or one of the other post-colonial states. I am skeptical of the cognitive advantages of this move—whether study of India as part of a South Asian department substantially changes how scholars perceive the object of their enquiry. It should encourage more comparative research; but comparative analysis is plagued by an ambiguity in its self-definition. There is still a great deal of uncertainty about whether the starting point should be the historic similarity of the societies or the dissimilarities of their contemporary political systems. 8

20 An entirely different approach to a pragmatic conception of South Asia could be found in the tentative, intermittent attempts by the states to gingerly approach proposals of regional cooperation—on the lines of European integration. There are obvious arguments for the advantages of economic and market integration, or educational and cultural exchange, and the possibility that establishment of such connections and interdependencies might reduce political tension. These initiatives have stuttered through the recent decades, and have been plagued by anxieties about Indian dominance. Compared to the relative successes of Europe, South Asia has failed to evolve even a prosaic idea of political convenience.

Evading the states

21 These disappointments are inherently related to a statist perspective on identity. We are forced to reflect on the immensity of transformation that modern politics has brought to the way people cognize and practice space. Through its long history what

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we now can call ‘South Asia’ was a space that was intimately recognized, but formally unnamed. It was a vast expanse which contained hundreds of political formations in which neither the states made exclusive claims on its subjects, nor did the people on their states. Technology made it hard to move easily; and oppressive social structures often made mobility impossible. But the political regimes did not act like containers or cages. Borders were shifting, ineffective and porous. It is remarkable how the power of the modern state—which can use a form of violence that is implicit, not obvious – has created containers for identity and effective circulation of political acts, of economic goods and cultural goods. State boundaries have made two cities like Lahore and Amritsar, separated by a few miles, much more distant than Kolkata and Chennai. Under modern political conditions, it is exceptionally hard to evade the state.

22 Yet, it can be argued that, as an historical project, in some ways the containerization of singularized state identities in our region has not entirely succeeded. This is true in at least two ways. First, the creation of the states of India and Pakistan has not successfully erased the identity pluralities of previous history. States have been forced to different degrees to come to terms with internal pluralism. Second, in many respects, the pre-modern disjunction between different kinds of spatiality—of politics, economic connections, cultures and literary public spheres—has survived. Identities have remained stubbornly plural, and attempts to force them into a single stable hierarchy sanctioned by the state failed. Commerce notoriously evades political control. The difficulty of policing the Bangladesh-India border is that there is an underlying economic regionality that crosses the boundary. Laborers cross borders driven by economic incentives. The populations of these states have historical cultural commonalities. Urdu literary culture straddles the boundary between Pakistan and India; just as Bengali culture does between India and Bangladesh. Different socialities of space find ways of evading the brutal enforcement of state borders. State borders and efforts at containerization are frustrated as much by historical forces as by forces of the future. Globalization processes have added to the difficulty of maintaining the boundaries as the impermeable limits of all forms of activity. Still, there is no denying of the dominance of states and borders in contemporary political practice. It is highly unlikely that there will be a tarana9 for South Asia as a poetically felt space in the near future. But if we go back to the initial argument about two senses of space and inhabitance, we can observe a robust presence not of a modern South Asia created by the collaboration of states, but of a vestigial pre-modern South Asia present in social transactions. 23 Let me illustrate this by a Tariq Ali’s interview. In an interview on Al-Jazeera television he was asked to recount his long experience of living in Britain, and the interviewer questioned him particularly about hardships on first arriving in England. He answered that he was revolted by the food served in college; and remarked to someone that ‘we do not serve food of this sort even to animals back in our place’. This sense of ‘our place’ was not merely vivid but real. It was not an act of memory; but also a reference to the present, not just a remark about culinary taste. Historians like Braudel have noted that material cultures have the longest temporal rhythms, and are the hardest to shift. It is amusing how the powers of the state have been ineffective in partitioning material life, particularly aspects like cuisine—which represents one of the fundamental ways in which humans interact with nature. Despite the inflamed and militarized frontier between our two countries, any culinarily un-cosmopolitan Indian

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would immediately understand what Tariq Ali meant and sympathize. Theorists have neglected to notice that food, as much as commerce, tends to seep out under the boundaries of states. Movements of culinary taste have proved impossible to control by stringent rules of immigration. When students arrive in alien cultures, they always tend to congregate along these lines of common culture. Commercial centers like Southall in London or Gare du Nord in Paris stand witness to the shared material cultures of South Asian peoples. Remarkably, when states do not intervene, cultural commonality tends to reassert itself. Isolated in a surrounding culture which ignores or devalues them, South Asians rediscover their shared relation to the natural world. Bhudev Mukhopadhyay (1827-1894), a 19th century Bengali social theorist, argued that in people who live in the same material world history produces strong filaments of samaduhkhasukhata—identical experience of pleasure and pain. Of course, this was a travesty of the term’s original meaning in the Gita, which exhorted wise people (the sthitaprajna) to consider pleasure and pain as identical. But its new meaning—in Bhudev’s hand—captures something vital in historical experience—to travelers from the subcontinent (which is our embarrassed word for invoking the continued presence of this pre-modern historical space) Southall cuisine produces delight and British food despair. Culture has ways of escaping the invigilation by states, and of creeping out of the containers of modern power. If we can overcome the comprehensive devaluation of all things pre-modern, we could become less embarrassed in celebrating these connections—which are real and deeply felt, though unlike nationalism, they lack the endorsement of magnificent poetry. Though it is possible to suggest that in the sincere appreciation of ‘classical music’, sung often through the words of medieval poets like Kabir, we still have an equally powerful poetic celebration of pre-modern neighborliness. In those words, and in the wordless expressivity of instrumental music, we may have the half-forgotten anthems of a wistful common culture of the space called South Asia.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anderson, Benedict (1991) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso.

Bernier, François (2011) Travels in the Mogul Empire, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [1672].

Cohn, Bernard (1996) Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge: the British in India, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Gellner, Ernest (2006) Nations and Nationalism, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, [1983].

Iqbal, Muhammad (2013) Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, Stanford: Stanford University Press, [1930].

Jalal, Ayesha (1995) Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

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Kaviraj, Sudipta (2010) The Imaginary Institution of India: Politics and Idea, Columbia University Press, New York.

Kaviraj, Sudipta (2003) ‘The Postcolonial State in India’, in Quentin Skinner & Bo Strath (eds.), States and Citizens, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Khan Tabatabai, Gholam Hossein (2006) Seir Mutaqherin: Or View of Modern Times, Being a History of India, from the year 1118 to the year 1194 A.H. (1781-82 A.D.), Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Publications.

Nehru, Jawaharlal (2002) The Discovery of India, Oxford: Oxford University Press, [1946].

Pinney, Christopher (2004) Photos of the Gods: The Printed Image and Political Struggle in India, London: Reaktion/Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Sen, Amartya (2006) Identity and Violence: the Illusion of Destiny, New Delhi: Penguin Books.

Taylor, Charles (2003) Modern Social Imaginaries, Durham: Duke University.

Uberoi, Patricia (2006) Freedom and Destiny: Gender, Family and Popular Culture in India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

NOTES

1. Despite the anachronistic poetic redeployment of Rana Pratap or Shivaji in the cause of Hindu nationalist history. 2. Rabindranath Thakur, Gitabitan [Akhanda], Visvabharati, Kolkata, 1970, 818: the section is appropriately called Jatiya Sangit (Songs of the Nation). 3. Dwijendra Lal Roy also composed intense nationalist plays like Mebar Patan (Fall of Mewar). 4. See Christopher Pinney (2004) and Patricia Uberoi (2006) on calendar art. 5. See Iqbal’s speech to the Muslim League conference in Allahabad in 1930. 6. Iqbal (2013 [1930]). 7. See for the extended argument about subsumption, Sudipta Kaviraj (2003). 8. It is common to emphasize the political differences between India and the other South Asian societies; but a different argument can be found in Ayesha Jalal (1995). 9. Like Iqbal’s Tarana-i-Hindi (see above).

ABSTRACTS

In this paper I shall try to explore how the idea of space in what we call ‘South Asia’ today got reconfigured by modernity. I shall explore three spatial conceptions of South Asia—strategic, geographic and cultural; and I shall try to explain the patterns of space-thinking underlying each one of them, show their connection with modernity, and observe why and how South Asia is still not a space that can be conceived in nationalistic or state terms as a space of belonging. Two political processes of modernity introduce a new kind of space-making—nationalism and state- formation. In the paper, I shall follow some significant points of this dual process—of the emergence of new state structures—of British colonial India—and its animation of the rise of variant forms of nationalism—in 19th century Bengal, in the Islamic imagination of the 20 th

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century, and eventually through the institution of state-nationalisms in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. These state forms and gestalts of affect make it impossible to think of South Asia as a space of emotional inhabitance—like India or Pakistan. Yet, despite this state-nationalist borders of consciousness, there still exist long-term historical commonalities which people spontaneously practice and enjoy—in food, material culture, literature, art, music—which have a deep and long history. This marks peoples of this region (not states) by a common intelligibility which is reflected in their easy commingling when outside their countries, and free of the pressures of state nationalism, or in artistic public spheres.

INDEX

Keywords: Bengali poetry, identity, modernity, nationalism, South Asia, state

AUTHOR

SUDIPTA KAVIRAJ

Professor of intellectual history and Indian politics, Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies, Columbia University

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Poetics and Politics of Borderland Dwelling: Baltis in Kargil

Radhika Gupta

‘What the map cuts up, the story cuts across’ (de Certeau 1984: 129) 1 As India awoke to its freedom at the stroke of the midnight hour in August 1947, whilst millions in Punjab and Bengal fled in caravans (kafilas) and trains to seek refuge in their new homes, the fate of many others remained unsealed for a long time after. In the far north-western region of Kashmir, people in the areas of Kargil and Baltistan were late wakers to the stirrings of the Partition. Elders in Kargil recall that the force of events struck them only when the Gilgit Scouts (a paramilitary force originally raised by the British in the Gilgit Agency), which had rebelled against the decision of the Hindu Dogra Maharaja of Kashmir to accede to India, reached Ladakh in October 1947. According to local historians in Kargil it was only when the Indian army, dispatched from the plains, repulsed the Scouts out of Ladakh in May 1948 that people in this region realized they were henceforth a part of India. Ladakh wazarat (province) was sundered, with Kargil and Leh incorporated into the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir and Baltistan into the Northern areas of Pakistan or the present day Pakistan administered region of Gilgit-Baltistan. The destiny of people in Ladakh (Leh and Kargil) became entwined with that of disputed Kashmir, to which India and Pakistan lay claim even today. However, unlike some separatist movements in the Kashmir Valley that call for azadi (freedom) from India, people in Ladakh—both Muslims and Buddhists —have remained resolutely pro-India and strive to make their distinct political voice heard in the national mainstream. The reiteration of patriotic sentiments in a contentious ‘border’ location is also an important claim-making device used to garner political and developmental support from the central government in India. Yet hidden beneath this overt discourse is the more delicate balancing act between a politics of belonging to India and a poetics of longing for a space unfettered by geo-political barriers erected by the Partition, which is expressed through the circulation of cultural forms sustained by shared linguistic and religious histories. It is to this story that this article turns.1

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Perry-Casteñada Library Map Collection, University of Texas, Austin (http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/ kashmir.html).

2 With the Partition many fled to the ‘other’ side from the erstwhile Ladakh wazarat too. But scores of people also found themselves involuntarily left on one side or the other of the ‘line of control’ (LoC), the ‘cross-border dwellers’ (Rahman & van Schendel 2003), a category of people whose postcolonial predicaments remain relatively understudied in comparison with Partition refugees. Among them were the Baltis, descendants of traders from Baltistan, who settled in Kargil and Leh for business, and others who had migrated in search of labour work to other parts of North India. They suddenly found themselves on the ‘wrong’ side of the border, separated from their close kin and ancestral lands.

3 Unlike other borderlands in South Asia, particularly those that India shares with Nepal and Bangladesh, which are often porous and see both licit and illicit flows of people and goods across them,2 heavy policing, especially after the 1999 conflict with Pakistan, coupled with the natural barrier of the mountainous terrain permitted few border crossings between Kargil and Baltistan. Caught in the crossfire of political tension between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, legal travel to meet their kin across the border was impossible for Kargilis due to the difficulties in obtaining visas until the 1980s. Illegal travel was far too dangerous. Thus, areas such as Baltistan and Gilgit, through their very unattainability, acquired heightened emotive power in the Kargili imagination. Despite the impermeability of the border, people in Kargil, especially those who originated from the regions of Baltistan, Gilgit and Chilas that now lie in Pakistan, continued to maintain strong emotional and cultural links across it. From the late 1980s a few individuals from the Balti community in Kargil managed to obtain permission to travel to Baltistan to meet their kin. Narrations of these travels in Baltistan and objects carried back imaginatively recreate the borderland for those who have never been to the ‘other’ side. These stories acquire a life of their own through

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renditions by those who have neither experienced the Partition nor travelled to Baltistan and Gilgit. These renditions echo what Kabir (2013: 26) terms ‘post-amnesias’ whereby later generations explore places lost to them through ‘a combination of psychological and political imperatives’. They question, blur and transgress boundaries (Jackson 2002: 25). Imbued with joy, irony, sadness and humor, the stories are ‘structural in-betweens’ (ibid.), provoking a re-thinking of the region along pre- Partition borders. Some of the narratives, particularly those of cultural activists, try to promote the concept of ‘Greater Ladakh’.3 Though an imagined region that harks back to the territories encompassed by the Ladakh wazarat, it could not only be read as lending credence to the concept of South Asia but even going beyond it. It foregrounds the cultural coherence of the region that rests on trans-Himalayan contiguities of landscape, language, dietary habits, material culture and ethnicity, transcending the national cultural identities that India and Pakistan tried to create through a process of ‘mirror-imaging and misrecognition’ resting on the secular-Islamic dichotomy (Borneman 1992: 4). However, the vast majority, including cross-border dwellers, on both sides of the ‘LoC’, constantly calibrate this regional imagination with iterations of national belonging as integral to their political selves. Heightened patriotism in Kargil is couched in the language of Indian secularism. People in Kargil praise India’s secular ideology despite the awareness and experience of its obvious failures. This endorsement is especially provoked by sectarian violence across the border against Shi‘as in Gilgit-Baltistan. The majority of Kargilis, including the Baltis, are Twelver Shi‘a. I repeatedly heard that despite living in an Islamic state, Shi‘as in the Northern Areas of Pakistan are subject to oppression by the majority Sunnis, while they themselves can live and practice their religion relatively peacefully in India. 4 The Baltis in Kargil claim a strong sense of belonging to India while simultaneously longing for Baltistan. However, they have no desire to return to their ancestral homes in Baltistan. Their sense of rootedness in India is evident in statements such as ‘we would be happy to die here’, typifying the migrant or diasporic experience wherein dying in a place as opposed to being born there marks a sense of belonging (Ho 2006). On a more abstract level, a sense of belonging emerges out of kinship, nation-ness and citizenship (Borneman 1992). Baltis have struggled and got political membership in India but their kinship networks have been fragmented or amputated. They long to reunite families and meet their kin and friends on the other side. However, the difficulty of obtaining visas, the closure of overland travel routes and surveillance of those who do manage to travel by both the Indian and Pakistani state convert kinship into a political category. The deafness of the state to this creates a tension between the ‘geobody’ of the nation-state and the affective body of the citizen.4 Seemingly contradictory emotions of belonging and longing lend insight into the poetics and politics of borderland dwelling. Borderlands are not merely geographic or political but also ‘existential situations of being betwixt and between’ (Jackson 2008: 377). This is brought into sharp relief particularly through the stories of individuals, through biographical narrative. 5 Following a brief history of Balti settlement in Kargil, the first part of the article will discuss the poetics of longing for Baltistan. It is not merely literal poetry, a major form of cultural production exchanged across the border, which the ‘poetics of longing’ refers to. It is a phrase that expresses the poignancy of longing for the other side through evocations of landscapes and shared cultural histories that predate postcolonial geopolitical barriers in South Asia. This will be followed by a biography of

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a Balti intellectual in Kargil who has visited Baltistan. His personal narrative is a critical reflection on the social and cultural milieu on either side of the border, which I suggest could be read as a very subtle critique of politico-cultural ideologies of nation-making. The last part of the paper will discuss the politics of belonging to India. In the absence of a desire to return to Baltistan in any permanent way, the use of the word ‘exile’ by some Balti activists in Kargil is merely a poetic trope. It is the accrual of citizenship rights in India that underlines their political and cultural activism.

Balti settlement in Kargil

6 Balti is a generic term that is routinely used especially by the Buddhists in Ladakh to refer to all Shi‘a Muslims in the region (Grist 1998). However, the Baltis are a distinct community whose ancestors migrated from Baltistan to Kargil and Leh before the Partition. Most Baltis came to Kargil as traders and are still referred to as hatti-pa (shop keepers). Some are also descendants of preachers who came from Baltistan. Shi‘i Islam came to Kargil via Baltistan through the proselytization of preachers who travelled overland from Khorasan in the 17th century. In fact, most of the historically renowned religious teachers (‘ulama) in the region were Balti. Legendary among them is Shaykh Ali of Brolmo, under whom some of the most learned of the older generation of clerics in Kargil studied. His shrine (astana) in Brolmo village is visible from a rocky perch in the village of Hundarman, which was brought into Indian territory during the 1971 war with Pakistan. The shrine is prominent in the regional sacred geography of Shi‘a Muslims in Baltistan and Ladakh, and residents of Hundarman relate how people across the ‘border’ still come to light incense and candles on Thursday evenings and Friday (Jumma), making the shrine a symbol of emotional attachment for the other side.

7 Three villages in Kargil district—Hardas, Lato, and Karkichu—situated on the left bank of the Drass River, a couple of miles from the main Kargil town, are predominantly Balti. These villages came under the estate (jagir) of the Raja of Kharmang, a valley in the Skardu tahsīl. Baltistan was divided into the tahsīls of Skardu and Kargil in 1901; Kharmang was placed administratively under the Kargil tahsīl due its geographical proximity to Kargil. According to a Balti elder, the Raja brought people from Hamzigund and Singkarmo and settled them in what is present day Hardas, famous for superior quality helmund apricots. These villages provided a halting point for the Raja during his travels. In Kargil town itself, there are about five thousand Baltis, many from Kharmang, mostly living in a neighborhood called Balti Bazaar, one of the oldest bazaars in Kargil district. A well-known and much respected intellectual and poet, an ardent activist for the preservation of Balti culture, Sadiq Ali Sadiq, proudly told me in 2008 that his was the only family in Balti bazaar which remained ‘pure Balti’ as his children had married into families who were also descendants of people from his hometown Kharmang. There is a preference among elders that the young marry within the community. Thus, matches are even sought among Balti communities outside Kargil. A significant Balti settlement can be found in Khalsi Gate near Dehradun in Uttaranchal. They too are cross-border dwellers, descendants of Balti labourers in Uttar Pradesh and Himachal who got stuck on the Indian side after Partition. Kargil bazaar has several ‘Balti dhabas’ (cheap restaurants) run by Baltis from Dehradun who migrate seasonally in the summer months in search of a livelihood.

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8 A part of Kharul, the summer capital of the erstwhile king of Kharmang, lies in present- day Kargil, en route to Hundarman village. Two Balti interlocutors pointed this out to me with much excitement when we visited Hundarman. I was told that we were now on the Kargil-Skardu road. They also mentioned that at certain places the road had even been widened in anticipation of it being opened. Yet the long-standing demands and pleas for opening the road remain unmet. A wood and steel bridge reconstructed from an old rope bridge by the Indian army in 2000 leads across the river to Hundarman. No vehicles are allowed beyond a certain point, which is guarded by an army picket. A stretch of the road before this point was within Pakistan till 1971. As we climbed up the steep path to the village, it appeared like a patch of dense green hanging over the river. When we crossed over to the other side and walked parallel to the river for a bit, one of my Balti respondents said emotionally, ‘Sometimes I feel like jumping into the river and flowing away into Pakistan with it’. His statement was a reference to the lament of the Balti community in particular, but also more widely among people in Kargil, of the refusal by the Indian and Pakistani states to re-open the Kargil-Skardu road. If the road were to open, Baltis going to meet their kin would not have to travel to Skardu via Delhi to Lahore through the Wagah border in Punjab or by air covering over 4,000 kilometers when Skardu is a mere day’s journey by the direct overland route from Kargil.

The Kargil-Skardu road

9 The road to Skardu from Kargil stands at the symbolic intersection of the poetics of longing and politics of belonging. For the Balti community the demand for opening the road is particularly emotional for it would facilitate travel to meet relatives more easily. However, they have not been the only ones campaigning for the road to be opened. It has also become a symbol of the sense of belonging afforded by the Indian state to people in Kargil as a whole in the context of regional politics. Kargilis argue that they proved their patriotic credentials during the 1999 Kargil war by not only alerting the Indian army of Pakistani intrusion, but also aiding soldiers on the high mountain terrain. Without local support, they argue, the Indian army, which later acknowledged this, would never have been able to win the war. Despite this, the Indian government has not opened the Kargil-Skardu road. A Balti interlocutor mentioned that a friend of his in Skardu had (in 2009) told him that 70 kilometers of a stretch of this road on the Pakistan side had already been macadamized. ‘This means’, he conjectured, ‘that it is India which is not opening the road, as opposed to the propaganda that the Pakistan government does not want it to open it’. The fact that phone calls cannot be made from the Indian side to Pakistan from Jammu and Kashmir but not the other way around and that many people from Kargil have been able to obtain visas to travel to Skardu, and not the other way round, might lend support to his argument. He rhetorically proclaimed, ‘This means that the Indian government does not treat us as their own’. He pointed to the disparity in the government opening the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road even though the people of the Kashmir Valley raise anti- national slogans, while the Kargil-Skardu road had remained closed despite Kargilis being patriotic citizens. He added that the Buddhists in Leh do not want the Kargil- Skardu road to be opened for communal reasons, fearing they will be out-numbered by Muslims. He lamented that opening the Kargil-Skardu road has nothing to do with religion; it is for purely sentimental reasons, so that family members separated from

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each other from the time of Partition may be able to meet. ‘Where does religion come into this?’ he asked. One Balti activist in his anger and disappointment said that in part the people of Kargil are to blame, for they do not raise protest slogans. He mentioned that in Baltistan an organization called the ‘Baltistan National Movement’, which has been advocating a return to ‘Greater Ladakh’ (Leh, Kargil and Baltistan), organized a protest march, but that the Kargilis are too scared. He added, ‘The Baltistan National Movement is so active that it even has a logo and a flag for Greater Ladakh’.

10 Despite their nationalist sentiments and overt endorsements of Indian secularism, the ambivalent relationship between the state and borderland dwellers becomes clear in the confusion and conjectures expressed in conversations on the Kargil-Skardu road. When a person asks, ‘Where does religion come into this?’, it reflects the biases of Indian secularism. The sentiments surrounding the road reiterate the fracture between the geo-body of the nation and the affective body of those who live on this contentious borderland. Furthermore, the long-standing desire for the Kargil-Skardu road to be opened among Baltis in Kargil often leads to a partial representation of the social and political realities in Baltistan. Thus, it is cultural movements in Baltistan lobbying for ‘Greater Ladakh’ that are talked about, rather than the more complicated nationalist sentiments and relationship with the Pakistani state that may be found among people in Baltistan. 11 The Baltis in Kargil are so close to Kharmang and Skardu and yet so far. I was struck in my conversations with them by the extent to which the landscape of Baltistan and Gilgit looms large in their imagination. Even people who have never had the opportunity to travel to Baltistan speak of the plains of Deosai, Rondu Valley, the forts at Shigar and Khaplu, the Sadpara Lake and the Maqpon Polo Ground in Skardu. During my visit to Hundarman three Baltis had a long discussion on places mentioned in Tarikh-e-Baltistan,5 one of the few histories of the region, saying, for instance, that forests existed in three places in Baltistan—Manthoka, Memush and Shing. Even places farther away in Gilgit such as Braldu and Astor figured in their mental mappings. 12 The closure of the Kargil-Skardu road has meant the closure of a pathway. The issue is not merely that it takes a longer time to get to Baltistan. Rather the cutting off of pathways, especially in the case of travel by air, leads to a flattening of the landscape and the experience of it. In his critique of the concept of space as being too abstract, Tim Ingold argues that life is ultimately lived and anchored in places. It is the ‘particularity of place’ which is central to sustaining a moral community defined by ‘networks of personal, genealogical, familial, and status relationships’, in contradistinction to the notion of territory which defines the geobody of a nation (Gilmartin 1998: 1083-84). Further, places are ‘delineated by movement, not by the outer limits to movement’ (Ingold 2011: 149). The closure of pathways converts wayfaring into transport. One could argue then that in having to take a circuitous route from Kargil to Baltistan, not only is territory divorced from the sense of place; something of the magic and immediacy of the landscape is also lost. However, in an ironic twist to Ingold’s argument on the usefulness of the concept of space, memories of the landscape are nurtured through virtual spaces. Young Baltis today enjoy the landscape through regular exchange of photographs, old and new, via the Internet through dedicated pages on Facebook and smartphone applications.6 They also connect with relatives and friends through online chatting. Yet, this can never replace the joy of meeting in person.

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13 With the closure of pathways and difficulties in obtaining visas Baltis sometimes look for their kin in third places such as the Hajj. Recognition of individuals still continues according to the traditional system in which families were classified into larger units defined by genealogy and reciprocity with the suffix pa added to the name. In Balti bazaar, for instance, there are four such families—Ghulam Beg-pa, rGyalu-pa, Mekhdan- pa and Hashim-pa. When people go on the Hajj they search for long-lost relatives from Pakistan by asking the name of the pa.

The pain of separation

14 In 2005 the International Association of Ladakh Studies held its biennial conference in Kargil. Two people from Baltistan travelled to Kargil for the first time since the Partition to participate in the conference. One of them was Ghulam Hasan Hasni,7 a poet much loved by people on both sides of the border. People in Kargil received him with adulation. The Baltis in particular were moved to the point of tears. Long sessions of poetry and laughter followed, running late into the summer nights. To convey the pain of separation from family and friends, a Balti writer, Master Sadiq Hardasi,8 related a story to me in connection with Hasni’s momentous visit to Kargil.

15 Hasni did not tell many people he was traveling to India fearing that he would lose face if he did not get a visa. But eventually he did. On his return to Baltistan, a young man called Ashraf on hearing that Hasni had been to Kargil got very upset. Hasni learned that Ashraf’s father’s sister lived in Hanu village in Kargil. His father had got stuck in Pakistan when he crossed over Hanu-la [pass] and was never able to meet his sister again. Ashraf was yearning for news of his phupi (aunt). Some letters had been exchanged many years ago, but they had lost track of her for a long time now. When Hasni learnt this he put Ashraf in touch with Master Sadiq on the internet. The two became friends and chatted online.9 Ashraf requested Master Sadiq to try and track down his aunt in Hanu. Through an acquaintance of his from Hanu, Master Sadiq made enquiries and learnt that Ashraf’s aunt was still alive, albeit not in good shape. She had lost one of her daughters some years ago. Then Master Sadiq himself went to Hanu and took pictures of the aunt and her family, which he sent to Ashraf. This made Ashraf extremely happy. Then one year Ashraf’s aunt passed away. When Ashraf heard the news he was sad, but he said he would not cry and not allow his father to cry either as he was so thankful that at least they had been able to reconnect with his aunt and had news of her passing away. He told Master Sadiq that he would organize a fatiha in his home in Skardu for his aunt. After this Ashraf stopped chatting with Master Sadiq. 16 According to Master Sadiq he receives ‘offline’ messages from him once in a while but knows that Ashraf will never chat with him again. He told me that he understands why —this is because Ashraf’s last link with Kargil, his aunt, is no more; ‘Such is the pain of separation and loss among those of the Balti community, who still have relatives across the border’. 17 There are numerous stories of families being broken up between the two sides of the border. Hajji Ali had travelled to India to trade salt leaving behind a pregnant wife. He got stuck in India when the Partition happened and the border closed in 1947. His wife had a son, but he had to send her a divorce, not being able to return to Skardu. Ghulam Hussain and his siblings got separated from their parents when Hundarman suddenly found itself part of India. His father was from Hundarman but was running a shop in

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Skardu; the children were studying in the primary school in Hundarman. Ghulam Hussain was able to visit Baltistan to meet his mother, who was still alive, in 2008. However, most Baltis have not been fortunate enough to be able to travel to Baltistan. Never able to return, they express a deep sense of loss for their lands, homes, relatives and friends. Take the case of Api Fatima, one of the last of the generation who experienced the Partition in 1947-1948. She was 73 years old when I met her in 2008 and passed away a couple of years later. From Gandus village in the Kharmang Valley, she came to Kargil at the age of 12 on getting married to a trader. She was never able to visit her natal family. Our meeting started off on a jovial note, with Api reminiscing about the way women in Kargil dressed in the older days. She pulled her shawl over her forehead to demonstrate how they observed proper hijab compared to the young girls today. She talked of the apple orchards in her village in Baltistan. As we were talking, her daughter cautioned me to not press her for too many memories for she was bound to get upset. A few years ago her elder sister in Pakistan sent her a video of her family, which made Api cry. Ever since, Api began collecting anything nice that she found in the hope of giving it to her sister one day (Gupta 2013). 18 Just as Api Fatima was yearning to give her sister many precious things from India, gifts carried back from Baltistan by those who manage to travel hold a heightened emotive value. A lady from Balti Bazaar had dressed especially for an outing to Hardas during the apricot season one summer. She pointed to her salwar-kameez to say it was made out of material her husband had brought back from Baltistan. On another occasion, her husband offered me a bowl of dried apricots saying I must try them as they were from Baltistan, where the best helmund apricots are grown. Yet another day, a different respondent even brought a collection of catalogues from a furniture shop in Skardu to show me their experiments with local material. Hasni himself gave some of us at the IALS conference in 2005 small pieces of jade as good luck charms, which many Baltis in Kargil told me were very precious. It is as if lost connections inhere in these objects. 19 Classical anthropological theory on the basic rules of exchange systems has taught us that societies exchange words, women and goods (Borneman 1992: 10). Besides facilitating the meeting of kin, demands for the opening of the Kargil-Skardu road are also made for facilitating trade, for the freer exchange of goods. Until the road opens people on both sides of the border will continue to attach added value to goods from the other side. For now they must remain content with the exchange of words. Indeed, for Baltis it is largely words that can be exchanged unfettered across the border. In the absence of travel, poetry and music bring both sides together. 20 It is not just with the elderly like Api Fatima, who has childhood memories, that Baltistan has an emotional resonance. A younger generation of Baltis holds equal enthusiasm for visiting and maintaining ties with their ancestral lands. However, their desire for Baltistan is underlined by something more than wanting to locate and meet family there. It is driven by a ‘thirst for our culture’, as a young Balti activist put it.

Balti adab

21 The Baltis in Kargil make claims of being the upholders of the classical culture of the region. There is no match for Balti adab (refinement, etiquette), they argue, for Balti is the ‘original’, ‘pure’ (asli) language of the region.10 Unlike the lingua franca, Purigi, which too is a dialect of classical Tibetan, Balti, they claim, has not been contaminated

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by Urdu words.11 Purigi activists contest this within a growing politicization of identity along ethnic lines in the region.12 They argue that Purigi is the ‘original language of the region’. As Master Hussain of Silmo village proclaimed, ‘I challenge the Baltis to show me even one poem without a single word of Urdu, Persian or Arabic in it’.

22 Balti adab finds its expression in a vibrant tradition of poetry. The repertoire extends from religious poetry (qasida, nauha, marsiya) to Persianate forms (ghazal, goshwara, diwan and bahr-e-taweel). 13 The origin of Balti majlis music in Baltistan is an important source of legitimacy, authenticating the small Balti community’s claim to being the upholders of high culture or adab as compared to Purigi in Kargil. Poets like Bashir Wafa and Septe Kalim, who have visited Baltistan, returned with stories extolling the literary culture of Baltistan. They reminisced about the special mushairas (poetry sessions) that were organized in their honor, lamenting the relative ‘shallowness’ of Kargil’s literary scene14. Recordings of these mushairas are watched with much eagerness by Baltis and others in Kargil, as are photograph albums of their visits. 23 In order to preserve their language and ethnic identity a younger generation of activists has produced music CDs of classical poetry set to pop music. These CDs are also sent to Baltistan via pilgrims and relatives (Magnusson 2011). Although competing with Bollywood music these albums are fairly popular in Kargil; I often heard them playing in local buses and shared taxis. Listening to old Balti qasidas and ghazals on Radio Skardu was a popular source of entertainment for the older generation and women who do not easily understand Urdu, until the enhanced 200 Kilo Watt (in 2005) of All India Radio in Kargil diminished the clarity of Radio Skardu. The sharing of poetry is an important example of the circulation of cultural forms across the border despite limited mobility. The majority of the poems are on romantic and everyday themes, not directly or necessarily expressing longing for the other side. Rather it is through the persistence of a shared cultural space that cuts across the border that the emotion and affect denied by the state find succor. The effort put in to maintain this cultural space speaks of the poetics of longing rather than the actual poetry itself. 24 Balti intellectuals in Kargil proudly maintain small personal libraries in which books brought back from Baltistan hold pride of place. A Balti from Hardas told me he brought back 80 kilos of books in 2012. Books from Baltistan are also often received by post and through relatives going on pilgrimage. These poets and writers sing high praises not only of contemporary poets like Hasan Hasni, but also memorialize old Balti writers like Ba Abbas, Mansoor and Mohaib, whose names cropped up frequently in our conversations. Despite the growing popularity of Urdu nauhas and marsiyas from Pakistan, people prefer to listen to and render older Balti poetry on the most solemn days of Muharram. Akhon Asgar Ali Basharat, a poet from Karkichu village, collected and compiled some of this older poetry, especially religious poetry, preserving it for posterity. The vibrant cultural exchange between poets, musicians, and writers in Kargil and Baltistan brings to view the ‘unofficial history’ of the Partition: ‘the collective voice which persists—in the sharing of language, in poetry, and music and performance’ (Sen 1997 25 According to Nosheen Ali (2012), poetry in Gilgit-Baltistan contests the religious authoritarianism of the Pakistani state. While this is not the case in Kargil, the experience of the cultural exchange has been a site for reflection on the social milieu on either side of the LoC for some Balti intellectuals in Kargil. It contributes to the formation of what might be termed cosmopolitan subjectivities. I explore this through

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the biography of a Balti intellectual. Despite being a somewhat idiosyncratic character he offers a critique of the wider context in which cultural conversations across the LoC are embedded.

A biography: transcending dichotomies?

26 Bashir Wafa is a well-known cultural activist and poet in his mid-forties from Balti Bazaar in Kargil town. The first time I met him, he was wrapped in a hand-woven traditional woolen shawl, which he usually dons for visitors to signify his Balti identity. Wafa had the opportunity to visit Baltistan in 2007 and reminiscences from his three- month stay in Skardu came up in our first and subsequent conversations. One afternoon he pulled out photograph albums of his visit. Pointing to famous local poets in Baltistan at various mushairas held in his honor in Skardu, he wistfully recalled going to as many as forty-seven mahfils, many of which continued through the night. To convey the affection with which he had been received in Skardu, Wafa told me about the poem he had composed to recite at his farewell. Clearly reflecting his own emotions, the verse anticipated the darkness that would descend upon the mahfil in Skardu when he left and urged people to light a candle to dispel it. But the darkness lingered, a friend in Skardu called to tell him, when he was back in Kargil. Such was the emotional intensity of his visit.

27 Married to a Purigi woman, Wafa considered himself lucky to have found a wife who understood his liberal outlook and passion for poetry, reading, and writing. Wafa’s intellectual aspirations and interests were conveyed by his visiting card: ‘Bashir Wafa (Balti): Poet, Drama Artist, Sports Commentator’. One day, pulling his shawl tightly across his shoulders as the evening chill seeped into the room, enclosed by glass windows looking onto the Suru River, Bashir Wafa slipped into a momentary reverie: ‘When the moon rises from behind the mountain across the river, it casts its beautiful light into this room and gives me inspiration for my poetry’. Then laughing, he added that in order to write he would also need to be continuously supplied with tea and cigarettes. One afternoon, he pointed to his modest bookshelf, proudly telling me that he had sourced some titles all the way from Pakistan. Nostalgically, he recalled visiting the World Book Fair in Delhi. He enjoyed reading Premchand, Manto, Ismat Chugtai, and even James Hadley Chase. Both Manto and Chugtai are considered the most progressive writers of the Partition era. They boldly wrote against the dominant grain of social mores. 28 Conversations with Wafa were always freewheeling, seamlessly shifting between past and present, wry humor and serious reflection. He would often describe his days as a laborer in Shimla (Himachal Pradesh) and the joy of meeting people from other parts of India. He reminisced about evenings spent at the ‘Shimla bar’ with Hindu friends, where he satisfied himself with cashew nuts while they drank alcohol. Religious differences did not stand in the way of friendships and the years in Shimla played a crucial role in exposing Wafa to different ways of living and thinking. As if to convey his cosmopolitanism, he proudly told me that barring his abstinence from alcohol and consumption of non-halal meat, no one in Delhi would be able to tell he is an outsider: ‘I know how to behave in every context, be it a cabaret, a five-star hotel, or a railway station’.

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29 The strength of Wafa’s intellect and its eclecticism, conveyed by him as possessing an ‘open- minded’ and ‘secular’ outlook, was perhaps most poignantly illustrated by his ‘Darling’ story. Wafa communicated fairly regularly with friends in Baltistan via the Internet. As he related it to me: 30 One day, he received a chat request from a woman in Khaplu who called herself ‘jannat ki shahzadi’ (princess of paradise). Two of Wafa’s friends in Kargil had chatted with her previously. After checking on the woman’s credentials through his niece in Baltistan, Wafa started chatting with her. At the onset of their communication, he warned the woman of his quirky nature, telling her that some of his ideas may seem outrageous to her, shaped as they were by a context, which is not as strictly Islamic as Baltistan, since he lived in a ‘secular country’. After a rapport had developed between them, Wafa decided to ‘test the woman’ and jokingly addressed her as ‘Darling’. He used the phrase purposely as a tool to judge her ‘way of thinking’. There was no reaction from the princess. However, a few days later a friend of Wafa, who had also chatted with her, came and asked him with apparent innocence the meaning of the word ‘Darling’. Wafa realized that news of his chat had spread. He explained to his friend that ‘Darling’ was a general term for expressing endearment; it could be used by parents for their children. His friend insisted that it was a romantic term. Wafa realized that the woman failed his test to see how ‘broad-minded’ she was and his reputation was at stake. To express his anguish at being misunderstood, that he had only used the term in jest, Wafa wrote a long letter to a well-known intellectual in Baltistan. 31 A photocopy of the letter was carefully preserved in a file along with his other writings, which he hopes to compile into a book someday. Interspersed with Urdu verse, the letter dwelt upon Wafa’s ‘inner life’ and how he came to be the person that he is. While provoked by the ‘Darling’ episode, it went much beyond and could be read, I suggest, as a social commentary. Lamenting to his friend that people today have little time for laughter and must be warned to laugh before telling a joke, he indirectly spoke to the woman through this letter: 32 ‘Thinking of you as an ‘open-minded woman’, in my own andaz (manner/style), I put myself in the role of Saadat Hasan Manto and you in that of Ismat Chugtai’. He wrote that little did he realize that she too had a ‘rural’ mentality of ‘close-mindedness’ (bichdi hui, tang nazar), and was not able to take a joke in the right spirit, that of adab-i Baltistan. The spirit of what Wafa was trying to say was perhaps best expressed in a piece that Manto (2000) wrote on Ismat, offering tender insight into their friendship. He wrote of her reaction to a story of his: She was unusually enthusiastic in her appreciation of ‘Neelam’. ‘Truly what is this rubbish about adopting a woman as a sister… you are absolutely right. It’s an insult to a woman to be called a sister’. And I was left thinking—she calls me Manto bhai and I call her Ismat Behen—God alone knows why. 33 Perhaps Wafa was looking for a companion who shared his thinking, akin to the companionship that Manto and Chugtai shared in their writing. It is true that this is only Wafa’s side of the story and we can glean little from it of the woman’s thoughts on the conversations with him. Perhaps the woman did not have the same kind of exposure that Wafa had given that the literary culture of Baltistan is largely male- dominated as is that of Kargil. It was Wafa’s own expectations and imagination of a more expansive and open adab-i-Baltistan that were disappointed.

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34 He spoke of adab not just as etiquette and refinement in the distinction he made between rural and urban women but also as an expression of a wider worldview that transcends any form of narrow thinking. Just as Wafa’s inspirations, Manto and Chugtai, broke the writing conventions of their times to reveal the underside of society, his own thinking was a critical commentary on society in both Kargil and Skardu. He derided puritanical versions of religiosity and parochialism of any kind. Wafa had always been critical of excessive religious injunctions, criticizing, for instance clerics’ discouragement of music and dance, as stifling creative expression in society. Wafa wrote in his letter that despite the changing times, he adhered to his principles, which were above all that of insaniyat (humaneness), shaped as much by Islam as his service in the National Scouts where he had mingled with people from different religions and walks of life. Implicit in such statements are efforts that people, particularly Muslims, living on the India-Pakistan border, make to balance the values derived from Islam with the nationalist ideology of secularism in India. 35 In the many conversations that I had with him, Wafa would return to his frustration with being unable to find people with whom he could have meaningful, reflective conversations in Kargil. His sentiments resonated with the search for an inner life and reflective relationships that Magnus Marsden has written about directly across the border in Gilgit and Baltistan (Marsden 2005). 36 Wafa’s cosmopolitanism derived not from fashionable global ideas or world travel, but from a rootedness in the poetics and politics of his locality that transcended the constraints imposed by political borders. His outlook was also a reflection of a long- standing tradition of Muslim literary humanism in South and Central Asia (Ali 2014). One day I noticed the TV cabinet in his home. On one of the door knobs of the cupboards on either side of the television hung a traditional Balti cap and on the other side a Bharat Scouts (national scouting and guiding association of India) cap. Placed on the shelf in-between was a photograph of Hasan Hasni. This unconscious placement of personal objects of sentimental value effectively portrayed in a single visual image the discursive resources drawn from both sides of the border that have shaped Wafa’s outlook. 37 The finesse of Bashir Wafa’s thinking derived from the way the perceptions and experience of one context were refracted through those of another. Wafa’s biography rendered through his own narrations conveys how typifications of identity in categorical religious or secular terms imposed by post-colonial states in South Asia break down at the level of individual subjectivity. Wafa to me represents what Pandey calls the ‘fragment’ of society, which resists any ‘drive for shallow homogenization’ and challenges ‘binary categories of secular/communal, national/local, progressive/ reactionary’ (Pandey 1992: 28- 29). 38 The secular/Islamic dichotomy through which India and Pakistan define themselves as mirror images of each other are not distant and abstract categories for those who live in their borderlands. They take on a particular salience for the Baltis in the context of spiraling sectarian violence against Shi‘a Muslims in Pakistan. News of deaths and murders in Gilgit-Baltistan are mourned in Kargil not only because of kinship ties across the border but because of the decimation of a shared place often evoked as ‘Greater Ladakh’. However, unlike nationalist movements that call for a return to ‘Greater Ladakh’, and oppositional cultural activism in Gilgit-Baltistan that seeks to distinguish itself from the majoritarian Islamic state of Pakistan, people in Kargil are

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continually engaged in a politics of belonging that seeks to cement their place in India. This is often expressed through endorsements of the official definition of India’s secular ideology despite its apparent contradictions. In his nostalgic reminiscences of Parkuta Nallah in Baltistan, Ghulam Hussain from Hundarman recounted how people there had been curious about Kargil. They asked questions like whether the Indian government allows them to hold Muharram. He told them there is peace in India and anyone can pray in whatever way they want; on Ashura the army even halts its convoy for the procession to pass. To this they responded, ‘Hindustan ka ain achha hai’ (the rules/laws of Hindustan are good).

Politics of belonging

39 For all the nostalgia for Baltistan, the vibrant cultural conversation between the two sides and a realization of the need to keep alive their culture, there is no desire among the Baltis of Kargil to return to their original homeland in any sort of permanent way. The desire to return is a myth that is sometimes simplistically assumed for all communities in ‘exile’. The longing for people, places, and things from Baltistan and Gilgit is tempered by knowledge of the pragmatic considerations of everyday life and political conditions there. It is not just a comparison of the cultural and religious ambience between Kargil and Baltistan that we hear of from those who made the journey to Skardu and beyond.

40 Those who have been to Baltistan come back shocked at the price of basic commodities like cooking gas, for instance, in comparison to the prices in India. They may praise the quality of schools and roads there but clarify that this is the work of external agencies like the Aga Khan Foundation rather than the Pakistani state. Aware of the political alienation among the Shi‘a Muslims in Gilgit-Baltistan they stress that in comparison to Baltistan people in Kargil are getting rights and amenities. They cite certain privileges of Indian citizenship that they have been accorded such as ‘Scheduled Tribe’ and ‘State Subject’ status in Jammu and Kashmir.15 Baltis settled in Uttaranchal have been lobbying the Uttaranchal government for recognition of their community as a Scheduled Tribe but have been unsuccessful thus far. Some of them have come to Kargil to try and get State Subject status in Jammu and Kashmir through their kinship connections or holdings of land in the region if they are able to find the records. Their sense of rootedness in India is further reflected in a petition made to the state government for allocation of land in Kargil in lieu of their land in Baltistan. It is easy for them to provide proof of land ownership, they claim, as most of the land records are still in Kargil as Kharmang fell in Kargil tehsil before the Partition. Yet continued struggle by some to receive State Subject or Scheduled Tribe status, the search for records of land holdings and petitions for compensation for lands left behind in Baltistan attest to the ‘Long history of Partition’, which Vazira Zamindar (2007) has so powerfully described in her work on resettlement and ‘refugees’ in Delhi. 41 Despite this integration into mainstream governance categories, Balti activists often speak of feeling marginalized. Intellectuals like Wafa have acquired a vocabulary of exile through exposure to the wider world and interaction with scholars: ‘We feel a complex here,’ he stated one day, lamenting that there is an insufficient appreciation of Balti culture in Kargil. Relating how hard the Baltis have worked to keep their culture alive, he added, ‘After all we cannot compel ourselves upon others, we are a minority’.

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This sentiment has become particularly acute with the rise of intra-regional ethnic politics especially vis-à-vis the Purig-pa. In order to promote their culture and ethnic identity, Balti activists skillfully deploy their insider-outsider status. For instance, their designation by Buddhists as ‘outsiders’ (those who came from Pakistan) underlines their claim that the half-hour slot for a Balti programme on All India Radio Kargil was allotted only after they convinced the authorities that it would act as a counter to Pakistani propaganda on Radio Skardu. While these acts could be seen as strategies of claim-making, they also reflect the fragility of the sense of political belonging, which must be continually reiterated through allegiance to India. Endorsements of Indian secularism are central to this vocabulary of allegiance.

Concluding remarks

42 The case of the Baltis in Kargil does not subscribe to the category of either ‘transmigrants’ or people in exile. Even though they maintain ties with their ancestral ‘homelands’ through kinship, friendship and religion (Borneman 1992), they are not engaged in ‘long-distance nationalism’, by being involved in political struggles in Baltistan.16 Neither are they in exile given the absence of a desire to return to Baltistan in any permanent way. Nor are they refugees in the sense that they did not flee Pakistan voluntarily seeking refuge in India at the time of the Partition. The deployment of tropes of ‘exile’ and ‘refugee’ are claim-making strategies rather than structures of feeling. What then can cross-border dwellers whose subjectivity is shaped as much by a politics of belonging as a poetics of longing tell us about the relationship between borderland dwellers and the state in post-colonial South Asia?

43 Though writing about the very different context of postwar Germany, Borneman offers the important insight that ‘it is precisely around belonging to a nation that kinship and the state come together in a single frame’ (Borneman 1992: 30). In their politics of belonging Baltis certainly draw upon ‘master narratives’ of the state as we saw in the expression of a ‘secular outlook’ in Wafa’s biography and praise for the law of the land. They have gained political citizenship through the recognition of their community as a Scheduled Tribe. However, their poetics of longing unsettles the construction of a single frame that brings together kinship and state. The refusal to open the Kargil- Skardu road creates a wedge between the geobody of the nation-state and the affective body of the citizen. Calls for opening the road are above all a matter of emotions borne from the intense desire to be reunited with family and friends from whom they have been separated since the Partition, for the restoration of kinship ties. Yet it is arguable that the routinization of response and apathy of the state to narratives of emotion related to kinship render their sense of belonging with a feeling of incompleteness. This is expressed in the sometimes rhetorical but perhaps nonetheless meant conjecture that it is the Indian state which is more averse to the opening of the Kargil- Skardu road also suggested by the relatively fewer visas granted to people from Baltistan to visit Kargil as compared to the other way round. As Borneman has written, ‘Unlike law and policy texts, personal recollections rarely attempt to divide history into discrete categories of political and domestic life, into a set of objective circumstances and subjective responses’ (ibid.: 38). 44 Individual narratives of real or virtual travel to Baltistan not only express a poetics of longing but also offer a subtle critique of dichotomies on which the legitimacy of India

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and Pakistan rest. Travel to Baltistan renews an appreciation of Indian secularism, which falters in the context of oppression of and violence against Muslims in other parts of India or has been imposed on Muslims in India since Partition as a de facto condition of belonging. These narratives critique the Islamist ideology of the nation- state in Pakistan where minority sects are subject to spiraling violence. However, they also strengthen a sense of regional identity that is shaped by a longer history of cultural and religious ties that cut across the borders of the nation-state. They bring forth a temporality that disrupts the spatiality of nation making. Though Baltis on both sides of the border will never be content with just the exchange of words, their stories will remain powerful mediums of boundary crossings. These, I suggest, will continue to vivify the concept of South Asia, problematic as it may be in its origin and other contexts.

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Ghosh, Sahana (2011) ‘Cross-border activities in everyday life: the Bengal borderland’, Contemporary South Asia, 19(1), pp. 49-60.

Gilmartin, David (1998) ‘Partition, Pakistan, and South Asian History: In Search of a Narrative’, The Journal of Asian Studies, 57(4), pp. 1068-95.

Glick Schiller, Nina; Fouron, Georges Eugene (2001) Georges Woke Up Laughing: Long-Distance Nationalism and the Search for Home, Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Grist, Nicola (1998) Local Politics in the Suru Valley of Northern India, Unpublished PhD thesis, Goldsmiths College, London University.

Gupta, Radhika (2013) ‘Allegiance and Alienation: Border Dynamics in Kargil’ in David N. Gellner (ed.), Borderland Lives in Northern South Asia, Durham and London: Duke University Press, pp. 47-71.

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Hausner L. Sondra and Jeevan R Sharma (2013) ‘On the Way to India: Nepali Rituals of Border Crossing’ in David N. Gellner (ed.), Borderland Lives in Northern South Asia, Durham and London: Duke University Press, pp. 47-71.

Ho, Enseng (2006) The Graves of Tarim: Genealogy and Mobility across the Indian Ocean, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press.

Ibrahim, Farhana (2011) ‘Re-Making a Region: Ritual Inversions and Border Transgressions in Kutch’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, n.s, 34(3), pp. 439-59.

Ingold, Tim (2011) Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description, London: Routledge.

Jackson, Michael D. (2002) The Politics of Storytelling: Violence, Transgression and Intersubjectivity, University of Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press.

Jackson, Michael D. (2008) ‘Between Biography and Ethnography’, Harvard Theological Review, 101(304), pp. 377-397.

Kabir, Jahanara Ananya (2013) Partition’s Post-Amnesias, New Delhi: Women Unlimited.

Magnusson, Jan (2011) ‘Greater Ladakh and the Mobilization of Tradition in the Contemporary Baltistan Movement’, in Anna Akasoy, Charles Burnett & Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim (eds.), Islam and Tibet: Interactions along the Musk Routes, Farnham: Ashgate.

Marsden, Magnus (2005) Living Islam: Muslim Religious Experience in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Pandey, Gyanendra (1992) ‘In Defense of the Fragment: Writing about Hindu-Muslim Riots in India Today’, Representations, 37, pp. 27-55.

Rahman, Muhammad Mahbubar; van Schendel, Willem (2003) ‘I Am Not a Refugee: Rethinking Partition Migration’, Modern Asian Studies, 37(3), pp. 551-584.

Sen, Geeti (ed.) (1997) Crossing Boundaries, New Delhi: Orient Longman.

Winichakul, Thongchai (1994) Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-body of a Nation, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Zamindar Vazira Fazila-Yaccobali (2007) The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia: Refugees, Boundaries, Histories, New York: Columbia University Press.

NOTES

1. This article draws upon ethnographic research carried out in Kargil district as a whole between 2008 and 2014. My interest in Kargil arose after participating in the International Association of Ladakh Studies conference held there in 2005, where I was fortunate to meet three participants from Baltistan, including Hasan Hasni. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Bashir and Zahra Wafa, Master Sadiq Hardasi, Septe Kalim, Sadiq Ali Sadiq and other Balti interlocutors in Kargil for their time, knowledge and friendship. Critical comments and suggestions by the reviewers and editors of SAMAJ were enormously helpful in revising this piece. 2. On crossing the India-Nepal border, see Hausner and Sharma (2013). On the India-Bangladesh border, see Ghosh (2011). Despite the sealing of the Kutch-Sindh border between India and Pakistan, unlike the Kargil-Baltistan ‘border’, local newspapers in Kutch report illegal border crossings (see Ibrahim 2011:443).

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3. See Magnusson (2011) ‘Greater Ladakh and the mobilization of tradition in the contemporary Baltistan movement’ in Akasoy, Burnett and Yoeli-Tlalim (eds.). 4. I draw upon Winichakul’s (1994:17) conceptualization of the ‘geobody’. Based on his work on Siam he argues that the geo-body of the nation is the effect of maps. A nation is discursively constructed through cartographic delineation. 5. Tarikh-e-Baltistan was written by the Dogra administrator, Hashmatullah Khan. Some local intellectuals contend that parts of it are therefore not an accurate representation of history given the Dogra oppression of Baltis. 6. See a popular forum: https://www.facebook.com/Lchangra. 7. More can be learnt about Ghulam Hasan Hasni from a documentary film on him released in 2014. 8. In 2013 Master Sadiq Hardasi published a book in Urdu on Baltis in India based on extensive research and travels, titled Balti Muhajireen Ki Mukhtasar Tareekh. 9. The trend of online chatting among Baltis kicked off after Hasni’s visit to Kargil. 10. The meanings of adab draw upon an Islamicate imaginaire and typically refer to an Islamic ethos of refinement, etiquette, and civilization. Aggarwal (2004:200) too mentions the Baltis’ claim to authenticity of their dialect. 11. Balti has been accorded official recognition as one of the eight regional languages through its inclusion in the Eighth Schedule of the J&K Constitution. This is based on the pre-colonial 1941 census linguistic enumeration on the basis of population numbers. Taking into account Baltistan and Kargil there were a greater number of Balti speakers compared to Purigi, which has not been included in the Eighth Schedule. Despite the Baltis being a minority in numerical terms today, their language has constitutional status. 12. On the politicization of ethnic identity amongst the Brog-pa, see Bhan (2014). 13. Qasida (poems in praise of the Prophet, his family and the Imams), Marsiya (Muharram elegies), and Nauha (Muharram rhythmic dirges). 14. These poets have been interviewed in a recent documentary film on Hasan Hasni, whose death in 2010 was deeply mourned by Baltis in Kargil. Ali (2012) describes the centrality of poetry performances in the cultural and spiritual lives of people in Gilgit-Baltistan, where poetic expression is considered to be the ‘hallmark of intellect’. 15. The category of ‘State Subject’ was created in 1927 under the reign of Maharaja Hari Singh to protect the rights of those residing in his kingdom. It continued to be maintained after the Dogra accession to India through its inclusion in Article 370 of the Constitution of India that grants special status to Jammu & Kashmir. Scheduled Tribe status, which is separate from State Subject status was accorded to various ethnic groups in Ladakh in 1989. 16. I draw here on the definition of ‘transmigrants’ and ‘exile’ from Glick Schiler and Fouron (2001).

ABSTRACTS

The experience of ‘cross-border dwellers’ corresponds clearly neither to the category of Partition refugees nor those in exile. This article is an ethnographic case study of the Baltis in Kargil living in the India-Pakistan borderland in the province of Kashmir. It discusses the seemingly contradictory emotions of a poetics of longing for the ‘other’ side and a politics of belonging in

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India. I argue that a tension persists between the geobody of the nation-state and the affective body of the cross-border dweller. Further, subjective narrations and biography offer a subtle critique of the legitimating ideologies of nation-states on both sides of the ‘border’.

INDEX

Keywords: cross-border dwellers, Kargil, Kashmir, Partition, Baltis, biographical ethnography, minorities

AUTHOR

RADHIKA GUPTA

Research Fellow, Centre for Modern Indian Studies, Goettingen University

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Impasse and Opportunity: Reframing Postcolonial Territory at the India-Bangladesh Border

Jason Cons

1 On 18 December 2013, the Congress Government introduced a bill in the Indian Parliament to implement the 1974 Land Boundary Agreement (LBA) with Bangladesh.1 If ratified, the Agreement would finally ‘resolve’ a border dispute that has long troubled India-Bangladesh relations concerning the presence of Indian enclaves in Bangladesh and Bangladeshi enclaves in India. Specifically, the LBA made way for the absorption of several hundred enclaves, chhitmahal in Bengali, into their bounding states.2 The bill was the latest in a long series of proposals to bring the enclaves into line with conventional understandings of territorial contiguity, sovereignty and national space. Like its predecessors, it faced long odds.

2 Enclave exchange has been a persistent and proverbial fly in the ointment of India- Bangladesh border politics. This version of the bill proved no different. Members of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) protested its introduction vociferously. Members of West Bengal’s Trinamool Congress and the Asom Gana Parishad (Assam People’s Party) attempted to physically arrest copies of the bill from India’s external affairs minister (The Times of India 2013). Trinamool MP, Derek O’Brian tweeted his disgust over the bill, writing, ‘A lame duck government introduced Bangladesh Giveaway Bill’ (DNA India 2013). Meanwhile, Mamata Banerjee, West Bengal’s chief minister and head of the Trinamool Congress party, posted on her Facebook page, ‘We are not accepting, not accepting and not accepting [the agreement]. The state government will not implement it’ (BDnews24.com 2013). 3 That the LBA seemed destined for failure was no surprise to those who have followed the enclaves’ postcolonial diplomatic history. Yet, it did assert a series of urgent questions about the regional concept of South Asia and the territorial boundaries that constitute it. Postcolonial territory in South Asia—by which I mean both nationalist and communal ideologies of blood and soil and the specific claims and technologies for controlling space—presents a range of challenges and paradoxes to scholarly and

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popular imaginations of the region.3 This essay engages one of these challenges— enclaves—in order to make a series of claims about the salience of borders and border conflicts to postcolonial territory. As I argue at length elsewhere (Cons n.d.), these spaces are key sites in the production of postcolonial territory. They are ‘sensitive spaces’ that provoke anxious regulations and debates. By calling these enclaves ‘sensitive’ spaces, I mean that they trouble conceptualizations of state, nation, and citizen even as they are caught up in nationalist debates over security, sovereignty, and identity. The chhitmahal emerge not just as material sites, but also as issues within national politics that seem disproportionate to their size, population, or geopolitical import. They are thus productive places to begin disentangling the relationality between nationalist framings of territory and its quotidian experiences. Moreover, they have critical relevance for understandings—both political and scholarly—of South Asia. 4 The notion of South Asia as a region is predicated on a cartographic imagination of discretely cordoned-off states. As Ludden argues, ‘Habits of mapping expunge dissonance from our geographical imagination by invisibly burying disorderly spaces under neat graphics of national order’ (Ludden 2003: 1058). This Westphalian vision of orderly space constitutes a powerful mental map, one that governs not just scholarly inquiry, but political conceptualizations of space (Migdal 2010).4 Yet, within the region, not only has this orderly spatial imagination been a historical fiction, the disjuncture between it and ground realities has been a constant source of discord in nationalist politics and inter-regional relations—discord which has produced regular violence at and within national borders.5 These tensions suggest a need not just to better understand broad imaginations of territory or local experiences of it. They also suggest a need to attend to the relationships between these broad and localized framings—their articulations and disarticulations, their conjunctures and disjunctures. To do so implies thinking postcolonial territory as an analytic, rather than merely descriptive, category (Elden 2013, Sassen 2013). 5 The enclaves embody a telling impasse that haunts postcolonial territory in South Asia —namely, the inability to disentangle material needs and realities of people living on the bleeding edge of state space from nationalist imaginations of blood and soil that are often indexed to the unfinished processes of Partition (Zamindar 2007, Chatterji 1999). To move beyond this impasse requires understanding the ways in which places such as the chhitmahal are amplified into sensitive space and the ways that people living in such spaces negotiate such amplifications. The enclaves demonstrate the limits to thinking of territory as only a political technology of rule—a set of practices organized around the ordering and management of space (Elden 2013). They are also emblematic of what Sanakran Krishna (1994) calls ‘cartographic anxieties’—violent mappings of national anxieties of survival onto places like borderlands. At the same time, understanding these zones only through the lens of regulation or cartographic anxiety yields a vision of territory as effectively structured by national concerns. This belies lived realities in the enclaves and in South Asian borderlands more broadly, which are anything but passive reflections or imprints of national logics (essays in Gellner 2013). Territory, as much recent work has shown, emerges and is produced through both broad political maneuvering and more everyday forms of territory making (Erazo 2013). These local realities have a different story to tell about how territory is made and lived at the interstices of South Asia.

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6 What I intend in this essay is to make a modest epistemological intervention into the discussion of borders, territory, and the concept of South Asia. Studies of borders often either choose to engage the broad, macro historical processes of border and state making, or the micropolitics of life in the shadow of state control. I propose that if we are to reimagine territory and region, both perspectives are necessary. Thinking these positions together at once exposes the mystifications of territory in nationalist debate and untangles the impasse of viewing space through a nationalist lens by bringing mobility, spatial regulation, violence, and competing territorialities within a single analytic frame (Sur 2014).6 My argument here is that to simply reject nationalist framings of space is to misunderstand the very processes that make spaces like the enclaves such intractable issues. Yet, to view the enclaves solely through such framings is to miss the idea that people living in sensitive space engage territory in ways not explainable solely within state or nationalist logics (Jones 2012b). What is important, then, is to understand the relationality between these two registers of territory and, moreover, to be attentive to this relationality’s fluctuating dynamics. Such attention destabilizes uniform conceptualizations of territory and region in favor of more fluid and negotiated visions. Here, the region emerges as a tension between projects seeking to codify space along nationalist and often communal lines and a set of lived relationships and mobilities with contingent and unstable ties to such projects. 7 To illustrate this, I first look at debates over enclave exchange. These debates are characterized by persistent breakdowns of attempts to forge durable solutions to questions of territory and citizenship for enclave residents. Yet, if these negotiations have failed to yield exchange, we should not be misled into thinking that they have not been productive of territory. Indeed, national debates have produced the enclaves as particular kinds of spaces. This nationalist view of space does not constitute the only possibility for imaging borders and territory. A bottom up view produces a fundamentally different picture. I accordingly contrast the geopolitical history of the chhitmahal with a brief look at the lived experiences of one enclave, Dahagram, that has been at the heart of debates about the LBA. Not surprisingly, such a view yields a markedly different picture of life and space at the border. Yet, what I am more interested in are the ways that quotidian negotiations of projects of rule—often for purposes as straightforward as economic gain—highlight new forms of territoriality at the border. What emerges is not a rejection of official projects of control, but a transformation of them. This suggests the need and possibility for re-constituting the region from the margins by taking a more fluid and ethnographic vantage point (Van Schendel 2002a).

Territory’s ‘odd-bits’

8 What did the LBA contain that made it so objectionable to parties as dissimilar as the BJP and the Trinamool Congress? Why do these tiny blips of territory provoke such animated responses? One way to answer these questions would be to take the rhetoric of the current debate over the LBA seriously. A point that regularly emerges here is the disparity in the amount of land to be exchanged.7 The configuration of the enclaves to be swapped is such that there would be a net loss to India of approximately 10,000 acres, roughly .001 % of the country’s total territory. Yet, as Das and Raju (2012) point out, this 10,000 acres is land that Indian officials can neither access nor administer, as it

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falls on the wrong side of the international border with Bangladesh. It is only nominally part of India. Moreover, the land differential is so comparatively small that this concern might justifiably be read as a petty calculus of exchange.8 A more salient point raised in contemporary debates is the articulation of national policies towards the India-Bangladesh border and the complex border politics within states along it. Controversies over the LBA within these states are indexed to long histories and concerns over cross-border migration, regional violence, and local autonomy in India’s Northeast (Sur 2012, Chatterji 2007, McDuie-Ra 2012). Such concerns are clearly urgent and crucial in parsing the contemporary debate over the LBA. Yet, to see the conflict as a clash between national and regional politics, or as a squabble over small amounts of land, obscures the problematic place of the enclaves within counterpoised Indian and Bangladeshi national imaginations.

9 Rather, to understand the concern over such spaces, we must locate them within broader histories of territory and region. The chhitmahal were originally discontinuous territorial holdings of Zamindars and chieftains in the Mughal army’s Northern incursion into the kingdom of Koch Behar (Van Schendel 2002b). At Partition, a number of chhitmahal found themselves on either side of a new border. As tensions between India and Pakistan escalated in the 1950s, there were increasing numbers of incidents related to these spaces (Whyte 2002). Yet, these conflicts remained largely matters of local negotiation between populations (both inside and outside of the enclaves) and government officials struggling with the complexities of the new Partition boundary. With the emergence of national debates over exchange, however, the enclaves began their transformation from one of a series of spatial problems into sensitive spaces— impossibly marginalized, yet increasingly central to national imaginations of territory. 10 The first attempt to address these troublesome spaces through exchange, thus normalizing the territorial complexities of the Bengal border, was the Nehru-Noon Accords. They reflected a decidedly optimistic technocratic perspective on territory— one that imagined that border issues could be resolved with a stroke of a pen. On 4 June 1958, in a somewhat cavalier statement made in his monthly press conference, Jawaharlal Nehru claimed that the ongoing border disputes between India and Pakistan were relatively minor and that ‘any two reasonable people on behalf of the two Governments could sit together and decide them in a day or two’.9 This ‘responsible’ counterpart presented himself in Feroz Khan Noon, who assumed the Prime Ministership of Pakistan in December 1957. In early September, the two heads of state met in Delhi to hammer out the contours of just such an agreement. 11 In a triumphant 1958 Statement to the Lok Sabha outlining the results of the Accords, Nehru offered an account of the enclaves as minor abnormalities easily addressed through rational intervention: The Cooch-Behar State had little bits of territory all over, and some of those fell in Pakistan and some in India on partition. […] Therefore, the result is that we have some territory in Pakistan, little enclaves, little islands, and they have some here, which is very awkward. […] They are just odd bits, usually the home of smugglers and other fugitives from the law. So, it has been decided ultimately that we should just exchange them. 12 Nehru’s remarks reduced the enclaves to administrative hassles—odd ‘bits’ that could be managed through rational intervention. The enclaves are presented as territorial accidents—the result of Radcliffe’s careless division of Bengal. The Accords would bring these problematic spaces in line with the map, with territorial norms, and,

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consequently, with the forces of law and order (Neocleous 2003). However, Nehru radically underestimated the enclaves’ emerging resonance in nationalist discourse.

13 Almost immediately following the September 10th announcement of the Accords, both Nehru and Noon were attacked by conservative oppositional parties within their own countries for having betrayed national interests and national sovereignty. In Pakistan, Fazlur Rahman, a Muslim League representative in Parliament, mounted an attack on Noon for what he claimed was a blatant attempt to ‘to hoodwink and mislead the people to hide the fact of the shameless surrender of Pakistan’s vital interests at the alter of Bharati appeasement’ (Dawn 1958). Meanwhile, in India, Nehru was attacked by Jana Sangh MP and future BJP Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who claimed that the Accords were not only illegal, but a betrayal of national interest and the rights of citizenship of Indian enclave residents. As Vajpayee argued, ‘Nobody, not even the Prime Minister, has the right to deprive any Indian citizen of his nationality and citizenship’. By tying the question of territory together with citizenship, Vajpayee reframed the chhitmahal not just as zones filled with criminals and smugglers, but also as spaces within which Indian [Hindu] citizens clung to tenuous national territory. In short, the enclaves became territorial symbols—spaces encapsulating the antinomies of post-Partition belonging. 14 The Accords proved a political stumbling block for Nehru’s Congress Party. In the face of increasing opposition, Nehru was forced to qualify his earlier enthusiasm in a statement to the Lok Sabha in 1960: At the time I was clear in my mind that the whole agreement, in spite of certain aspects of it which were not agreeable to us, was profitable and advantageous. […] But there is a ‘but’. I did not realise then that there is a certain human aspect of it. […] And subsequently when this aspect has come before me, I have felt troubled in my mind. 15 Nehru’s suddenly ‘troubled mind’ underscored how deeply affective questions of territorial integrity can be in nationalist discourse (Billé 2013).10 It highlighted the stakes of not treating the enclaves ‘sensitively’. In this regard, Nehru’s reversal captures a central trope in the chhitmahal’s postcolonial history—their seeming stubborn refusal to be resolved through well-intentioned policy and their persistent capacity to raise nationalist ire.

Corridors of territory

16 Following the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971, Indira Gandhi and Sheik Mujibur Rahman attempted to capitalize on the goodwill between India and newly independent Bangladesh to resolve outstanding border issues between the two states. The results were the 1974 LBA, also known as the Indira-Mujib Accords, which proposed a wholesale exchange of the enclaves on either side of the border with one exception. Bangladesh was to relinquish its claim on a disputed border area known as Berubari. In exchange, India would lease, into perpetuity, a 170-meter long land bridge known as the Tin Bigha Corridor connecting Dahagram-Angarpota (henceforth Dahagram)—the largest Bangladeshi enclave situated in India—to ‘mainland’ Bangladesh.11 Once again, the Agreement prompted heated debate on both sides of the border over the legality and ethics of handing over territory to another sovereign state. Bangladesh soon ceded

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Berubari. However, the struggle to open the Tin Bigha Corridor was to become a morass of nationalist and increasingly communal politics.

17 In 1981, as a step towards resolving the question of Dahagram and pushing for implementation of the 1974 Treaty, the Government of Bangladesh attempted to conduct a census of the enclave. Terms of passage through Indian territory were negotiated for census workers, but following the implementation of the census, local activists in India organized a blockade of the enclave, cutting it off from access to both Indian markets in Mekhliganj and Bangladeshi markets in Patgram (for discussion, see Cons 2012). The Bangladesh Observer reported that supplies of food and medicine in the enclave were scarce and that several residents had died from starvation and lack of medical care. ‘Equipped with guns, arrows, lathis and hand bombs, the Indian nationals are patrolling around these enclaves, preventing helpless Bangladeshi nationals of Dahagram and Angarpota to come out and enter Bangladesh main soil to purchase essential commodities’(Bhasin 1996: 808). The expression of outrage in the piece captured not just an offence committed against a marginal population at the border, but an offence against ‘nationals’—beleaguered citizens who lived at the mercy of a territorially aggressive Indian state and population. It further flagged the question of enclave exchange as both symbolic and symptomatic of India’s willingness to discount Bangladeshi lives and the rights of the Government of Bangladesh to protect them. As the Bangladesh Times wrote, ‘an inherent and a legally vested right of a population and its natural custodian, the State of Bangladesh, is going ignored’ (Bhasin 1996: 808). 18 The media coverage of the blockade in Bangladesh raised concerns in the Lok Sabha about its overall impact on India-Bangladesh relations. In a heated debate, Amar Roy Pradhan, an MP from West Bengal, dismissed concerns over the census, suggesting that the suffering of residents of Dahagram was inconsequential compared to the suffering of over 100,000 Indian citizens living in Indian enclaves inside of Bangladesh. In Pradhan’s words, ‘in Bangladesh, they are living under sub-human conditions—no administration, no police, no chowkidar, no panchayats, no voting, nothing of the sort. It is a matter of grave regret’ (Bhasin 1996: 804). Pradhan’s observation reflects not an empirical or demographic reality of life in Indian enclaves, but rather, a political imagination of territory, community, and suffering (Moore 2005). This and ensuing debates indexed the enclaves to broader concerns in the relationship between India and Bangladesh. These included the rights of citizens (of both states) at the border, the sovereign control of space, and the sanctioned violence (real and imagined) against those living on this contested edge of territory. 19 If the enclaves became a zone in which nationalist and often-communal politics were regularly grafted onto space, they also are sites in which moments of cross-border cooperation do, occasionally, produce change. Despite vociferous debate, the Tin Bigha Corridor finally opened on 26 June 1992 in a moment of diplomatic thaw following the removal of General Mohammed Ershad from power in Bangladesh (Cons 2012). The return of democracy to Bangladesh eased the politics of opening the Corridor, but not the nationalist rhetoric around it. It opened amidst the arrests of numerous local activists and threats by the BJP to train a ‘suicide squad’ to prevent its opening (Chaudhuri 1992). Initially, the Corridor was open for only one hour a day. This amount of time was gradually increased until, in 2002, it was opened for 12 hours a day, during daylight hours. If the LBA’s partial fulfillment addressed some of the spatial challenges of Dahagram, however, it also further transformed it into a stage upon which territorial

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dramas were enacted (see below). Moreover, the Corridor transformed Dahagram into the most closely monitored chhitmahal along the border, surrounded by BSF watchtowers and regularly patrolled by armed paramilitary border guards from each country. 20 This episodic history signals the patterns that have shaped the debates over enclave exchange—patterns that have reappeared in the current round of negotiations regarding the LBA. It also points to ways in which territorial imaginations and cartographic anxieties become inextricably linked to territorial practicalities and attempts to resolve and rationalize space. Following Mitchell (2002), one might argue that territory here emerges as the mutual constitution of affective representation and reality—a particularly problematic and emotive enframing of space. Seen as such, the enclaves represent a territorial impasse—the inability to disentangle concrete space from the imagination of it as simultaneously threatening and under threat. Such an impasse does not, as we have seen, preclude meaningful transformation in border- politics. Indeed, attempts by political leaders to think past this impasse have lead to concrete changes in life at the border. But it does systematically efface other possible imaginations of territory and region. How might we think beyond this impasse? My suggestion here is that we begin by considering the spatial imaginations and negotiations of those who live in the enclaves themselves.

Quotidian forms of territory

21 If part of the project of rethinking South Asia is imagining possibilities as well as limitations, it is important to also examine the ways that territory might be rethought from a more grounded perspective. The articulation between the enclaves as imagined and concrete spaces has crucial implications for the lives of those living there. Indeed, the outcomes of the broad debate over Dahagram and the Tin Bigha Corridor have been central features of life in the enclave. Yet, at the same time, life in Dahagram is shaped by more than these framings alone. It is a fluid negotiation of a range of processes that converge in sensitive space. To conclude, let me then focus on a set of recent transformations in Dahagram’s political economy in order to highlight the ways in which broad imaginations and negotiations over territory refract in particular spaces.12

22 In 2007, when I began conducting research in the enclaves, Dahagram was a palpably uncomfortable place. Tensions over the Corridor were high and disagreements between India and Bangladesh (and between Congress and the Bangladesh National Party) were escalating—particularly in conjunction with the building of the border fence with Bangladesh and with the regular shooting of Bangladeshis by BSF troops at the border (see Jones 2012a, Human Rights Watch 2010, Sur 2014). Meanwhile, numerous development initiatives were at work within the enclave. These had produced, among other things, paved roads that saw little or no use by motorized vehicles, a fully constructed functioning hospital that had never opened for business, and a model village project devoid of denizens. All of these projects seemingly demarcated and laid claim to the enclave as Bangladeshi territory, but had little impact on the well-being of the enclave’s residents. Local transportation was limited to rickshaws and cycle-vans. To get to Dahagram, it took at minimum an hour ride from Patgram, the nearest market town in Bangladesh, approximately 11 km away. People were anxious about the future and, especially, about the Corridor, often suggesting that the BSF could close the

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Corridor for good on a whim. Such fears were supported by the BSF’s occasional implementation of new restrictions on what could be brought through the Corridor, especially the number of cows that could be transported to market.13 Agriculture within the enclave was robust, with regular trade with Patgram, but there was little other industry or open commerce besides a few tea stalls and tailoring shops. In short, life in Dahagram seemed oppressively marked by broader tensions over the border and their corresponding politics and anxieties. 23 In 2013, I returned to Dahagram after several years, to discover a remarkably different set of circumstances. In my absence, the enclave had transformed into a frontier boom- town. Now, instead of rickshaws, I traveled to Dahagram via a regular tempo van. The two hubs of activity in the enclave—Guchogram near the Tin Bigha Corridor and Bongerbari, the administrative and political center of the enclave—were bustling and crowded not just with people but also hulking and brightly colored transportation trucks. There was a steady stream of traffic moving through the Corridor. Moreover, the atmosphere seemed to have shifted from one of anxiety to one of comparatively prosperous optimism. 24 The apparent reason for this transformation was the opening of the Tin Bigha Corridor for 24 hours a day on 19 October 2011. This opening, thus far, represented the only tangible outcome of the new debates over the LBA. The opening marked a significant moment in the history of the enclave. Now, while the Corridor remained under the administration and control of the BSF, enclave residents could come and go, day or night. Signaling the national significance of both the Corridor and of Dahagram, the opening was presided over by Prime Minister Sheik Hasina, the first visit by a head of state to Dahagram since before the opening of the Corridor in 1992. Hasina’s visit to the enclave was recalled with pride by almost everyone I spoke to. A new brick and concrete memorial to her had been raised in the center of the enclave. During her visit, Hasina also granted a series of longstanding demands of enclave residents, noting, according to my informants, that ‘these people have suffered enough. Give them what they ask for.’ Enclave residents regularly expressed the feeling that they were now, truly, citizens of Bangladesh. As a smallholder farmer I spoke with had it, ‘the opening of the Corridor for 24 hours has put us in a better frame of mind. Things are good here now.’ On the surface, it appeared as though geopolitical negotiations over space at the border had, indeed, yielded positive transformations in the lives of border residents. 25 Yet, even a cursory glance at what was happening in the enclave revealed that the Corridor’s opening was not the only, or perhaps even the most significant, change in Dahagram’s landscape. What appeared to be the more immediate source of the enclave’s shift in fortunes was the massive adoption of a relatively new cash crop: corn. Every available plot of land seemed covered in corn husks and stalks from the recent harvest. A number of new godowns had been built since my last visit, all now bursting at the seams. The large trucks in the enclave were being stacked high with sacks of corn as well. Corn kernels were drying on many of Dahagram’s paved roads, transforming the color of the tracks from a dull asphalt grey to a bright golden yellow. 26 The demand for corn was being driven by Bangladesh’s thriving poultry and shrimp aquaculture industry.14 It had clearly emerged as a major boom crop in the Patgram region as a whole, not just in Dahagram. ‘People are growing corn even in their courtyards,’ a man in Patgram told me. Yet, its transformation of the enclave was especially stark. Its introduction, at scale, into the region began in 2007, when a

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company called Doyel, with funding and support from crop and soil scientists at Cornell University and CIMMYT, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, had introduced the crop into Patgram (CIMMYT E-News 2009). They had done this by partnering with a national bank which offered a microcredit scheme whereby Doyel would hold the provisional land titles of farmers in Dahagram and guarantee loans for farmers to purchase seed stock. The scheme was launched in Dahagram in early 2007 at a ceremony that I attended, a ceremony that was, itself, framed as an intervention that honored Dahagram residents’ long-history of suffering. As the NCC official who visited the enclave to launch the scheme made clear, the loans-for-corn-seed program was not framed as a strategy to expand agricultural markets, but rather as a gesture to honor the struggle for the enclave and to help its downtrodden and marginalized residents.15 27 Doyel ultimately went out of business, and many in the enclave complained that the company never returned their land titles. Others complained that recalcitrant farmers in the enclave had forced Doyel out of business by failing to repay their loans. Whatever the reason for the company’s failure, the gap opened by Doyel was a business opportunity for local groups within the enclave seeking to establish new modes of territorial control. After the enclave opened in 1992, as I describe elsewhere (Cons 2013), a flood of new migrants moved in and purchased land from Hindu residents, many of whom were abandoning the enclave, at fire sale prices. These new migrants were known locally as Bhatiyas (outsiders), and though they remained politically marginal within Dahagram, they quickly emerged as central economic players, expanding existing holdings and experimenting with new strategies for capital accumulation. Indeed, though Doyel’s initial expansion into Dahagram was framed as a celebration of the enclave’s history it was primarily Bhatiya farmers who began adopting the new crop. 28 Beginning in 2011, around the time that Doyel was collapsing and the Corridor was opened for a full 24 hours, several of these farmers banded together to capitalize on the possibilities of corn. This new syndicate began providing seed and fertilizer at preferential prices to farmers in Dahagram in exchange for purchasing rights to the harvested crop. This allowed them to develop a monopoly on corn exports from the enclave. Such arrangements are not uncommon in Bangladesh and are part and parcel of how many mohajan [moneylending] and syndicate operations work. Indeed, this one seemed particularly successful. One of the heads of the syndicate—a Bhatiya farmer who had risen from modest means to become one of the wealthiest denizens of the enclave —told me that 95 % of all cultivatable land within the enclave was now being used for corn production. People seemed to be making money hand over fist. 29 Derek Hall (2011) argues that crop booms, such as the explosion of corn production in Dahagram, provide crucial clues to the ways that smallholders reconfigure land-rights and uses by bringing a range of different forms of power to bear on the control of land. Yet, the emergence of corn in Dahagram also spoke to the ways that broader political debates over territory transformed a range of productive possibilities in sensitive space. Members of the syndicate that I spoke to openly acknowledged that seed money from the venture came from the smuggling of household goods from India into the enclave for sale. Yet, other smallholder farmers in the enclave who were the syndicate’s clients told a different origination story of the corn boom—that of cattle smuggling. Cattle smuggling has long been a central trope in debates over the India- Bangladesh border. The export has proved a profitable trade for both those involved in

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smuggling itself and border security forces who often become its de facto regulators. 16 The trade is inflected by a communal rhetoric—the transportation of sacred cows over the border for slaughter in Muslim meat markets. 30 When I began research in the enclave in 2007, a crackdown on smuggling through the enclave had emerged as the central political concern of both the BSF and of parties within Dahagram. Specifically, the BSF had placed a cattle ceiling on the movement of cows through the Corridor, limiting the number of cattle that could be taken to market to six on any given haat (market) day. The ceiling had been not only a source of tension, but also a mechanism for re-arranging political power within the enclave. The Union Parishad Chairman at the time, who many suggested was deeply implicated in cattle smuggling himself, was given the power to decide who within Dahagram would be allowed to take cattle to market. The Chairman immediately began using this as a tool to consolidate his own political power. 31 In 2013, the ceiling still remained in place, but its enforcement had become markedly lax. Yet, with the opening of the Corridor for 24 hours a day in 2011, and with the general ease in tension along the border that marked the joint tenure of the nominally amicable Congress Party and the Awami League, cattle smuggling had re-emerged as a major source of capital within the enclave. Not only had schemes for smuggling cattle through the Corridor re-surfaced, but a longstanding relationship with cattle smuggling rings in surrounding Indian areas had been revitalized with a mandated relaxation in border patrols in the area. Numerous farmers who I spoke with pointed to this reemergence in the cattle trade as the source of capital for launching the corn syndicate and transforming the enclave’s agricultural landscape. 32 The political economic transformations related to Dahagram’s corn boom were thus as intimately tied to shifts in the political imagination of the border as they were to concrete transformations in border policy and broader frameworks of capital accumulation within Bangladesh. The contingent convergence of a crop boom with a moment of comparative cross-border cooperation—a moment which also facilitated the opening of the Corridor for 24 hours a day—had produced a significant shift in the fortunes of Dahagram farmers. Such shifts, I would argue, suggest not a withering away or resolution of sensitive space. Rather, they indicate shifts in the relationality between broad nationalist and more localized registers and framings of territory. Creative individuals in such spaces make use of such shifts for material advantage, control of terrain, and remaking territory in ways that best suit their own ends. Yet, this relationality itself is highly unstable and subject to constant transformation. Indeed, the linkages between border politics, cattle, and corn suggest that Dahagram’s corn boom may be a particularly ephemeral transformation—one subject not just to market fluctuations, but also to the return to power of political parties, in either state, less disposed to cross-border cooperation.17 33 Importantly, neither the focus on nationalist representation nor lived realities alone can explain these recent transformations in Dahagram. On the one hand, viewed from the nationalist vantage point, Dahagram appears as a sensitive space—one that embodies the tension between administration of a challenging border and a range of nationalist anxieties over territory, identity, and the unfinished business of Partition. Understanding such a perspective helps in untangling the complexities of space in Dahagram—tensions over the movement of people and goods through the Corridor, the stakes and symbolics in the opening of the Corridor for 24 hours a day, and more. Yet,

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viewed from inside of the enclave, Dahagram appears as more of a vector for broader sets of territorial issues—the political economy of Bangladesh, fluctuations in outlook towards smuggling, the politics of land use. Looking from these vantage points simultaneously opens up ways to see the articulations between national anxieties over the border and everyday habitations of it.

Conclusion

34 This essay makes an epistemological contribution to the re-imagination of postcolonial territory, a re-imagination that has implications for both analytic and political figurings of South Asia. A longstanding contention of border studies has been that the margins are productive locations from which to think nation, state, and territory (see Cons & Sanyal 2013). This is so not just because margins are privileged locations for engaging the contradictions of state-making, but also because margins are often intimately bound up in conceptualizations and imaginations of nation and state.18 That said, many studies that engage this challenge take a bifurcated approach, focusing either on the ways that nations frame their borders, or on how local territorialities constitute alternative spatial modes. Paradoxically, in both narratives, state control of space continues to be the central dynamic and focus of analysis. My claim here is that to understand the vagaries of territory in postcolonial South Asia, we must incorporate both of these into a single analytic frame in ways that are attendant to the securitization of space, but not over-determined by them. What we should attend to is the relationship between these two registers, the extent to which articulations do and do not emerge between them, and the ways that such articulations open up new possibilities—political, economic, and otherwise—for people who navigate borders on a daily basis. Such a project is not unique (see, for example, Jones 2012b, McDuie- Ra 2012). Yet, its implications continue to be critical in moving beyond monolithic and polarized views of territory and of South Asia as a region.

35 Analytically, an examination of the histories of sensitive space illustrates the way that territory emerges out of a confluence of deeply affective anxieties about the ‘nation,’ and its ‘citizens.’ Spaces such as the enclaves are over-represented in national imaginations of territory precisely because they unsettle territorialized national imaginations (Billé 2013). They are spaces that, to paraphrase Schmitt (1985) (paraphrasing Kierkegaard) the center thinks with intense passion. These spatial imaginations collectively produce what I call here a territorial impasse—the inability to disentangle spatial imaginaries from spatial practicalities. These cartographic anxieties are manifest not just in Parliamentary debate, but in the very landscape of spaces such as Dahagram. The maintenance of boundaries—dramatized in the politics of the Tin Bigha Corridor—is central to producing national territory and to shaping the lives of those who live in borderlands. Yet, life in the borderland is more than simply a product of national anxieties. It is better described as an engagement with the terrain that emerges from overlaps between nationalist and other processes that shape territory— for example, the strategic exploitation of crop booms and cattle smuggling. The relationship between these two perspectives yields a shifting and unstable picture—one of both radical disconnects, such as hospitals that serve no one, and moments of convergence, such as Dahagram’s current corn boom. This picture has critical implications for our understanding of the production of territory. On the one hand, it

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troubles coherent narratives about the framing and control of space. On the other, it helps reframe territory as an active dialogue and set of negotiations over the meanings and uses of land, of borders, and of projects that seek to establish often contradictory forms of rule. 36 Mrinalini Sinha, in a defense of regionalism, suggests, that ‘by the sheer ambiguity and elusiveness of its definition, [the regional] provides an opportunity to reflect more pointedly on the fact that all spatial boundaries are inherently political and contingent’ (Sinha 2013: 266). As I have argued in this essay, a possible starting point for reconstituting the regional notion of South Asia—to take, as Sinha urges, an ‘angular’ relationship to the nation—is to rethink territory from the perspective of both margins and centers. If an understanding of broad projects of territory-making yields a view of the ways territory is ossified in nationalist debate, a perspective from within sensitive space yields different possible understandings. Cartographic anxieties blend with and are transformed by geopolitical currents, political economic trends, and the quotidian ways that people in borderlands carve out livings against a landscape of political flux. South Asia emerges as a striated space—overlapped and crisscrossed by people who struggle to work around and past incomplete projects of spatial governance and intermittently ossified borders.19 If my call to rethink the region this way is not unique, it is no less urgent against South Asia’s contemporary landscape—a landscape in which, as debates over the LBA suggest, territory remains a fraught battleground in which affective nationalist imaginations of space efface the lived realities of places such as Dahagram.

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NOTES

1. Thanks to Aminah Mohammad-Arif for inviting me to participate in this special issue and to Townsend Middleton and to three extremely thought provoking reviewers for comments on earlier versions of this paper. Funding for this project was generously provided by the Social Science Research Council’s IDRF fellowship. 2. These enclaves are recognized by each state and regularly appear on maps of the region, however, they are inaccessible and unadministered by their ‘home’ state because they fall on the wrong side of an international boundary. The bill also makes provisions for the resolution of disputes over a series of spaces held in ‘adverse possession’ by both states, and several kilometers of undemarcated border. 3. The literature on this subject is vast. Texts addressing these issues specifically related to the India-Bangladesh border include Van Schendel (2002b, 2005), Hussain (2013), Jones (2009, 2012), Sur (2013), McDuie-Ra (2012), Roy (2012), Feldman (2003), and Chatterji (1999, 2007).

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4. There is a robust debate in political geography on moving beyond the vision of states as naturalized containers of society. For a useful review of its various manifestations, see Brenner (1999). 5. Examples of dissonance between geographic imaginations and lived realities abound in South Asia, including the massive displacements of Partition (Zamindar 2007), disputes over territorial possession (Ibrahim 2009, Robinson 2013), struggles for regional autonomy and independence (Raghavan 2013, Middleton n.d.), questions about shared resources (Swain 1996), and the identities and locations of increasingly mobile populations (Samaddar 1999, Sur 2013). 6. I echo here classic claims of postcolonial scholarship that seek to bring the metropole and the colony into a single analytic frame (Stoler & Cooper 1997). 7. See, for example, Garg (2013). 8. Though it assumes more significance when viewed against the backdrop of, for example, the BJP’s recent call for Bangladesh to give land to India in compensation for the migration of Bangladeshis into Assam (BDnews24.com 2014). Here, fragmented territories are intimately indexed to broader meanings of population, demography, and possession, highlighting the ways that even tiny amounts of land are over-determined within nationalist logics of space. 9. Nehru’s optimism seems, retrospectively, fantastic in the context of the range of seemingly intractable problems presented by the border in the post-Partition period. For an exploration of these, see Van Schendel (2005). 10. Billé goes so far as to suggest that lost territory is best understood as a ‘phantom limb’ in the national psyche. 11. Dahagram is approximately 4,600 acres in size. 12. I make no claim here that Dahagram is representative of all enclaves. Indeed, for reasons outlined above, it is quite distinct. For an exploration of the conditions of other chhitmahal, see Jones (2009) and Shewly (2013). 13. For a full discussion of all of these issues, see Cons (n.d). 14. Themselves industries deeply implicated in the contemporary production of territory in Bangladesh (see Paprocki & Cons 2014). 15. A gesture, of course, with anticipated material benefits for all. 16. For more on the commodity flows—licit and illicit—across this border, see Sur (2013). 17. What the fate of Dahagram and the LBA will be under the new Modi administration is, as yet, unclear. However, the BJP has voiced opposition to any attempts to ‘hurriedly’ resolve border disputes through the LBA (Zaman 2014). Moreover, in the past, the BJP has regularly used the question of cross-border migration as an issue to consolidate political power (Ramachandran 1999). 18. See Tsing (1993) and essays in Das & Poole (2004). 19. See Ludden (2003), Sur (2013), Samaddar (1999).

ABSTRACTS

This essay makes a case for reconceptualizing South Asia by refiguring postcolonial territory. It does this by bringing together the broad political history of a series of enclaves along the India- Bangladesh border with an ethnographic discussion of the contemporary political economy of Dahagram, the largest of these enclaves. The essay argues for a need to bring nationalist

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framings of space and more textured explorations of everyday forms of territory-making into a single analytic frame. Doing so provides a way to understand and think beyond the territorial impasses posed by nationalist framings of space—the inability to disentangle lived realities from affectively charged conceptualizations of the nation and its borders. The essay, instead, reframes territory as the relationality between broad spatial imaginaries and lived realities at the margins. Such a view allows for a conceptualization of the region that builds upwards from quotidian negotiations to challenge nationalist and communal geographies.

INDEX

Keywords: India, Bangladesh, border, enclaves, territory, region

AUTHOR

JASON CONS

Research Assistant Professor, University of Texas, Austin

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Anthropology, Politics, and Place in Sri Lanka: South Asian Reflections from an Island Adrift

Jonathan Spencer

For Tambi

1 Something is missing in many maps of Sri Lanka.1 If it isn’t missing it is simply reduced, faded, played down. That something is India:

Official maps

Left: Commonwealth secretariat. Right: Sri Lanka government website.

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2 How did Sri Lanka get to drift away from the land mass to which it seems so almost- attached? Indeed why is Sri Lanka a separate place, a different country, a different anthropology? I doubt many Sri Lankans, let alone researchers working on the island, would be able to give an answer. When the Dutch colonies around the coast of the island passed to the British in 1796 they were briefly under the control of the Madras Presidency of the East India Company. This morphed into a system of dual control, shared with the crown, before Ceylon formerly became a crown colony of its own in 1802. Thereafter it was controlled from the Colonial Office in London, not by the Company, and it shared its 19th century rulers with Fiji and New Zealand, rather than Madras and Bombay. Why? The reasons for this outcome are deeply embedded in local rivalries between different British agencies of the time. It could easily have been otherwise. But as Sujit Sivasundaram has recently pointed out, the consequences were profound, in both governmental and imaginative terms. Attempts to dredge a deeper channel between the island and the mainland provide a nicely concrete metaphor for the ideological separation established in early colonial rule (Sivasundaram 2013: 14). We have one source of these outlines of an island adrift, apparently disconnected from its neighbours, at once South Asian and not-South Asian.

‘Local Society’?

3 For the last 15 years I have spent a large part of each summer with my family on an island in the Outer Hebrides. The island is way out in the far, far west with nothing but brimming ocean between it and Canada. To get there requires a six or seven hour ferry journey from the mainland. Once there, you feel you are on the very edge of the continent.

4 Our closest neighbour is a man I shall call Roderick. Roderick is a fluent Gaelic speaker, born and brought up on the island. But, as I have slowly got to know him over the years, I find his conversation to be full of surprises. Once, when I mentioned my own trips to Sri Lanka he merely said, ‘Now I do remember going to Trincomalee more than once’, his accent adding a syllable or two to the name of the Sri Lankan port, thus bending the anglicized place name closer to its local rendition, tirikunamali. In his youth Roderick had worked for years in the merchant navy, had circled the globe more than once, and could tell Conradian tales of his experience on pilgrim ships taking flocks of hajjis from Malaya and Indonesia to Mecca. Nor was he especially unusual in his travels. Another neighbour, two houses up the road, is now retired, but used to work on the oil rigs in the North Sea; after the North Sea, he found work in other oilfields in different places, ending up working for years in the Gulf of Mexico before coming home to the island. Roderick and his neighbour, and others like them, are both deeply located in the place of their birth, but their sense of emplacement is set against a life in which economic necessity sent them across the world and something else brought them back. My opening point is simple. To adapt what Geertz once said of villages—people live on islands, but they don’t necessarily stay on islands. 5 We may think of islands as sealed, enclosed, worlds in themselves, bubbles of various sorts (cultural, political, whatever). But this is simply wrong. Islands are rarely any of these things. They are places of harbour, and places of transit, points of arrival and points of departure. Their popular representation as closed worlds of their own is not a self-evident reflection of the experience of living on islands: it is something that

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requires quite a bit of cultural and political work, and the result of this work is rarely stable or seamless. As Charles Hallisey once put it, in a situation like this, every invocation of the ‘local’ inevitably invokes a coeval invocation of the ‘translocal’. A historian of medieval Buddhism, Hallisey has been an active participant in some of the most interesting discussions about place in recent South Asian scholarship, and I will return to those discussions later in this paper (Pollock 2003). 6 Another conversation, this time in 2006 in Ampara District in Sri Lanka, brought this home to me. With the sociologist Tudor Silva, I was visiting one of Sri Lanka’s smallest and most disadvantaged universities, Southeastern University, which is located on the edges of a fishing village called Oluvil right on the island’s East coast. Tudor and I were there to advise the University on curriculum development in sociology and anthropology. The current undergraduate programme was entirely taught by two enthusiastic but hard-pressed junior lecturers. One thing they told us they wanted was more material for the students which addressed ‘local society’. The cry is common among social scientists teaching all over Sri Lanka, for whom until very, very recently, almost nothing of academic worth about Sri Lanka was available in the local languages used for university teaching. But the situation was especially vexed in Oluvil. The students at Southeastern University are over 90 % Tamil-speaking Muslims—a minority within a minority—and their University is itself the product of the long civil war which has ravaged this part of the country. It was formed in the mid-1990s when Muslim students and staff at the University further up the coast withdrew from that campus, citing the constant threat of attack from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. 7 So what would constitute ‘local society’ for these people? Not the classic ethnographies of kinship and land tenure that dominated the literature when I started out as a PhD student in the early 1980s (Leach 1961, Obeyesekere 1967). Nor the literature on Buddhism, politics and change which followed (Gombrich & Obeyesekere 1988, Obeyesekere 1981, Seneviratne 1977, 1998), or ritual and sorcery (Kapferer 1983, 1997). We could, it’s true, have built the entire syllabus on the excellent work of Dennis McGilvray (2008), most of which was researched within a bus ride of the Oluvil campus, supplemented by a chapter or so from Under the Bo Tree (Yalman 1967), but that was about it (I dread to think how they would have reacted to Margaret Trawick’s eccentric take on the war (Trawick 2007): based on fieldwork an hour’s drive away, it might as well have been written about the planet Mars for all its ‘local’ resonance in Oluvil). We might have looked to Indian textbooks and treated ‘local society’ as an outpost of India proper (the Outer Hebrides of South Asia, perhaps) but this idea met with little enthusiasm. The lecturers themselves had suggested ‘Islamic society’ as a way to conceive their kind of place, but we were unsure this would deliver the kind of teaching material they seemed to need. Finally, I tried an idea which did seem to work: ‘Local society’, for a place like Oluvil, really meant the Indian Ocean rim— from Kerala upwards along the west coast of the subcontinent to Gujarat, the ports of the Arabian Gulf, the old trading routes down the coast of East Africa, plus the predominantly Muslim coasts of Malaysia and Indonesia. This resonated in all registers. Everyone knew someone who had travelled north to the Gulf for employment. Everyone knew the stories of Arab traders arriving in Sri Lanka, marrying local women and settling down to found the Muslim communities now living along the coast (not least because these stories became the official rationale for treating ‘Moors’ as ‘racially’ distinct from Tamils in late 19th century colonial sociology). And everyone knew the other reason for Oluvil’s limited fame—the imagined super-port that a local politician had promoted for

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the village, which was intended to reawaken the great days of the old trade routes. The politician had died in murky circumstances some years before. All there was to show of his dream harbour at this point was a fine Islamo-vernacular lighthouse, a mile or so down the beach from the campus.

Oluvil lighthouse

Photograph by the author.

8 Looking out from the lighthouse, the local is not a place but a process. Islands are good sites to watch this process at work. And islands like the island of Sri Lanka are perhaps best thought of not as closed entities but more as sieves or colanders, through which persons, ideas and theories pass, leaving odd bits and pieces behind on their passage. All this passing is not without its problems and predicaments, and from these problems some of us make anthropology.

Connected anthropologies?

9 My reflections on South Asia as seen from its southern extremity were not, as may already be obvious, originally formulated for the context in which they now appear. They were first drafted in response to an invitation to think about the somewhat more specific topic of South Asia as a context for anthropological theory. Thinking about Sri Lanka in terms of its proximity to, and distance from, the bigger thing that is South Asia, can, I think, illuminate our understanding of the island (not least its current venomous politics). It can also shed light on why Sri Lanka has been such a fruitful site for the making of anthropologists. I will return to the question of politics, and specifically the anxieties of post-war place-making in Sri Lanka, in my concluding comments. First, though, I want to step back from anthropology and instead steal an idea or two from the historians of the region. I should stress that I am not pretending that what follows has much if any substance as a contribution to the history of anything (Sri Lanka, anthropology, whatever): rather I am using a perspective derived

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from these historians because, as they say, it is good to think with. Anachronism is the least of my problems.

10 In a contribution to a symposium on early modern history in South and Southeast Asia a decade ago, Sanjay Subrahmanyam (1997) launched the idea of what he called ‘connected histories’. Ostensibly commenting on a six-country comparison by the historian of Southeast Asia Victor Lieberman, Subrahmanyam chose to propose a radically different way of approaching the history of early modern Asia and Europe. One component of Subrahmanyam’s argument is an implicit critique of what has elsewhere been called ‘methodological nationalism’ (Wimmer & Glick-Schiller 2002), this time as manifest in the historiography of the early modern world.2 In the case in hand, he means the treatment of entities called ‘Burma’, ‘Siam’, ‘Vietnam’, as well as ‘France’, ‘Russia’ and ‘Japan’ as self-contained and self-evident units for analysis and comparison. In place of this kind of comparativist perspective, Subrahmanyam argues for a kind of analysis which takes the issue of connections across distance seriously as a point of departure. The flows that link different parts of the early modern world in his analysis are as often ideological as material (both matter, of course) and they extend far beyond the familiar contours of the ‘expansion’ of western Europe, a theme which he suggests may have been of only marginal importance in many parts of Asia in the period in question. 11 Subrahmanyam takes as one example the Arakan court (in present-day Burma/ Myanmar), ‘wherein the court chronicles were written in Pali, but where Persian was used, and Bengali the major language of literary expression’ (Subrahmanyam 1997: 757). Arakan, he reminds us, was tied into a network of Buddhist polities, including those in Sri Lanka, held together by flows of monks and more material representatives of the Buddha, in the form of relics. This Buddhist ecumene persisted well into the 19th century in ways both predictable (the importation of Siamese and Burmese monks to restart the ordination tradition around the turn of the 19th century) and unpredictable (King Mongkut of Siam providing some of the money for Buddhist monks to run their first Sinhala-language printing presses in the mid-19th century (Malalgoda 1976: 219, see Blackburn 2010). 12 Another example might be the movement of people from South India to Sri Lanka, and then from Sri Lanka onwards and outwards into the world. The movement of Tamil people since the early 1980s, into a growing diaspora in Western Europe, North America and Australia can be seen as a continuation of earlier patterns of movement: educated Tamils from the Jaffna peninsula supplied South India and Malaya with schoolteachers and clerks; South India in turn supplied the colonial plantations of Ceylon with coolies to harvest the coffee, rubber and tea (Spencer 2003, Thiranagama 2014). Before that, the Palk Straits were for centuries a crossing point for all manner of people and goods, with groups of incomers being absorbed in local hierarchies of caste, family and religion. But, as Sunil Amrith (2013) has eloquently demonstrated, if we attend to the movements of migrants across the Bay of Bengal, we find ourselves thinking in terms of a rather different region, a region which includes Singapore and Penang, as well as Colombo and Kolkata, and therefore a region which undermines the coherence of received ideas about Southeast as well as South Asia. 13 One obvious way to respond to this argument is to abandon any talk of ‘an’ anthropology of Sri Lanka (or, to stick to Subrahmanyam’s original point, an anthropology of ‘South Asia’ or ‘Southeast Asia’), and try to develop a kind of fluid

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anthropology, which can treat the very idea of place as inherently problematic, and which is less embarrassed by all this evidence of movement and connection (see Ludden 2003). One can see the stirrings of this in the early fiction of Amitav Ghosh (1992, 1993), in the renewed interest in migration across the sub-continent (Gardner & Osella 2003), in the study of the politics and performances of border-crossing (Samaddar 1999), or in recent work on cross-Indian Ocean networks of people and places (Gilsenan 2003, Ho 2006). Two contributions from the history of religion demonstrate the possibilities inherent in such an approach to our understanding of Sri Lanka. Anne Blackburn’s Locations of Buddhism (2010) systematically shifts attention from the well-rehearsed story of colonial interactions between Western and local Buddhists, to focus instead on relations with Buddhists elsewhere in Asia, especially in Thailand. Ronit Ricci’s Islam Translated (2011) provides a virtuoso analysis of the movements of a single narrative, the Book of One Thousand Questions, from 10th century Arabic, through Tamil, Javanese and Malay translations, conjuring up another new spatial configuration—the Arabic cosmopolis of South and Southeast Asia. Towards the end of her tale, she introduces an 1897 Malay manuscript, written in jawi script in Colombo, which connects the story to the lineage of Abdul Qadir Al-Jilani, the Sufi saint whose network of shrines links Sri Lanka to Tamil Nadu, Singapore and Penang (Ricci 2011: 209-12). From this kind of geographically expansive material we might begin to construct the kind of account of ‘local society’ my young colleagues in Oluvil were looking for. 14 But I want to explore a rather different implication of Subrahmanyam’s argument. His article is aimed at a number of well-chosen targets: at Eurocentric accounts of the modern; at overly materialist readings of movement and connection in the early modern; and at those who think the world has only very recently discovered travel, connection, and the intellectual consequences of connection. One of these consequences is a set of more or less ‘anthropological’ predicaments which can be discerned in the transcultural exchanges that pepper the history of early modern travel: issues of translation abound, of course in all registers, but so too do exchanges concerning fundamental assumptions about human life and sociality, of what it is to be a person. Subrahmanyam describes an extraordinary conversation between the Mughal ruler Akbar and a visiting Jesuit on their different ideas about the imminence of the Last Judgement, and then traces the circulation of millenary ideas and images across the supposed religious and cultural boundaries of the region. In Subrahmanyam’s argument ‘difference’, and the desire to render it intelligible or fix it in classificatory schemas, was never solely an issue for Europeans venturing into Asia. 15 Again, to seek a Sri Lankan illustration for this point, we can point to the most famous proto-ethnographer of the island, the English sailor Robert Knox, who published his account of life in the kingdom of Kandy in the late 17th century. Knox’s account is based upon 20 years spent in Ceylon as a (rather generously treated) captive of the king of Kandy. While contemporary anthropologists happily read Knox as a Malinowskian fieldworker avant la lettre ( e.g. Kapferer 1990), they rarely reflect on the peculiar circumstances of his captivity. Knox was one of a significant number of Europeans who were detained for many years on the orders of the King of Kandy, not, it would seem, for any obviously instrumental reasons—no ransoms were demanded, no treaties negotiated—but rather for reasons of curiosity. The editor of my early 20th century edition notes: The causes of their detention were:

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(i) a quaint whim of King Rajah Singho to make a sort of menagerie of European captives; (ii) the jealousy of the Dutch at the possibility of English intervention; (iii) the disinclination of the captives themselves to make a determined effort to escape. (Knox 1911 [1681]: xiii-xiv) 16 In short, the pioneer ethnologist was himself a specimen in the King’s personal ethnological museum. From the start, ethnography cut both ways.

Vedda chieftain and portrait of Robert Knox

An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon in the East Indies (1681)

Anthropology as place-making

17 There is one other lesson I want to draw from this rather dubious and breathless tour of early modern Asia. That concerns the local and the supra-local and the making of place. The inspiration from this comes from a different source—Sheldon Pollock’s comparative model of vernacularization and cosmopolitanism in early modern Eurasia. Comparing the histories of Latin and Sanskrit, Pollock points out on the one hand a parallel process of expansion followed by vernacularization, in which ‘[n]ew, local ways of making culture—with their wholly historical and factitious local identities—and, concomitantly, new ways of ordering society and polity came into being, replacing the older translocalism’ (Pollock 2000: 592). Across the sub-continent new literary cultures emerged, using Tamil, Marathi, Kannada in place of Pali or Sanskrit.

18 Much of Pollock’s argument concerns the different modalities of the cosmopolitan and the vernacular that emerged in Europe and, somewhat differently, in South Asia. What interests me is his vision of the local as something that emerges from an earlier

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translocal culture. The local, in this instance, is not given, it is consciously produced. The translocal is not something in our future, it is very much there in the deep past. ‘What some are inclined to characterize as vernacular primordiality,’ he argues, ‘is shown to be a chimera; vernacularity has always and everywhere been produced’ (Pollock 2000: 617). In South Asian versions of the early modern vernacular, the key element is not people so much as ‘Place’. Vernacularization is attached to what Pollock calls an ‘aesthetic of Place’, itself expressed above all in the new literary ‘languages of Place’ (desha-bhasha). 19 Two points stand out. I would like to believe that Sri Lanka’s geographic position makes it especially vexed by the dilemmas of vernacularization. The sheer duration and impact of colonial rule—which lasted unbroken for over 400 years in parts of the seaboard—is probably the other troubling factor, something which produces and reproduces place as a problem to be overcome. The problem of place-making is never resolved there but has to be undertaken anew in each generation. Certainly, it is noteworthy that in the chronology of Pollock’s epochal account, Tamil and Sinhala appear early as vehicles of vernacular literature in their own right and stay the course until the present (Hallisey 2003).3 The second is that the classic stories of indigeneity in Sri Lanka work within a structure of feeling dominated by movement, travel, and the supplanting of what is already there by what has come from outside: the Buddha comes to the island and leaves the places blessed by his presence; the founder of the Sinhala kings, Vijaya, comes and marries a wild local woman. And having arrived from elsewhere, the new force settles and becomes the very essence of the place of arrival. 20 Whatever the antecedents, anthropology in Sri Lanka has been, for much of the time, an exercise in making and marking the place. ‘Anthropology’ as cosmopolitan idiom is harnessed to exercises in locating, valorizing and fixing the essence of place. To take an example I have used more than once before (Spencer 1990, 2007): the most prominent literary figure of the years after Independence, the Sinhala novelist Martin Wickramasinghe, drew on Malinowski and Benedict in his writings on Sinhala culture, stressing the permeability of cultural boundaries and the value of cultural borrowing, even as he sought to locate the ‘real’ heart of Sinhala culture in traditional village life. Out of the same 1950s literary milieu emerged two of Sri Lanka’s many brilliant anthropologists, Gananath Obeyesekere and Gehan Wijeyewardene. Obeyesekere has recounted the first part of his own life of to-ing and fro-ing between the cosmopolitan and the local: As an undergraduate at Peradeniya I, like many others of my generation, wondered about my social and personal identity. I had left my own village in early childhood and then lived in Colombo and Kandy. Though I did go back to my village during school vacations, I was never really a part of its social existence. Moreover, my village was a considerably acculturated one, characteristic of parts of the Western and Southern provinces. Inspired by a romantic quest for the really real, I used to wander during university weekends and vacations into remote villages in the North Central Province to collect folk songs and myths. I felt increasingly drawn toward understanding village culture, thereby hoping (futilely, I soon learned) to abolish my own alienation. (Obeyesekere 1984: xv) 21 Or Daniel on his own cosmopolitan circumstances: I am a native Tamil speaker, born in the Sinhalese-speaking south of Sri Lanka to a South Indian Tamil father who changed his name from something divine to something daring in order to marry my mother, a Sri Lankan Anglican whose mother tongue was English. My father’s English was poor, his Sinhalese ineffective;

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my mother’s Tamil was excruciating, her Sinhalese reserved for the servants. For me, at least, anthropologizing began early. (Daniel 1984: 57) 22 Daniel’s Fluid Signs starts with the story of a rich visitor from Malaysia drawn back to his ancestral village in Tamil Nadu in order to make arrangements for his son to come and spend time there, to ‘live on its soil’ (Daniel 1984: 62). The book, with its fascination with ur, the Tamil concept of village-as-origin-and-essence, is at once about—and an example of—the making and marking of place.

23 For others, place-making has happened at one remove. Some, like Chandra Jayawardena, found themselves as anthropologists by recapitulating the routes of the coolie migrants of the 19th century, in his case to Guyana and Fiji. Others like Wijeyewardene and Tambiah, traced the contours of the old Buddhist ecumene which linked Sri Lanka to Southeast Asia. Tambiah has described his anthropological journey to Thailand (after experiencing an early round of Sinhala-Tamil violence) in these terms: And intuitively reading the signs, I wished to get away from the island, for I experienced a mounting alienation and a sense of being homeless in one’s own home. And then a remarkable opportunity came my way, which enabled me to positively sympathize with and creatively study the phenomena in another country that I could not do in my own. I went to Thailand. 24 He continues: ‘In a complex way, I sense that [World Conqueror and World Renouncer] was an attempt at an intellectual and emotional confrontation with and resolution of my own personal situation with regard to Sri Lanka, and the conflicts and urges it gave rise to’ (Tambiah 1986: 137-8).

25 Place-making is never a dispassionate exercise. What links this generation of brilliant anthropologists is the strong normative dimension in their work. Obeyesekere set out to look for the ‘really real’, Tambiah lamented the ‘betrayal’ of Buddhism in its modern nationalist orientation. Seneviratne’s Work of Kings (1999) is a remarkable reading of modern Buddhist polemics, made up in equal parts of interpretation and admonition. Much of this normative concern focuses on Buddhism, and especially its link to the vicious politics of friend and enemy. In seeking out their version of the real, anthropologists have played a central role in challenging and destabilizing other, more popular, claims to the heart of things Sinhala and things Tamil. As a result, they have become frequent figures for public vilification in Sri Lanka itself. Tambiah’s Buddhism Betrayed (1992) was banned by the government in the 1990s as a result of a campaign by chauvinist critics. Obeyesekere is often attacked in the local press. But their crime is not the empty deconstruction of sacred symbols of nation and people. Their crime is the use of the anthropological lens to argue for other, better ways to configure the heart of this place.

The view from the lighthouse

26 In 2009, as the long civil war came to an end, someone in the Sri Lankan tourist authority had the bright idea of marketing the island as part of a ‘Ramayana Trail’, carefully packaged to attract Indian tourists eager to see the home of Ravana. The plan was immediately contested by a group of voluble intellectuals associated, not unironically, with the Royal Asiatic Society of Sri Lanka. A symposium was organized in

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2010, with presenter after presenter disowning the plan. As the opening speaker explained: The Archaeology Department has strict rules and laws against the destruction of archaeological sites; however there are no laws for the opposite—creation of bogus sites and artefacts. The so-called ‘Ramayana Trail’ of the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority is such an invention. 27 But the concern for historically accurate tourism was only part of what concerned the speaker: India’s tourism authorities do not promote any alleged Ramayana sites, but sponsor a Buddhist Circuit to attract its Asian tourists. Sri Lanka sponsors of this fictional and ultimately anti-national venture started apparently under the guidance of a Tamil bureaucrat. This is similar to a few Tamil bureaucrats in 1961 which created the ideological group Pulip Padai (‘Army of Tigers’) which prepared for the LTTE. This Hindu fundamentalist tendency could be a not-too-subtle attempt to plant another invented homelands just as LTTE supporters and India invented a ‘traditional homelands of the Tamils’ prior to their war.4 28 Sri Lanka, it was argued, was the home to thousands of years of ‘real’ history – Buddhist history—and must therefore resist any attempt at annexation in the name of ‘bogus’ – Indian? Hindu? South Asian?—history.

29 Sri Lanka’s dense connections with the land mass across the Palk Strait have been a source of anxiety at the heart of the modern nationalist project, at least since the middle of the 20th century. In the years immediately before and after Independence, a series of cultural movements sprung up, each in rather different ways attempting to claim an autochthonous, and therefore authentic, origin for the Sinhala Buddhist project. The Hela movement, led by Munidasa Cumaratunga, campaigned on the claim that Sinhala was not, as generally believed, an Indo-Aryan language of North Indian origin; beneath the accretions of the years, Cumaratunga believed, could be found an originary Lankan language, Hela, with no trace of alien provenance (Coperahewa 2011). At the same time, a movement called Vinaya Vardena attempted to propagate a ‘pure’ form of Buddhism, a Buddhism without the order of monks, and the associated institutional genealogy that connected contemporary Buddhists to the figure of the Buddha himself in what is now North India (Kemper 1978). A few years later in the early 1950s, another movement emerged, the tapasayo, self-ordained monks who again sought to short-circuit the institutional genealogies that tied regular monks to the original followers of the Buddha (Carrithers 1979). 30 All of these movements attempted to cut the ties that might bind Sri Lanka to some bigger South Asian history, and their attempts at a kind of pure, self-positing language, religion, and perhaps nation, seem to be a mirror-image response to the circumstances that impelled the Sri Lankan anthropologists of the 1950s to find themselves in a journey out into other cultural worlds. 31 In 2011 I gave a talk, loosely based on this paper, at the International Centre for Ethnic Studies in Colombo. Two years after the end of the civil war in 2009, I thought it safest to provide something comfortably academic and obscure enough in its argument to deflect criticism from the usual suspects who haunt those occasions in Colombo. I cannot say the experiment was entirely successful. In particular, my whimsical counter-factual introduction—what if things had been different and Ceylon had stayed part of the Madras Presidency in the early 19th century—proved especially troublesome.

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One member of the audience was sufficiently moved to write an account in one of the country’s English language newspapers. It started badly: Ceylon, [Spencer] declared, should not have been made a ‘crown colony’ but ‘a part of British India’. 32 And quickly got worse: [Spencer] had two faces (there are others who have adopted more masks). In the one his facial expression, tone of speech etc mimicked those of an academic; in his other self he let himself go, descending into notions of ‘Empire’. It would be no surprise if he had voted for the demented Maggie Thatcher, the ‘gung-ho’ Blair (who waited till he was out to ‘go home’ to his wife’s church), the also genocidal Cameron and others of their ilk.5 33 If nothing else, my critic’s response (argued at some considerable length in the discussion that followed my presentation) demonstrated the depth of feeling behind the widespread disavowal of Lankan South Asian-ness: a talk which merely attempted to remind people of the many connections between the island and its neighbours in South and Southeast Asia, was received as a revival of Empire, and a continuation of the mission of Thatcher, Blair, and the, (somewhat unexpectedly) ‘genocidal’ David Cameron. I shall be more careful in the future.

34 All of this brings me back to my junior colleagues and the question of ‘local society’. One part of their problem, of course, was that the heart of other people’s anthropology was located elsewhere—in the Sinhala-dominated countryside of the interior, a part of the island that had been variously constructed as somehow realer and more Lankan since the Portuguese arrived. Place-making serves to exclude as well as include. Different parts of the island have served as the anthropological heartland at different points in the last 50 years. Most of them are rural, all of them predominantly Sinhala: the rice-growing villages of North-Central Province (Leach 1961), the Kandyan highlands (Yalman 1967; Gombrich 1971). Over 30 years ago it was claimed that at least five full ethnographic studies had been completed in an area of 9 square miles along the South coast between Tangalla and Dondra (Egan 1973: there have been more since). In contrast, the Hindu-Muslim patchwork of the East coast, with its inescapable reminders of the comings and goings that tie Sri Lanka to South Asia and beyond, has been relatively unexplored—despite the best efforts of exceptional researchers like McGilvray (2008), Whitaker (1999), Walker (2013), Gaasbeek (2010), Lawrence (1997) and Thangarajah (2003). 35 In the mid-1990s, Jayadeva Uyangoda, in a remarkable essay entitled ‘Academic Texts on the Sri Lankan Ethnic Question as Biographies of a Dying Nation-state’, observed that anthropology had ‘made the first sustained attempt at examining Sri Lanka’s contemporary manifestations of violence, practised in the service of the nation-state (1997: 8). Uyangoda’s essay concluded with a section headed ‘Treating the Nation-state as an Autonomous Island’. A basic problem in the academic literature, he suggests, is the isolation of Sri Lanka from the wider South Asian context, something he calls Sri Lankan exceptionalism, and that too, he argues, is symptomatic of an anachronistic clinging to the political contours of a dying political institution. We are back where I started this piece, with the critique of methodological nationalism. Let me now return to the lighthouse. 36 When I first encountered the Oluvil lighthouse in 2006, I took it for granted that the fanciful scheme for a new international harbour at this out-of-the-way fishing village on the East coast was long dead and buried. Then, a couple of years later, I noticed signs

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of construction work, and a billboard advertising a joint Sri Lankan-Danish project to build the harbour. When next I visited in 2012, the harbour was indeed constructed but there were no signs of life apart from the navy personnel guarding its entrance, and occasionally patrolling the high perimeter wall that had been built around the site. The harbour, I was told by local friends, was a disaster. Far from providing shelter, the builders had contrived to channel dangerous currents into the harbour itself. Even the local fishermen couldn’t use it. In many ways, the harbour is typical of much post-war development across the island—a high-capital project of little immediate utility to the people who live in its shadow. As such it can serve us as a final, very concrete, metaphor, this time of the ambivalence that marks Sri Lanka’s relationship to its neighbours—superficially a gateway to the world around, which turns out to be too hazardous for anyone to use.

Oluvil harbour 2012

Photograph by the author.

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Hallisey, Charles (2003) ‘Works and Persons in Sinhala Literary Culture’, in Sheldon Pollock (ed.), Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia, Berkeley: University of California Press.

Ho, Engseng (2006) The Graves of Tarim: Genealogy and Mobility across the Indian Ocean, Berkeley: University of California Press.

Kapferer, Bruce (1983) A Celebration of Demons: Exorcism and the Aesthetics of Healing in Sri Lanka, Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.

Kapferer, Bruce (1990) ‘From the Periphery to the Centre: Ethnography and the Critique of Anthropology in Sri Lanka’, in Richard Fardon (ed.), Localizing Strategies: Regional Traditions of Ethnographic Writing, Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.

Kapferer, Bruce (1997) The Feast of the Sorcerer: Practices of Consciousness and Power, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Kemper, Steven (1978) ‘Buddhism without Bhikkhus: The Sri Lankan Vinaya Vardena Society’, in Bardwell L. Smith (ed.) Religion and the Legitimation of Power in Sri Lanka, Chambersburg, PA: Anima.

Knox, Robert (1911) An Historical relation of Ceylon, Glasgow: MacLehose, [1681].

Lawrence, Patricia (1997) Work of Oracles, Silence of Terror: Notes on the Injury of War in Eastern Sri Lanka, PhD dissertation, University of Colorado.

Leach, Edmud (1961) Pul Eliya: A Village in Ceylon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ludden, David (2003) Presidential Address: Maps in the mind and the Mobility of Asia, Journal of Asian Studies, 62(4), pp. 1057-78.

Malalgoda, Kitsiri (1976) Buddhism in Sinhalese Society, 1750-1900: A Study of Religious Revival and Change, Berkeley: University of California Press.

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McGilvray, Dennis (2008) Crucible of conflict: Tamil and Muslim society on the east coast of Sri Lanka, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Obeyesekere, Gananath (1967) Land Tenure in Village Ceylon: A Sociological and Historical Study, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Obeyesekere, Gananath (1981) Medusa's hair: an essay on personal symbols and religious experience, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Obeyesekere, Gananath (1984) The Cult of the Goddess Pattini, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Pollock, Sheldon (2000) ‘Cosmopolitan and Vernacular in History’, Public Culture, 12(3), pp. 591-625.

Pollock, Sheldon (ed.) (2003) Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia, Berkeley: University of California Press. 2003.

Ricci, Ronit (2011) Islam Translated: Literature. Conversion, and the Arabic Cosmopolis of South and Southeast Asia, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Samaddar, Ranabir (1999) The Marginal Nation: Transborder Migration from Bangladesh to West Bengal, Delhi: Sage.

Seneviratne, H.L. (1977) Rituals of the Kandyan State, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Seneviratne, H.L. (1999) The Work of Kings: The New Buddhism in Sri Lanka, Chicago, IL: University Of Chicago Press.

Sivasundaram, Sujit (2013) Islanded: Britain, Sri Lanka and the Bounds of an Indian Ocean Colony, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Spencer, Jonathan (1990) ‘Writing Within: Anthropology, Nationalism and Culture in Sri Lanka’, Current Anthropology, 31, pp. 283-300.

Spencer, Jonathan (2003) ‘A nation ‘living in different places’: notes on the impossible work of purification in postcolonial Sri Lanka’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, 37(1-2), pp. 1-23.

Spencer, Jonathan (2007) Anthropology, politics, and the state: democracy and violence in South Asia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Stirrat, Jock (2006) ‘Competitive humanitarianism: relief and the tsunami in Sri Lanka’, Anthropology Today, 22(5), pp. 11-6.

Subrahmanyam, Sanjay (1997) ‘Connected Histories: Notes Towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia’, Modern Asian Studies, 31(3), pp. 735-62.

Tambiah, Stanley (1986) Sri Lanka: Ethnic Fratricide and the Dismantling of Democracy, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Tambiah, Stanley (1992) Buddhism Betrayed: Religion, Politics, and Violence in Sri Lanka, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Thangarajah, Yuvi (2003) ‘Ethnicization of the Devolution Debate and the Militarization of Civil Society in North-eastern Sri Lanka’, in Markus Mayer, Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake & Yuvi Thangarajah (eds.), Building Local Capacities for Peace: Rethinking Conflict and Development in Sri Lanka, Delhi: Macmillan India, pp. 15-36.

Thiranagama, Sharika (2014) ‘Making Tigers from Tamils: Long-Distance Nationalism and Sri Lankan Tamils in Toronto’, American Anthropologist, 116(2), pp. 265-78.

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Trawick, Margaret (2007) Enemy lines: warfare, childhood, and play in Batticaloa, Berkeley: University of California Press.

Uyangoda, Jayadeva (1997) ‘Academic Texts on the Sri Lankan Ethnic Question as Biographies of a Decaying Nation-State’, Nethra, 1(3), pp. 7-23.

Walker, R. (2013) Enduring Violence: Everyday Life and Conflict in Eastern Sri Lanka, Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Whitaker, Mark (1999) Amiable Incoherence: Manipulating Histories and Modernities in a Batticaloa Hindu Temple, Amsterdam: VU University Press.

Wimmer, Andreas; Glick-Schiller, Nina (2002) ‘Methodological nationalism and beyond: nation- state building, migration and the social sciences’, Global Networks, 2(4), pp. 301-34.

Yalman, Nur (1967) Under the Bo Tree: Studies in Caste, Kinship, and Marriage in the Interior of Ceylon, Berkeley: University of California Press.

NOTES

1. This is a revised and updated version of a paper originally written for an AAA panel on ‘Theory and Area in the Anthropological Imagination: Revisiting the Anthropology of South Asia as a Place of Theory’. I am grateful to the conveners, Veena Das and Akhil Gupta, for the invitation to join the panel, and for the stimulating comments of our discussants, Arjun Appadurai and Rajeswari Sunder Rajan. Everything since is my responsibility. This paper is dedicated to the memory of Stanley Tambiah: ‘Everything that was beautiful about the world, he loved’ (Charles Hallisey). 2. The critique of ‘methodological nationalism’ should not be confused with a bien-pensant wishing away of nation-states and their continued importance in our world. It is rather a querying of the lazy identification of nation-state boundaries as self-evident boundaries for social scientific enquiry. 3. Even if it is true that ‘language’ and ‘people’ commingle with ‘place’, rather more than Pollock’s sweeping account would allow, in early modern Sinhala assertions of the local (Gunawardana 1979). 4. S. Goonetilleke, ‘Introduction: Inventing Arcaheology: The Tourist Board’s ‘Ramayana Trail’,’ Royal Asiatic Society of Sri Lanka, 17 July 2010, http://www.royalasiaticsociety.lk/wp-content/ uploads/2010/07/01-Introduction.pdf, accessed 27 May, 2014. 5. G. Seneviratne, ‘Jonathan Spencer and History’, The Island 20 August 2011, http:// www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=32889, accessed 27 May 2014.

ABSTRACTS

How does the idea of ‘South Asia’ play out in the politics and public culture of Sri Lanka? As an island, long connected by the trade routes of the Indian Ocean, it has always been a place of comings and goings. Yet, paradoxically, this fact seems to often generate efforts to imagine it as

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necessarily bounded and unattached to the adjacent subcontinent. The problems of place-making that follow from this move, it is suggested, may be a source of Sri Lanka’s success as a producer of extraordinary anthropologists—anthropologists like the late Stanley Tambiah, whose research in Thailand was self-consciously conceived as a way of understanding the peculiar dilemmas of his homeland.

INDEX

Keywords: Sri Lanka, island, anthropology, South Asia, connection

AUTHOR

JONATHAN SPENCER

Social Anthropology, School of Social and Political Science University of Edinburgh

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Thinking India in South Africa: Gandhi’s Conundrum

Claude Markovits

1 The term ‘South Asia’ was not in use before the 1950s, and did not therefore belong to Gandhi’s lexicon. In analysing how Gandhi (1869-1948), in South Africa, between 1893 and 1914, ‘thought India’, we may however be able to approach indirectly some of the problems raised by the political/spatial conceptualization of the region that we now call ‘South Asia’. Gandhi himself was certainly not interested in the question of naming that space, which for him, like for most of his contemporaries, was simply and un- problematically India, or Bharat. But in his own political practice, the question of spatiality occupied an important if somewhat unrecognized place, inasmuch as he started his public career in South Africa and relocated to India for good only at the age of 46 after having spent most of twenty years in Durban and Johannesburg. This is bound to raise interesting questions regarding Gandhi’s perception of India and Indianness. We might note in passing that his twenty-year stay in South Africa remains a relatively neglected episode in most accounts of his life1 and in the vast literature generated around his thought and political practice. There is, however, a growing body of texts coming out of South Africa that has tended to offer a view that differs from the dominant Indian view, less hagiographical in nature, and more attuned to the local context.2 I shall make use of this literature up to a point, but shall try to give precedence to Gandhi’s own writings. The latter fall into two distinct categories, on the one hand the texts he produced while in South Africa, mostly letters, newspaper articles, particularly those in his own Indian Opinion, and the occasional pamphlet, on the other hand the two narratives he penned in India in the 1920s, while in jail, of his South African experience, firstly the some two hundred pages devoted to it in the well- known Autobiography (representing approximately half the book), 3 but also the more focused and detailed narrative entitled Satyagraha in South Africa written in 1924 in Gujarati and published in English in 1928.4 My focus here is not what these texts tell us about Gandhi, but the light they throw on perceptions of India from a location in the diaspora. I am not going to offer a narrative of Gandhi’s South African years, but I shall be attentive to the gradual evolution of his ideas over the twenty-year-period that

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extends from his arrival in Durban from India in 1893 to his departure from Durban to England in 1914 on his way to India.

2 When Gandhi landed in Durban in 1893, British Indians had been immigrating to South Africa for more than thirty years. Before that, during the period of Dutch rule (1652-1795), Indian slaves had been brought to the Cape in significant numbers, but by the mid-19th century they had melted into the ‘coloured’ population of that colony. A new wave of migration had started when the first batch of indentured labourers were sent from British India to Natal in 1860 to work in the sugarcane plantations as an alternative to African labour. By the early 1890s, there were three distinct groups of Indians in the two British colonies of Natal and the Cape (the latter, I shall largely ignore, since they were few in number, and Gandhi never became very much involved with their problems) and in the Boer Republic of Transvaal (the so-called South African Republic). Firstly the indentured labourers, some 16,000, who were still arriving every year from Calcutta and Madras to work in the sugarcane plantations with five-year contracts, at the expiration of which they could either re-enlist or seek return to India. The indenture system has sometimes been defined as ‘a new system of slavery’,5 and, although this is certainly an exaggeration, there remains the fact that indentured labourers, dismissively called ‘coolies’ by their employers and the authorities, worked in harsh conditions for little pay, were often subjected to physical violence, and had no rights as workers or citizens. The majority of these labourers in Natal (contrary to the situation in most other sugar-producing colonies of the British Empire, such as Guyana, Trinidad or Fiji) were Tamilians and Telingas who had come from Madras, but there was also a significant group of North Indians, Hindus as well as Muslims, who had come from the Bhojpur area (Eastern United Provinces and Western Bihar) through Calcutta. The second group of Indians, the most numerous (some 30,000) consisted of ex- indentured labourers who, at the expiration of their contract, had chosen to stay in Natal to cultivate their own plots of land or to work as domestic servants or in other menial occupations. In spite of being ‘free’, they were still considered to be ‘coolies’ and did not enjoy any political rights. That group also included a growing number of locally-born Indians, the children of indentured labourers, some of whom had received an English education in missionary schools. Of the latter, some had converted to Christianity, and they constituted an embryo of middle class. The third group consisted of ‘free’ or ‘passenger’ Indians who had come at their own expense, from the 1870s onwards, either from neighbouring Mauritius or from India. It was a small (some 5,000- strong in Natal, and less than 4,000-strong in Transvaal) but fairly diversified group in which the dominant element consisted of Gujarati Muslim traders, mostly Memons from Kathiawar, who were Sunnis, but also Bohras from Surat, who were Shi’a Ismailis. In Durban, they were generally known as ‘Arabs’. These traders had brought with them from India clerks, who were often Hindus (as well as a few Parsis), and servants. The Gujaratis were general traders who catered to an African as well as to an Indian clientele, which brought them into competition with small European traders, either Britons or Eastern European Jews, a competition that was a major source of resentment towards the Indians on the part of the local whites. Some of these Gujaratis were very successful in business, and, having amassed wealth, had acquired voting rights (which were based on property and income qualifications). They constituted an elite, whose status was however precarious, and they feared the consequences of the grant of self- government to the Natal colony, which gave increased power to white settlers who were particularly hostile to them. There was also a small group of traders from Sindh,

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known as Sindworkies, who were specialized in the sale of curios and silk to Europeans. A distinct group consisted of small itinerant traders, hawkers, of various origins, who were active mostly in the Transvaal (some 2,000). I draw this detailed picture in order to stress the extreme heterogeneity of the Indian community that was to provide Gandhi with the opportunity to start his public career. The Indians of South Africa were a fairly representative sample of India’s population, with Hindus and Muslims as well as North Indians and South Indians more or less evenly balanced, but with the added twist that the richest and most influential of them were Muslims, a situation that was of course different from the one that prevailed in India. 3 As is well known, Gandhi’s original point of entry into this universe was through the Muslim Memon merchant network from his native town of Porbandar. Hired as a lawyer to assist in a court case pitting against each other two prominent Memon traders, he managed however to enlarge at an early stage his acquaintance to encompass other groups of Indians. He acquired from the early days of his stay, through personal experience, a keen feeling of the kind of discriminations the Indians were subjected to on the part of the white settlers, who were the dominant element in the newly self-governing colony of Natal, as well as in neighbouring Boer-ruled Transvaal. Some episodes are well known, like the night he spent in Pietermaritzburg railway station on his way to Pretoria after having been expelled from the first-class compartment of a train.6 What deserves notice is the extreme sensitivity shown by Gandhi, from the time of his arrival in South Africa, towards any slight directed at Indians, in clear contrast to the attitude of his merchant friends who, as they put it themselves, did not mind pocketing insults if they could pocket cash.7 Such sensitivity was closely linked to the high idea he then entertained of the value of the British imperial connection for India. He strongly objected to the fact that Indians, who were British subjects, could be treated so callously in a British colony, although their treatment in Natal was not really very different from the one they received in India at the hands of British civilians, which Gandhi had experimented at first hand. But the reason for that extra sensitivity was that, in Gandhi’s view, when they were outside India, Indians, including the humblest of coolies, represented the country, so that any slight directed at them was actually an insult to India. In the same way, as they represented India, they had to be exemplary, for instance in matters of sanitation and hygiene, in which they were singularly lackadaisical (and we meet here with one of Gandhi’s recurrent obsessions throughout his lifetime). Apart from Gandhi’s own views, 8 this question of sanitation was important, because it was often the pretext used by local colonial authorities to confine the Indians to certain locations, which tended to become real ghettoes. 4 The view held by Gandhi of the place of Indians in South Africa was ambivalent: inasmuch as both India and Natal were under British rule, moving from one to another was not like crossing a border, but at the same time Natal was an ‘abroad’ in which Indians were bound to observe high standards of behaviour so as not to cast aspersions on the prestige of the motherland. We can see that India for Gandhi was a country of the mind, or rather of the spirit, as much or even more than a physical space. Where there were Indians, there was India. Actually Natal or South Africa were rarely invoked by Gandhi as physical spaces endowed with specific qualities, although in the Introduction to Satyagraha in South Africa, he briefly enthused about the beauty of the land, be it through quotations rather than in his own words.9 In the same text, after having praised the grapes of the Cape (for which, as a teetotaller he had however no

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use), he marvelled at the fact that Indians had acclimatized the mango in South Africa and that the local mangoes compared in quality with those of India. India was thus clearly the template against which he measured South Africa, including in the most mundane matters. Basically the view that Gandhi formed of the land in his early years was that of an imperial dependency where Indians, who had been thrown there by the workings of imperial policies, had, in spite of their unhappy circumstances, a duty to uphold the dignity of the motherland against the constant challenges thrown up by the white settlers and the imperial authorities. Although he tried to enrol the sympathies of some liberal-minded local whites, his basic political strategy was to appeal as much as possible to the imperial authorities against the white settlers. This led him to support the British in their war against the Boers in 1899-1901 by raising a unit of Indian stretcher-bearers who accompanied the troops to the front. He did it, in spite of his own avowed sympathies for the Boer cause. This sympathy was not because he harboured particularly warm feelings towards those settlers of Dutch origin who were even more fiercely racist than the British, but because he saw them, as many did then in the world at large, as victims of British oppression. His position on the war was however mostly of a tactical nature: he hoped that, in return for helping the British in their hour of need, Indians would receive more generous treatment. The realization that it would not be the case drove him to leave South Africa in 1901, and to try to restart his career in India. He was however recalled in 1902 by his compatriots, and struggled then in vain with the colonial bureaucracy to obtain relief for the hard- pressed Indians. 5 It has been noted by many, and has been a subject of heated public debate in South Africa, in the post-apartheid era, that Gandhi did not seek an alliance with the most oppressed group in South Africa, the Africans. I shall not enter into a detailed discussion of his attitude towards the latter (whom he called, according to contemporary local usage, Negroes or Kaffirs10). Let me just stress the fact that for Gandhi the Indians were in essence different from the Africans because they belonged to a high civilization, while the former were at an earlier stage of development,11 and that Indians had to resist all attempts by the white settlers to bring them down to the level of the Africans. The fact that Gandhi shared widespread European-derived prejudices about the low level of civilization reached by Africans should not surprise us, given the kind of intellectual influences he had been subject to in India. Ranking human groups on a scale of civilization was then a widespread intellectual fashion, and Indian literati tended to embrace it, as they could find some comfort in the fact that, in British eyes, they were not the lowest of the low. Besides, from a purely instrumental point of view, it would have been counterproductive, in the South Africa of the 1890s, for anyone aiming to defend the Indian cause, to stress any similarity of interests between Indians and Africans. It made more sense to present Indians as a separate group deserving of a more generous treatment. This may explain why Gandhi ignored (deliberately?) the fact that, in Natal, relations of intimacy sometimes developed between Indians and Africans. Because of a deficit of Indian women, some Indian men had taken up with African women, and there existed a small group of mixed race children.12 As far as Gandhi was concerned, it is clear that ‘Africanization’ was not a palatable option for the Indians of South Africa. As noted by two South African historians of Indian origin, ‘Gandhi occasionally spoke out against racism and discrimination and even commented on the abject plight of African people, but he did not argue for equality for them. If he did not feel the need to spell out how Indians

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should relate to Africans, it was because he remained firmly focused on an imperial approach that put India at the centre of his thinking’.13 6 In an open letter to Natal legislators written at the end of 1894 to enrol their support against a bill seeking to disenfranchise Indian voters (of whom there were only 250, mostly traders, out of a total of some 10,000 voters), Gandhi, in his defence of Indians’ voting rights, put forward the argument that they belonged to the Aryan race, like Britons, and that ‘India is not Africa, and is a civilized country in the truest sense of the term ‘civilization’’.14 In Gandhi’s view, their Aryan identity was one of the two basic resources the Indians could draw upon, the other one being the fact that they were British subjects. 7 While he perceived the Indian community of South Africa as an offshoot of the motherland, this did not prevent him from noticing some differences between the Indians of India and those of South Africa, for instance in the matter of language. In an aside he described the ‘local Hindustani’ as ‘a grotesque mixture of Tamil, Gujarati and other Indian languages, clothed in extremely bad Hindustani grammar’.15 But his main emphasis was on sameness rather than on difference. Indians in South Africa, according to him, had an obligation never to forget that they were Indians, in spite of the distance separating them from the motherland, a distance that was not only physical, but also mental. 8 Actually one of Gandhi’s aims was precisely to abolish that distance, in particular through a very idiosyncratic practice of journalism. In an interesting article on ‘Gandhi’s printing press’,16 the press that Gandhi brought from India in 1898 for his newspaper Indian Opinion, the South African historian Isabel Hofmeyr has argued that Gandhi sought to establish an intimate relationship between himself as editor and his readers through a mode of reporting that was based on a constant circulation between the two locations of India and South Africa. Thus events involving the Indians of South Africa were reported via dispatches coming from India. The result was ‘a mode of simultaneous reading as if the event were taking place in India and South Africa at the same time and as if the reader could inhabit both spaces’.17 ‘Inhabiting both spaces’ seems an apt description of Gandhi’s South African project. There was of course a utopian dimension to it, given that the future Mahatma, as well as his readers, were after all but earthbound creatures not endowed with a gift of ubiquity. In spite of that, the phrase captures well Gandhi’s aspiration not to let the umbilical cord linking Mother India with its children across the Ocean be cut. Here I am deliberately mixing metaphors, in order to try to grasp something fairly unique in terms of the politics of diasporas. That the nation, that ‘imagined community’,18 can be imagined with more clarity from the distance of exile is a banality. Suffice it to think of the Irish Fenians in America, or of Sun Yat Sen (1886-1925) creating his Chinese Nationalist Party (1912) in Hawaii. But Gandhi’s South African story does not quite fit that pattern. For, unlike De Valera (1882-1975) or Sun Yat Sen, he did not arrive in South Africa with a preconceived and well formed notion of what India was politically. On the contrary, his view of India was shaped through a process of circulation between South Africa and India. In South Africa, he went through what could be described as an epiphany, as he was able to develop a sort of ‘panoptic’ vision of the very diverse groups of Indians there as forming one community defined by the kind of discrimination they were all subjected to, although in varying degrees. But that vision had to be constantly validated through it being taken up as a cause in India itself. Hence Gandhi’s first

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‘propaganda tour’ in India in 1896 to alert Indian public opinion to the condition of Indians in South Africa,19 that led to his being almost lynched by the white settlers on his return to Durban. What I want to stress is that, without a constant interaction with India, Gandhi could not have sustained this vision. But a reversal occurred from 1906 onwards with the invention of satyagraha, in the course of the struggle against the Transvaal Asiatic Amendments Act, known as the ‘Black Act’, an invention that Gandhi saw as divinely inspired, and the result of a kind of predestination. It followed Gandhi’s own move, in 1905, from Durban to Johannesburg, where he started a successful law practice. At the beginning of 1906, while he was attending to some wounded Zulu prisoners with a small ambulance corps he had raised, following a rising of that African group and its violent suppression by the colonial authorities, he had the revelation that he should become brahmacharya (celibate) and devote his entire life to public action. 20 This resulted in a complete change in his trajectory, from successful lawyer to activist and jailbird, which produced in its turn a change in his view of South Africa. Because satyagraha had been born in South Africa, and was then practiced there in a succession of struggles between 1906 and 1914, the relationship of that land to India was not any more one-way. The land of South Africa had been sanctified by the sacrifices made by the Indians there in defence of their own dignity, and therefore of the dignity of the motherland. In spite of the blood spilled by the martyred satyagrahis on South African soil, there remained however a hierarchy of sacredness between South Africa and India. This was clearly expressed by Gandhi himself in one of the innumerable farewell addresses he gave at the time of his departure from South Africa in the summer of 1914. After having told his mostly Gujarati audience that he was ‘extremely sad to part from (them)’, he added: ‘I am about to leave a bhoga-bhumi (land of enjoyment)21 for a karma- bhumi (land of duty). For me, there can be no deliverance from this earthly life except in India. Anyone who seeks such deliverance must go to the sacred soil of India. For me, as for everyone else, the land of India is ‘the refuge of the afflicted’. I am therefore longing to return to the motherland’.22 Why only the matrabhumi (motherland) could be a karma-bhumi was not explicated, but a hint was that it had ‘been sanctified by the austerities of the ages’.23 There remained in Gandhi’s mind, during his entire South African stay, the notion that South Africa by itself was an empty land, in the sense of a land empty of meaning. Indians, by their struggles, could endow it with meaning, but this they could do only if they kept a close link to India. Thus, in an address to the ‘colonial-born Indians’, he exhorted them to ‘preserve their national characteristic, to learn their mother-tongue (sic) and study the history and traditions of their Motherland’.24 He also expressed the hope to ‘see them there one day’. In the last years of his South African stay, it is clear that Gandhi saw South Africa as a kind of laboratory for experiments in struggle that could at a later stage be replicated in India. Congress moderate leader Gokhale’s visit to South Africa in 1912, which Gandhi carefully organized at each and every stage, was a crucial moment in his new project, as he could thence present himself to public opinion in India as a favourite disciple and prospective heir to the great man, whose fragile state of health was known to all. He just needed one symbolic success in South Africa to be able to come back to India with his head held high, and he obtained it in 1914 with the Indian Relief Act legalizing Indian marriages. He then left South Africa for ever, although he left there a son, close friends, a newspaper. They would have to manage without him. 9 What does this story tell us about India as a political/spatial category? Gandhi’s ability to somewhat straddle the Indian Ocean to inhabit two spaces at the same time remains

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a rather unique feat. It ran contrary to a trend towards seeing India as part of Asia that developed in Indian nationalist circles, mostly in Bengal, in the wake of the Russo- Japanese war of 1904¬05. Gandhi was never tempted to ‘look east’ towards Tokyo, as Rabindranath Tagore and other literati were at the time.25 For him, India did not belong to Asia, it was a world of its own, susceptible of encompassing any place on earth where Indians toiled and suffered. In that sense, we can speculate that he would not have taken to the idea of ‘South Asia’ that anchors India firmly in the Asian continent. Hofmeyr suggests that he saw India as part of a cosmopolitan ‘Indian ocean world’, of which South Africa was also part.26 This appears dubious. To Gandhi, I would argue, the Indian Ocean was simply a waterway that one had to cross, rather than a space endowed with qualities of its own. In spite of having travelled a lot by ship, he does not strike me as very sea-oriented. Although I would agree that Gandhi was in many ways a cosmopolitan figure, I do not see his cosmopolitanism as specifically bound to the Indian Ocean. Prior to 1919 a more crucial spatial dimension for him was that of the British Empire, that straddled the whole world. Once he distanced himself from the Empire, he was left without any other space than India, a cosmopolitan without a cosmos. Hence his horror at the idea that that space itself could be partitioned as it was in 1947. 10 This opens up the whole delicate chapter of his relationship with Muslims. In South Africa, he forged close links with Muslim merchants, and some of them, like Seth Kachhalia, were amongst his closest associates, even if they do not appear to have become intimate friends in the same way as Europeans like Hermann Kallenbach or Henry Polak. It is also amongst Muslims that he found some of his most determined opponents, who rejected his non-violent tactics. But, in spite of his political proximity to some Muslims, he does not appear to have acquired a deep knowledge about Islam. Thus, in one text, he claimed that Muslims prayed ‘four times a day’.27 His knowledge of Islamic law also appears to have been limited, and one European judge, in a court case concerning the succession of a Muslim merchant, accused him of being totally ignorant of Islamic law.28 In his writings, the references to the Holy Christian scriptures far outnumber the Koranic references, a reminder that Gandhi as an intellectual was a product of as well as a producer of a particular synthesis of Christian and neo-Hindu elements. His notion of India as a sacred land is obviously a very Hindu idea, but, contrary to Peter Van der Veer,29 I do not see Gandhi as a ‘moderate’ Hindu nationalist, by contrast with extremists like Savarkar (1883-1966). His nationalism and his Hinduism remained in separate spheres. He never identified the ‘Indian nation’ with a ‘Hindu nation’, and his conception of it was always inclusive of Indians of all faiths, whether Muslim, Sikh, Christian, Zoroastrian or Jewish.30 The problem was rather one of communication: Gandhi increasingly made use, in his public utterances, of an idiom that was strongly Hindu-connoted, and this tended to alienate non-Hindus, particularly educated Muslims. This shift in language started in the last years of Gandhi’s stay in South Africa, and coincided with a change in sartorial habits, with the adoption of the lungi (loincloth) and kurta (loose shirt) instead of the three-piece suit of the lawyer. 31 It signalled a strong desire on the part of Gandhi to appear fully Indian and to remove all traces of his former ‘Westernized’ self, as a prelude to his return to the motherland. Yet, as we know, the re-adaptation of Gandhi to the Indian setting was a process that took a few years, a clear sign that the impact of the South African stay had been even more profound than Gandhi himself realized. The India to which Gandhi re- acclimatized himself between 1915 and 1919 was far from living up to the idealized

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image he had conjured of it in his self-imposed exile. The realization of the true state of the country drove Gandhi to a gradual break with moderate politics. He tried however to maintain something of his former cosmopolitanism, but his turn to a more nationalistic position made it problematic. As a way of resolving this contradiction, his cosmopolitanism took a messianic form and he tended increasingly to see India as offering a way of redemption to the world at large. That is why, to conclude by returning to ‘the idea of South Asia’, I think it doubtful that Gandhi would have reconciled himself to the idea of India being only one part of a wider space called ‘South Asia’, but of course this has to remain in the realm of speculation.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anderson, Benedict (1991) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso.

Bhana, Surendra; Vahed, Goolam (2005) The Making of a Political Reformer: Gandhi in South Africa, 1893-1914, Delhi: Manohar.

Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (online edition), vols. 1 & 14.

Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand (1928) Satyagraha in South Africa, Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House.

Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand (1972) An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth, London: Jonathan Cape.

Hay, Stephen N. (1970) Asian Ideas of East and West: Tagore and his Critics in Japan, China and India, Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press.

Hofmeyr, Isabel (2011) ‘Gandhi’s Printing Press: Indian Ocean Print Culture and Cosmopolitanism’, in Isabel Hofmeyr & Michelle William (eds.), South Africa and India: Shaping the Global South, Johannesburg: Wits University Press, pp. 22-38.

Markovits, Claude (2003) The Un-Gandhian Gandhi: The Life and Afterlife of the Mahatma, Delhi: Permanent Black.

Markovits, Claude ( 2008) ‘Religious Boundaries and the Nation in Gandhi’s Thought and Action’, in Monica Juneja & Margrit Pernau (eds.), Religion und Grenzen in Indien und Deutschland: Auf dem Weg zu einer Transnationalen Historiographie, Göttingen: V&R Unipress, pp. 207-21.

Marks, Shula (2011) ‘Class, Culture and Consciousness in South Africa 1880-1899’, in Robert Ross, Ann Kelk Mager & Bill Nasson (eds.), The Cambridge History of South Africa, vol. 2, 1885-1994, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 102-156.

Swan, Maureen (1985) Gandhi, The South African Experience, Johannesburg: Ravan Press.

Tarlo, Emma (1996) Clothing Matters: Dress and Identity in India, London: Hurst & Co.

Tinker, Hugh (1994) A New System of Slavery: The Export of Indian Labour Overseas 1830-1920, London: Hansib Publishing, [1974].

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Van der Veer, Peter (1994) Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India, Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: University of California Press.

NOTES

1. For an emphatic statement of the importance of the South African years, see Markovits (2003: 78-85). 2. Swan (1985), Bhana & Vahed (2005). 3. Gandhi (1972: 85-287). 4. Gandhi (1928). 5. Tinker (1994). 6. Gandhi (1972: 93-94). 7. A Muslim merchant of Johannesburg told Gandhi (1972: 97): ‘Only we can live in a land like this, because, for making money, we do not mind pocketing insults.’ 8. He wrote in the Autobiography (1972: 181): ‘…ever since my settlement in Natal, I had been endeavouring to clear the community of a charge that had been levelled against it, not without a certain amount of truth. The charge had often been made that the Indian was slovenly in his habits and did not keep his house and surroundings clean.’ 9. Having stated that ‘The scenery of Durban is considered very beautiful, but that of Cape Town surpasses it’, he goes on to quote from a poem by ‘a gifted lady who dotes on South Africa’, Gandhi (1928: 6). 10. A derogatory term for Africans used mostly by the Boers. 11. Although he wrote: ‘It is only vanity that makes us look upon the Negroes as savages. They are not the barbarians we imagine them to be’ (1928: 10), that passage was written in 1924, ten years after his return from South Africa, and looks very much like an atonement for past sins. 12. Shula Marks (2011: 140) notes: ‘In rural Natal…Indians often became fluent Zulu speakers and very occasionally sex and marriage took place across a cultural divide’. 13. Bhana & Vahed (2005: 144). 14. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (CWMG), online edition, vol. I: 186-200. 15. CWMG, online edition, vol. I: 186-200. 16. Hofmeyr (2011). 17. Hofmeyr (2011: 34). 18. Anderson (1991). 19. ‘The Grievances of the British Indians in South Africa as exposed to the Indian public’, Rajkot, 14 August 1896, no. 101, CWMG, vol. I: 359-93. 20. Gandhi (1972: 263-267). 21. This translation, offered by the editor of the CWMG, is not satisfactory, as pointed out by Catherine Clémentin-Ojha. ‘Bhoga’ refers to any form of activity in the world. 22. ‘Speech at Gujarat Sabha function’, 9 July 1914, CWMG, 14(190), pp. 210-1. 23. In a speech at another farewell meeting on 8 July 1914. CWMG, 14(184), pp. 200-2. 24. Indian Opinion. 1914. 9 September. 25. Hay (1970). 26. Hofmeyr (2011). 27. CWMG, vol. I: 191.This is obviously not a misprint; otherwise, it would have been corrected by the editors. 28. Sir Walther Wragg, as quoted in Natal Witness. CWMG, vol. I, note 1: 209. 29. Van der Veer (1994: 95): ‘We cannot fail to notice that Gandhi’s pluralist nationalism retains a Hindu character’.

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30. Markovits (2008). 31. Tarlo (1996).

ABSTRACTS

The focus of the article is the way in which Gandhi in South Africa between 1893 and 1914 constructed a notion of India through a process of partly imaginary circulation between South Africa and India. While he embarked upon a career, firstly as spokesman, and then as leader of the very diverse Indian population of South Africa, he tried to remain in touch with political developments in India. His attempt at ‘inhabiting two spaces at the same time’, while necessarily utopian in character, nevertheless offers a fascinating case study in ‘long distance nationalism’, and the way it was intertwined with forms of cosmopolitanism. There is no indication however of an inclination on the part of Gandhi to think in terms of a wider space that would extend to contemporary South Asia.

INDEX

Keywords: Gandhi, South Asia, India, South Africa, diaspora, cosmopolitanism

AUTHOR

CLAUDE MARKOVITS

Emeritus Researcher, CNRS/CEIAS, Paris

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The Construction, Mobilization and Limits of South Asianism in North America

Anouck Carsignol

Introduction

1 In North America, the adjective ‘South Asian’1 is widely used these days by the media, in academia and in politics to refer to people originating from Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan,2 and sometimes Burma and Tibet. More than a mere census category or point of geographic origin, this label has recently become an identity marker, claimed by certain members of the diaspora themselves. Beyond cultural or ethnic commonalities anchored in the Indian Subcontinent, the idea of ‘South Asianism’3 emerged as a form of political consciousness and activism, allegedly transcending national borders in order to promote pluralism, secularism and progressive politics.

2 The category ‘South Asian’ remains nevertheless highly contested, both externally and internally. In North America, this expression is often used indiscriminately, to refer to Asians in general or to Indians in particular. The term is not unanimously accepted by migrants either. For instance, partisans of religious nationalist movements reject the idea of a transnational, secular and regional identity. As for intellectuals, leftists, social workers, writers and artists originating from the subcontinent, even if most of them endorse this umbrella term, some of them nevertheless consider the category ‘South Asian’ a post-migration artefact, a neo-colonial invention, a political utopia or a romantic myth. Political and economic analyst S. Akbar Zaidi, originating from Pakistan, thus questions its validity: ‘[…] as a non-Indian citizen of South Asia, I often wonder whether the concept is meant to achieve anything beyond the legitimization of Indian hegemony—cultural, geographic, economic’ (Zaidi 2002). Others, on the contrary, such as musician and activist DJ Rekha, or queer4 rights activist Urvashi Vaid,

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use this label as a means of resistance to traditional or homogeneous identities, both within the group of migrants of South Asian descent, and in society at large. 3 When and where did the term ‘South Asian’ first appear? How did it evolve, historically and geographically, as well as conceptually? Who is categorized as South Asian today, and who claims to be so? Is mobilization in the name of a pan-South Asian identity merely the expression of ethnic and cultural affiliation, or is it instead focused on a tangible socio-economic or political project? Is ‘South Asianism’ oriented toward the subcontinent, or is it centred on migrants in North America? Is this a label without content, or is it the symbol of a collective affirmation, the foundation for a neo- diaspora? 4 The purpose of this article is not so much to determine whether the term ‘South Asian’ is historically legitimate, politically correct, culturally authentic or sociologically relevant, but to understand its underlying identity and ideology, by examining the evolution of the concept and commenting on its limitations. More specifically, the objective is to analyze the apparent dichotomy between locality and identity, between the roots of a diasporic construction, traced back to the South Asian subcontinent, and its actual mobilization and focus, in North America. Based on a combination of ethnographic fieldwork and an analysis of digital networks, this paper sheds light on a dissenting, ‘post-diasporic’ movement, which epitomizes the idea of militant, cultural and political deterritorialization and relocalization (Deleuze & Guattari 1972, Appadurai 1990).

Construction and transformations of a South Asian category and identity in North America

5 The process of naming and self-naming is at the core of identity politics, diversity management and power assertion. At the community level, self-naming can be seen as a way to affirm the group’s identity, and thus to resist assimilation. At the society level, naming a population is part of the hegemonic group’s strategy to create boundaries and reinforce its power over members of minorities, through the use of derogatory terms, racial categories or implicit hierarchies. Historically misnamed and marginalized by their host state, migrants originating from the Indian subcontinent reacted in various ways to official and popular categorizations, thus epitomizing the fact that subjectivation, that is, the constitution of individual and collective identities, can be both alienating and liberating (Butler 2007). This first part analyses the intricate history of the term ‘South Asian’, which results from a combination of exo-designation and self-representation processes, and takes its roots in North America, while remaining connected to the subcontinent.

The Ghadar movement and the birth of a pan-South Asian solidarity

6 A sense of common ancestry and destiny emerged among migrants originating from the subcontinent and settled in North America, long before the idea of South Asia was explicitly formulated. This nebulous umbrella identity owed its very existence to the racist undertones and the colonial context of the 19th century when South Asia, then a loosely defined entity administered by a combination of colonial and local authorities, was commonly known as ‘Indian Empire’, ‘British India’ or ‘Hindustan’. In the 1890s,

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the first migrants who used to define themselves as ‘British Indians’, or more specifically, as ‘Punjabis’, ‘Sylhetis’ or ‘Bengalis’ depending on their region of origin, were indiscriminately and depreciatively designated as ‘Hindus’, ‘Brown’ or ‘Orientals’ in North America. In reaction to an anti-Asian climate, which also targeted Japanese and Chinese migrants, and resulted in a ban on Asian migration (from 1913 to 1946 in the United States, and from 1908 to 1947 in Canada), radical associations such as the India Welfare League, the India League of America, the United Indian League, the Hindustan Students Association or the Hindu Workers Union of America sprang up in New York, San Francisco and Vancouver. Despite their internal differences in terms of caste, language, religion and socio-economic status, migrants originating from the subcontinent coalesced to lobby in favour of equality of treatment and freedom of movement. Facing rejection of their demands, they established a link between the predicament of India—under British domination—and the status of Indian migrants, who suffered from discrimination (Jüergensmeyer 1997). Funded in San Francisco in 1913, and particularly active in British Columbia, the revolutionary and secular Ghadar movement played a major role in the formation of a militant and secular pan-Indian solidarity overseas: No pundits or mullahs do we need No prayer or litanies recite. These will only scuttle our boat; Draw the sword, it's time to fight! Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs though we be Sons of Bharat are we still. Postpone your prayers to another time; The call of the hour is to kill! (Singh in Puri 1983: 122) 7 Among Ghadar’s prominent figures were educated nationalist revolutionaries originating from different parts of India, such as Lala Har Dayal, Sohan Singh Bhakna, and Tarak Nath Das. The latter published the first South Asian publications in Canada (Free Hindustan) and established the Hindustani Association in Vancouver in 1907, before settling down in the United States where he relentlessly called ‘Asian Youth’ to resist the West. As for Rash Behari Bose, he initiated campaigns on behalf of Indian independence and Pan-Asianism from India and Japan, while Abdul Hafiz Mohamed Barakatullah advocated unity between Hindus and Muslims against British imperialism. With members dispatched around the world, the Ghadar became a transnational counter-movement, anchored in the diaspora and ideologically defined as ‘almost exclusively nationalist, with a touch of utopian socialism […], actively involved in international communism’ (Jüergensmeyer 1979: 184). Vehemently secular, although steeped in Sikhism, the Ghadar was also a source of ethnic pride, inspiring the cohesion of British Indians in North America.

8 At the same time, the Satyagrahis’ mobilization in Natal, South Africa,5 the Girmitiyas’ revolts in Fiji,6 and the indentured workers’ protests in the Caribbean islands7 served to build the base of a tradition of contestation against imperialism, racial discrimination and socio-economic injustice, a movement that carried on within the Indian diaspora at large until 1947. While using very different means of action, these various initiatives converged towards the same objectives: the liberation of India and the protection of migrants and workers abroad. As for the Indian intelligentsia and the political leaders in the subcontinent, they mobilized in favour of overseas Indians during colonial occupation, and petitioned in particular for the abolition of the indenture system, thus

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using a transnational cause to support their domestic goal of national liberation (Carsignol 2011: 53-62).

The fragmentation of an emergent South Asian diaspora

9 Once India, Pakistan, then Sri Lanka and later on Bangladesh obtained their independence, the worldwide solidarity and mutual interests which brought activists and nationalists from the diaspora and the subcontinent together partly dissolved. Pan South-Asian regionalism gave way to territorial nationalism, and identities, both in the subcontinent and in the diaspora, were redefined along national, sometimes rival lines, as illustrated by blogger Razib Khan on the online discussion forum Sepia Mutiny: ‘My maternal grandfather was born in British India and was Indian for most of his life (he was born in 1896). After 1947 he was Pakistani, and after 1971 he was Bangladeshi’.8 While overseas populations were busy negotiating their place in their country of adoption, the newly-defined countries in the subcontinent dissociated themselves from their migrants and engaged in a process of nation- and state-building centred on the territory.

10 The segmentation of migrants of South Asian origin in North America is also due to immigration and integration policies implemented by the host societies. The US Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, and Canada Immigration Act of 1952, followed by the introduction of a Point-system (1967), progressively removed the ban on coloured migration and attracted a massive wave of South Asian migrants to North America. The news: ‘Canada khulgaya!’9 (Canada opened up!) spread like wildfire from Ottawa to South Asia, and attracted migrants not only from India, but from the entire subcontinent as well as from the Caribbean, the Pacific and the Indian Ocean islands, and Eastern and Southern Africa. Due to their demographic growth and their increasing ethno-cultural and socio-economic diversity, newcomers gathered into subgroups defined according to their region of origin, religious affiliation and/or social class. Furthermore, they were particularly encouraged to claim a nationality of origin in order to get symbolic recognition and material resources from multicultural programs. While most successful professionals integrated relatively easily into the mainstream society, where they epitomized the ‘model minority’ theory,10 the labourers and sponsored family members suffered racism, discrimination and exploitation.

The construction of categories by academics and bureaucrats

11 Primo-migrants originating from the subcontinent actually never used the ‘South Asian’ label, which was first coined by American politicians and academics more than half a century after their arrival. It was at the University of Pennsylvania that South Asian studies were inaugurated, with the creation of the first department of South Asia Regional Studies in 1948, funded by the Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Ford Foundations.11 The US State Department conceived this new area of research in order to support national interests in the Cold War (Dirks 2003: 2).

12 In the 1970s, while people originating from the subcontinent were classified as ‘white’ by the US Census Bureau (Table 1), the Association of Indians in America (AIA) successfully petitioned for inclusion in state and federal ‘Asian’ racial categories in

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order to assert political demands in a multicultural context, when resources were distributed on the basis of racial or religious criteria (Espiritu 1992). Minority status then provided the only mechanism for redress against the racial discrimination faced by Asian Indians, which their existing classification as ‘white’ obscured (Fisher 1980: 129). Since the 1980 Census, the ‘Asian’ category has offered a series of subcategories of which ‘Asian Indian’ is the only South Asian option, and it provides a fill-in blank for responses such as `Pakistani’ or ‘Bangladeshi’. Despite this mutually agreed-upon official classification scheme, people of South Asian origin tend to differentiate themselves, and to be excluded from the definition of ‘Asian Americans’, which refers to East Asians in North American popular perception (Kibria 1996, 1998, Shankar & Srikanth 1998).

Table 1 Census Classification in the USA

Census Year Census Classification, USA

1910 Other/Non-white Asiatic/Hindu

1920 Other/Hindu

1930 Hindu

1940 Hindu

1950 Other/Non-white/Asiatic Indian

1960 Other/Non-white/Hindu

1970 Other/White

1980 Asian Indian

1990 Asian or Pacific Islander/Asian Indian

2000 Asian Indian

Koshy, n.d.

13 The rubric ‘South Asian’ introduced in the Census by Statistics Canada refers to Canadians from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, as well as from Africa, the Caribbean, the Far East, the Indian Ocean and Fiji. This category is widely used both by academics and in politics, along with other common designations such as Indo-Canadians or East Indians—to avoid confusion with the Aboriginals, or ‘Indians’.

14 In the subcontinent, the authorities of the home countries also have their own terminology to refer to their overseas populations. Within the last three decades, India, Pakistan and Nepal adopted official statuses to refer to their non-residents, such as People of Indian Origin, Non Resident Indian, Overseas Citizen of India, Overseas Pakistani or Non Resident Nepali. These administrative monikers have not been unanimously accepted by the migrants themselves: if some endorse them in order to take advantage of the resources to which they give access, others, on the contrary,

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reject the hegemonic definition, the elitist bias and the financial dimension these terms imply (Mallapragada 2006), or use them only in specific contexts to refer to their citizenship or their nationality.

The appropriation and transformation of the South Asian label by the migrants

15 Beyond their normative function, the categories used by the state of origin or settlement also have a performative effect on migrants’ self-perception. Within the so- called ‘South Asian’ population in North America, opinions about this exo-designation vary greatly, ranging from strong opposition to indifference to re-appropriation and transformation. For a segment of them, the moniker ‘South Asian’ overlooks internal differences and highlights common cultural denominators such as ‘curry, cricket and Hindi cinema…’ (Lal 2003). In the words of Hasan Altaf, a Pakistani poet and writer who grew up in America before relocating in Lahore: I grew up on the East Coast, but if I looked for it, South Asia was right there. When I was in middle school, the Indians and Pakistanis and Bangladeshis gravitated towards each other, drawn by the opportunity to make fun of other people and complain about our parents to peers who would understand. […] Later, when I was in college in New York, Indians and Pakistanis and Bangladeshis went to the same restaurants for a taste of home; we wound up at the same grocery stores, the same parties, the same movies; now, on Facebook, we laugh at the same memes. One could of course have looked for Pakistan, instead of South Asia, but the former was harder to find, and the differences so minimal. In the US and Canada and the UK, in the Middle East and in Singapore and in Hong Kong—surrounded that is by ‘others’, by people whose languages and backgrounds and cultures and experiences and expectations are more starkly different—Indians and Pakistanis begin to seem and to feel more alike—to feel, as it were, more ‘South Asian’. (Altaf 2012) 16 The ‘South Asian’ branding is also used by identity entrepreneurs and community leaders as a strategy to reinforce internal cohesion among migrants originating from the subcontinent, and to maximize the group’s demographic weight, particularly in multicultural societies where number matters. According to Zubair Choudhry, President of the South Asian Regional Cooperation Council of Canada, ‘Our identity in Canada should be South Asian, not Indian, Pakistani, etc. We’ll be stronger. Most of our culture is the same. If we are divided, we are not strong’.12 Indeed, it is acknowledged that: […] identifying as South Asian rather than Indian adds number and hence power within the US. Besides, regional differences among those of different South Asian countries are often less relevant than the commonalities based on our experiences and histories of immigration, treatment and location in the US. (Mohanty 2003: 127) 17 Yet, other migrants started to claim an alternative South Asian identity, in reaction to the ‘Asian’ census category, considered too vague and too closely associated with East Asians in the popular perception: That the bulk of US South Asians do not see themselves as Asian is of little consequence in the wake of representations of immigrants from the Indian subcontinent as ‘Asian’ in the media, in the political domain, and in the academy. Indeed, the fait accompli of being named ‘Asian’, and the shared struggles this has produced (in terms of the similar experiences forged by being similarly reconfigured as a community), has led many South Asian progressives to create a political identity around the term ‘South Asian’. The term ‘South Asian’ provides

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some measure of inclusion within the US, even if it is almost meaningless within South Asia itself. The cultural commonalities between Indians, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans, Nepalis, and Bangladeshis draw these migrants together, and the moniker ‘South Asian’ allows them to feel solidarity despite their different national origins and religious commitments. (Prashad 1999: 186-7) 18 A new, ideologically-defined South Asian identity shaped by both transnational and local factors made its appearance during the 1980s-90s. First, the growing power of the conservative, religious and nationalist ideology known as Hindutva triggered a counter-movement, both in India and in the diaspora. The destruction of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya (1992), the nuclear tests by both India and Pakistan (1998), the anti- Muslim pogrom in Gujarat (2002) and more generally, the rise of communalism in South Asia were denounced by ‘actors of reconciliation in the diaspora’ and ‘progressive activists’ throughout the world (Mohammad-Arif 2007). Leftist militants in North America adopted the ‘South Asian’ label to dissociate themselves from right-wing partisans of Hindu nationalism. As a set of socio-political ideas and ideals, ‘South Asianism’ thus started to compete with the conservative idea of Indianness, defined by Madhavi Mallapragada as ‘traditionally uppercaste, middle class male Hindu (oftentimes North Indian Hindu) version of cultural tradition and practices’ (Mallapragada 2000). A growing number of associations were created to promote pluralism and secularism in the diaspora and in the subcontinent.13 Summer camps for radical activists, such as Youth Solidarity Summer (YSS) or DC Desi Summer, were set up in a response to Hindutva camps. The importance of progressive ideology in South Asian mobilization is clearly articulated by the South Asian Progressive Action Collective: SAPAC was created as a space for South Asians with progressive values to share ideas and develop joint work. Our work promotes harmony among South Asian communities, social and economic justice, tolerance of difference, gender equity, and political mobilization to reach these goals. […] If you are politically conservative or apolitical, you are welcome to join. Just please recognize that we are a group that was formed around a certain set of values and that will be engaged in work that reflects those values. If you are uncomfortable with Indians and Pakistanis working side by side, with a group that tries to make space for LGBTQ activists, or with poets and performers who explicitly address taboo issues, then you may not be comfortable at all our events.14 19 During the same decade in North America, the demographic growth and the new sociological diversity of South Asian migrants made them an easy target for extremist and nativist groups such as Canadian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Western Guard Party or ‘dot busters’, in a context marked by economic recession and the upsurge of xenophobia. In response to racial, socio-economic and political segregation, activists and social workers set up committees of self-defence, farmers’ and workers’ unions, anti-racist organizations and professionals’ associations such as the East Indian Defense Committee, the British Columbia Organization to Fight Racism, the Canadian Farmworkers Union (CFU), the Indian People’s Association in North America (IPANA), the Indian Professionals Organization of Canada, the East Indian Professional Residents of Canada (EIPROC) and the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA).

20 Among the new wave of migrants, women were particularly vulnerable as they were exposed to both patriarchy inside their community, and racism outside. Gender-based associations created by and for women of South Asian origin, such as Manavi, Manushi, Maitri, Narika, Sakhi for South Asian Women, South Asian Women’s Organization

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(SAWNET) or South Asian Women Centre (SAWC), started to provide educational and social services, and to fight domestic violence. These associations played a major role in the production of a progressive South Asian identity, all the more because women are traditionally at the core of the transmission of values from one generation to the other. 21 Likewise, Lesbians, Gays, Bi-sexuals, Transsexuals and Queers (LGBTQ) suffered a double marginalization: within their own ethnic group, where intolerance for non- conventional sexual orientation dominated, but also in the mainstream society, where racism added to these prejudices. Movements emerged to defend LGBTQ’s rights, such as Trikone, created in San Francisco in 1986, followed by South Asian Lesbian Gay Association of New York City, the Queer East and Khush DC, to speak for ‘a minority within a minority community’ and to build a bridge between ‘Queer-ness’ and ‘Desi- ness’. South Asian feminism and LGBTQ activism, though firmly rooted in North America, also constituted a response to the recurrent brutality and discrimination against women and queers in the subcontinent. 22 The category ‘South Asian’ was subsequently adopted by intellectuals, academics, journalists and documentarians originating from the subcontinent, in particular cultural theorists such as Homi Bhabha, Ranajit Guha or Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, who gave this label historical legitimacy, sociological validation and cultural substance. With the rise of Subaltern Studies, South Asian branding became a militant statement against elitism—both bourgeois and nationalist—in the writing on South Asian history and society (Guha & Spivak 1988). This category has been used more recently by scholars in order to contest the myth of the model minority (Prashad 2000). 23 For Toronto-based activist and labour-organizer Maya Bhullar, Board chair of the Council of Agencies Serving South Asians (CASSA), South Asian-ness is inseparable from progressive militantism, as it embraces unity within diversity, culturally, ethnically and ideologically: I have always been betwixt and between identities. […] In terms of the diasporic identity, I guess I would call myself ‘South Asian’. A lot of my work is about uniting progressive voices from different ethno-linguistic groups that make up the South Asian communities, and the term ‘South Asian’ is a good unifier. Even culturally, I identify as South Asian because the cultural group I identify with is largely Anglophone, and involved in the more progressive side of politics. […] I started identifying as South Asian again in Washington DC, when a bunch of academics and progressives who were generally interested in South Asia formed the DC Collective for South Asia. […] To me this is what the term ‘South Asian’ allows, a political identity, a progressive internationalism, a love of poetry, culture and art that is from all the different communities and cultures that are South Asian […]. There is an underlying progressive. This is not to say that there isn’t a progressive element in each component community.15 24 Cultural commonalities were then constructed a posteriori, in order to legitimize the birth of a community, despite its heterogeneity. In a hostile climate, ethnic identity produced a militant, secular, anti-nationalist ideology, which today paradoxically opposes the pioneers’ nationalist ideals, while embracing their struggle for social justice. Gradually, the South Asian category has become a site of identity-building and collective contestation, used to oppose in particular the religious and conservative image of Indianness promoted by the ‘curry brigade’16 (Mallapragada 2000) on the one hand, and to contest the ongoing stereotypes and misconceptions in the host society on the other hand. It also offers an alternative to non-Indian national identities and politics.

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Location, action and profile of South Asian activists

25 Individual and collective mobilization in the name of a cultural ‘South Asian-ness’ or an ideological ‘South Asianism’ intensified during the last two decades, and became more and more visible, both offline and online. How can this recent type of mobilization be defined? How is it organized? Who are the activists at work? Where are they based? What are their objectives and their means of action? This section analyzes the structure of this mobilization, as well as the location, the field of action and the socio-economic profile of the people who define themselves as South Asians.

Geographic implantation, field of action and means of mobilization

26 Given that ‘the distinction of real and imagined, or virtual, is not a useful one’ (Wilson & Peterson 2002), the following study of the South Asian movement is based on a combination of content analysis of websites and interviews with activists self- identified as South Asians. In order to analyze the structure of the South Asian ‘virtual community’ (Rheingold 1993), I used computer programs, Navicrawler and Gephi,17 to systematically explore 150 websites created by and for South Asians. This corpus was established by first selecting a few websites dedicated to ‘South Asians’ in the diaspora, 18 then following the hypertext links19 which connected these websites to others, thus creating a digital network. In a second phase, the contents of these websites were scrupulously examined and classified according to their type of activity, means of mobilization, language, country of residence, field of mobilization and place of action. The mapping of the corpus highlights what brings different associations and individuals together, and sheds light on the goals and the means of action, as well as the ideas and ideals that constitute the foundations of the South Asian digital network (Carsignol 2012). These results were cross-analyzed with offline interviews of migrants and activists of South Asian origins.

27 The topology of the South Asian digital network (Figure 1) shows a very small number of hypertext links between the different websites of the corpus, and the absence of an agglomerated community around a single ‘authority site’. Unlike Hindutva partisans, structured around key institutions in India and abroad (Therwath 2012), South Asian activists form a relatively loose network, defined by a very informal sense of belonging, a similar experience linked to migration and marginalization, a common ancestry in the subcontinent, and a set of implicitly shared values.

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Figure 1: Corpus of the South Asian e-diaspora’s websites20

Carsignol 2012

28 South Asian online forums, websites and digital platforms such as ‘South Asia Citizen Web: Connecting dissenting voices from South Asia and its Diaspora since 1996’, are explicitly devoted to reinforcing vertical contacts between migrants and their homeland, and creating new horizontal links between migrants themselves. Yet, the majority (80%) of the 150 selected South Asian websites are not based in the subcontinent, but exclusively located in the diaspora, in particular in North America. Only 20% of the websites of the corpus are based in South Asia, and 5% in Europe, while 16% of them do not mention their place of origin, and some are simultaneously implanted in different localities. More importantly, the majority of the websites (63%) are devoted to the diaspora, while 43% are centred on the host country. Only a minority (19%) are actually dedicated to social reforms in South Asia.

29 In terms of activities, the mapping of the corpus reveals four virtual clusters of websites (Figure 2). The first cluster (in red), devoted to local empowerment, is composed of associations based in North America, focused on the local or national level, and dedicated to the defence of workers (NYTA), sexual minorities (GAPIMNY, SALGA), women (Sakhi, Maitri, Manavi, Maika, Sneha), professionals (Sabha, NSAP, SAJA), and the promotion of pluralism (SAAPRI, The pluralism project at Harvard University). The second cluster (in green), dedicated to identity representation, is composed of cultural and artistic blogs and personal websites, based in North America and mainly identity-oriented, such as Sepia Mutiny, Pass the roti on the left hand side beta, Angry Asian Man, PremaLal, The Langar Hall, Down on the Brown side, and Turban Campaign. They provide information and platforms of debate, for both outreach (fight against racism and prejudice) and inreach (consolidation of the cohesion of the community). A third cluster (in blue) is animated by progressive

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magazines such as South Asian Citizens Web, South Asia Watch, Counter Currents, South Asian Magazine for Action and Reflection (SAMAR), Himal South Asian, and associations such as International Campaign for Justice for Bhopal, People’s Union for Civil Liberties, Sanhati, South Asian Leftists dialoguing with Religion or South Asian Rights. These websites are principally devoted to the defence of Human rights and the promotion of pluralism and democracy in the subcontinent.

Figure 2: Clusters of mobilization of the South Asian radical e-diaspora, Zoom in

Carsignol 2012

30 The last cluster (in yellow) is mobilized in favour of pluralism and secularism in North America. Most of its websites, such as Coalition against Genocide, Stop funding Hate and Ekta, emerged in the aftermath of the Gujarat massacre or the Ayodhya affair, in response to Hindutva’s politics of hatred. The reference to South Asia seems to serve diasporic identity politics, a strategy that can be considered ‘long distance activism’, a variation of Benedict Anderson’s ‘long distance nationalism’ (1988: 73-74).

31 This graph not only highlights the lack of centralized and institutionalized organizational structure within the South Asian militant network. It also makes visible the fact that activists who define themselves as South Asians are mostly based in North America. South Asianism, as a socio-political and ethno-cultural counter-movement, could be qualified as ‘post-diasporic’ in the sense that it is not oriented toward the home country, but focused on the needs of migrants, or under-privileged members of minorities in general in their host society. The ideals of social or political change in the subcontinent seem to be mostly the symbolic alibi of mobilization aimed at promoting the various causes of South Asian migrants in North America. 32 In order to provide information, education and community services, South Asian activists combine both traditional means of action, such as demonstrations, petitions,

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fund-raising, boycotts, public meetings or lobbying, and electronic activism methods, such as online petitions, chain mailing-lists, e-forums or digital campaigns. In so doing, South Asian-ness has gained extensive outreach, as well as new substance. Interestingly, aesthetic creativity, both online and offline, plays a major role in defining what being South Asian in North America means: cultural politics and artistic activism are used not only as ways to produce subjectivity, but also as means of protest. Teesri Duniya Theatre (Third World Theatre), funded in Montreal in 1981, and Desh Pardesh (‘at home abroad’), a-disciplinary culture and arts festival organized in Toronto from 1988 to 2001, epitomized a new generation of counter-culture in North America, combining identity affirmation and political involvement (Fernandez 2006). As mentioned in the Festival Program: A non-profit community-based organization of artists, cultural producers and activists of South Asian origin committed to facilitating new expressions and encouraging the development of diasporic South Asian arts, culture and politics in the West. Desh Pardesh focuses on the perspectives, issues, artistic and cultural expressions of women, working class people, people with disabilities, lesbians, bisexuals and gay men, seniors and other progressive independent artists, hinkers and activists thinkers. It strives to forge links and work with other communities with compatible progressive objectives. (Desh Pardesh Festival 1995: 34) 33 Since the demise of Desh Pardesh, other initiatives, such as Diasporadics or Artwallah, continue to defend the participation of South Asian and other marginalized groups in North American cultural life, through artistic expression. Online associations such as the South Asian Visual Arts Centre (SAVAC) or the South Asian Progressive Action Collective (SAPAC) also provide platforms for artists to critically explore issues shaping South Asian identities and experiences, both in the diasporic context and in the subcontinent. Establishing a link between ‘imagining’ and ‘imaging’, Ananda Mitra shows how a virtual community21 ‘can textually produce itself, thus imagine itself—as well as present itself to the outside world, and thus produce an image’ (Mitra 1997: 54). Indeed, blogs and individual websites such as ‘pardonmyhindi’, ‘masalachai’ or ‘threadsandjewels’ both reflect and reinforce a sense of pride and belonging, through the publication of personal essays, as well as photos, audio and video material. Likewise, collective sites such as Mutinous Mindstate or Sepia Mutiny connect politics, arts and identity, as a blogger pointed out when she described ‘[…] a site that gave me space to explore my identity with words, gave me the training grounds to build a community virtually, and allowed me the opportunity to influence political and advocacy issues affecting the South Asian community?’.22 Offline and online movements thus jointly participate in the production of South Asian subjectivities in the empowerment of migrants in North America, through an original combination of aesthetics and politics. Beyond South-Asian-ness, which refers to migrants’ cultural and ethnic pride, South Asianism, as an ideology, promotes the ideals of social justice and pluralism, in reaction to the homogenizing ideology of the State, the essentializing effects of multiculturalism, and the dangers of communalism, aggressive nationalism or religious radicalism (Varghese 2006, Khandelwal 1997, Prashad 1999-2000, Mathew 1999-2000, Vaid 1999-2000). These objectives are strongly connected to the migrants’ quest for integration and recognition in North America.

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Who are the South Asian activists?

34 Given the loose and informal nature of the progressive South Asian activists’ network in North America, it is impossible to quantify the number of sympathizers, and to determine with precision their sociological profile, based on their age, caste, class or gender composition. Nevertheless, migrants who self-identify as South Asians are best defined in opposition to Hindutva militants, not only ideologically, but also sociologically. While the latter are typically scientists, most of whom are actually employed in the computer and information technology sector (Lal 1999b: 154, Spivak 1989: 277, Rai 1995: 43), the former, also highly educated, are mostly trained in humanities and engaged in academic, artistic or associative professions, such as professor and activist late Hari Sharma, film directors Ali Kazimi and Shonali Bose, and playwrights Rahul Varma and Sadhu Binning. Most of them reconcile intellectual reflections and social work, such as scholars Radhika Gajjala, Biju Mathew and Rinku Sen, who are also involved within the community. Others marry academic life with artistic production, such as Vivek Bald, filmmaker, writer and scholar, who was one of the pioneer DJs of Asian Underground music (under the pseudonym DJ Seraiki), and co- founded Mutiny, a New York South Asian club night, along with DJ Rekha. The latter not only spearheaded a mix of Bhangra and electronic music in the United States, but also actively supports the South Asian community through her work with SAKHI for South Asian Women, and Breakthrough, an organization active in the US and India, that promotes human rights through pop culture. As for Naeem Mohaiemen, author, artist (Shobak23) and activist, one of the founders of Visible Collective,24 he engages art to question issues of identity and politics. These activists, artists and intellectuals not only share common ancestral roots and political ideals; they are also closely connected and work together, thus constituting an informal, but nonetheless real network in North America.

35 Another difference between Hindutva and South Asian activists is their gender ratio. Militants of the Hindu right, almost exclusively male, share a conservative ideology on the role of women in domestic and public spheres. South Asians activists, on the contrary, promote the equal participation of women and members of minorities in all strata of the society, and the members of their organizations are more or less equally distributed in terms of gender, when they are not entirely made up of women. Furthermore, while first-generation migrants tend to define themselves along national lines, later generations, born in North America, refer more readily to South Asian-ness (Shankar & Srikanth 1998: 2). 36 Deeply secular, South Asian activists promote inter-faith harmony, tolerance and diversity, both in the diaspora and in South Asia. At Toronto Pride 2011, a contingent of Ismaili queers took part in the parade for the first time, holding banners such as ‘Advocates for Pluralism’, ‘My faith will not crumble to your intolerance’ or ‘Allah is my ally’, thus reconciling religion with progressive ideas and alternative lifestyles. Although many activists who define themselves as progressive South Asians claim to be atheist and vehemently denounce bigotry and religious fundamentalism, they share a common respect for religion and spirituality. 37 As for caste identity, which continues to define the social structure in South Asia and, to a lesser extent, to shape migrants’ interactions in the diaspora, it is particularly salient among supporters of the Hindutva, who mostly claim an upper caste status and

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refuse to question the distribution of power between castes. South Asians activists, the majority of whom are from upper castes and privileged backgrounds, have consistently denounced the caste system in the name of secularism, human rights and social justice. They nevertheless mobilize separately, as indicated by the conspicuous absence of anti- caste movements in the activities of South Asian associations in North America.

The limits of ‘South Asian-ness’ and ‘South Asianism’

38 Though more and more widely accepted by migrants in North America, the ‘South Asian’ label remains highly problematic, ‘masking deeply salient divisions of nationality, culture, religion and language’ (Kibria 1996: 77). This section analyses the intrinsic limits of South Asian-ness as a contested category and an ill-defined identity, and South Asianism as a vague socio-political project.

‘South Asian? Qu’est-ce que c’est?’

39 The question of the relevance of South Asian-ness is the object of intense debate within the diaspora, in North America in particular. It has been discussed, analyzed, deconstructed and criticized by identity entrepreneurs and culture producers themselves, at conferences, seminars and conventions such as the biannual National South Asian Summit, organized by South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) and the South Asian Law Student Association (SALSA), organized for the fourth time in Washington DC, in April 2013. South Asian identity is also debated worldwide, as illustrated by the Symposium ‘No Man’s Land—Exploring South Asianness’, chaired by the Institute of Contemporary Art in London in 2004, or the South Asian Diaspora Convention, set up in 2013 in Singapore. Last but not least, South Asian-ness is the subject of passionate discussions online, in forums and blogs.

40 In intellectual circles, the South Asian category is severely criticized by some prominent personalities as an opportunistic label deployed to obtain resources or influence representation politics. Academics, writers and artists condemn this descriptor for its monolithic and homogenizing connotations, its ghettoization and racialization effects (journalist Yasmin Alibhai Brown, researcher Jeevan Deol, Professor Sanjay Sharma, No Man’s Land, 2004), its simplistic dimension or its exoticized nature (author-diplomat Pavan K Varma, No Man’s Land, 2004). According to writer M. G. Vassanji (1996: 116), this category, ‘imported from academia, is purely geographic, artificial, recent and entirely devoid of any imaginative force’, especially because South Asians ‘think of themselves and live as various communities’. In the words of Professor Arun Mukherjee: ‘‘South Asian’ is a bureaucratic […] umbrella term (used) to produce a unitary community that is not actually there’ (1998: 29). As for Sunil Khilnani, Professor and Director of the King’s College London India Institute, he deplores the ‘unpoetic’ nature of South Asia, who, unlike Europe, is deprived of any mythology (No Man’s Land 2004). South Asian activists themselves, such as Biju Mathew (1996), point out the ‘limits to South Asian-ness, unless re-articulated from within a strongly defined politics of class’ (Ghosh 2007: 190). Similarly, Alaudin Ullah, the American playwright and performer of Bangladeshi origin, rejects this categorization: I could easily say I'm American but due to racism I've never felt welcomed. And to those assimilated desis who felt ‘American’, they got their nigger wake up call after

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9/11. […] I don't label myself as Southasian. I guess I'm Bangladeshi American. I just prefer to be Alaudin Ullah, that's who I am. […] Folks of European descent don't say I'm European they will say I'm Italian, French etc. […] Latinos, most I know, don't call themselves that. They identify from their indigenous country. I grew up with Puerto Ricans who call themselves Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Mexicans, etc who NEVER call themselves Latino or Hispanic. My family is from Bangladesh. If I say I'm Southasian most folks will think I'm Chinese or Japanese. […] So no I'm not a fan of the South Asian term. I've heard some apologists for this compromise state that by labeling oneself South Asian it shows we have solidarity with our brethren from the entire region (Bangladesh, Pakistan, India etc.) this is more academic babble. We don't have to surrender our identity to show our solidarity. By identifying ourselves from our indigenous ancestors, it instills an ability to show an alliance with our allies that we won't stand for bullshit especially when it comes to imperialism and culture bandits. We won't be a community unless we define ourselves instead of having academics bending over in order to get their next job at a fancy college to define us. Academics have force fed this term down our throats. My parents’ generation never used this term and laborers who arrived here pre'65 immigration act don't have any solidarity with the academics who came here post '65 immigration act. The class differences are extreme so to use the term South Asian doesn't really paint an accurate picture of who we are. Lots of affluent Indians who live in suburbs of New York don't associate with the cab drivers, Dunkin donuts, Subway sandwich workers.25 41 When I told her about my ongoing research, a relative whom I was visiting, originating from Delhi and settled in Montreal for more than 20 years, asked me simply (in French): ‘South Asian? Qu’est-ce que c’est?’26, thus indicating the meaningless of a term deprived of any grass-roots.

Desi, Brown and other alternative labels

42 In search of more appropriate appellations, overseas South Asians adopted in the 1980s the idiomatic term ‘desi’, derived from the Sanskrit देश (deśha: region, province, country), which refers to people, traditions and goods originating‘ from the homeland’ in northern South Asian languages (Hindi, Hindustani, Urdu, Nepali…). Imagined by the migrants themselves, this term is now widely used by associations, magazines or blogs named after it, such as Desis Rising up and Moving (DRUM), The Mutinous Mindstate of the Desi Diaspora, Über Desi, and Desinews, as well as TV channels (Desi-TV) or radio stations (DeSi-RaDiO). Some use alternatively ‘South Asian’ and ‘desi’ to define themselves and their peers: I love the word ‘desi.’ It is so beautiful. I can go around saying it over and over again. I'm of the view that it is the best word to describe ourselves . . . it is an ironic word, because it means of the homeland, but it does not say what that homeland is. We who use it do not hearken back to the 'homeland' of the subcontinent, because we are generally not nationalistic in that sense. Our homeland is an imaginary one that stretches from Jackson Heights to the Ghadar Party, from the rallies against Dotbusters to the Komagata Maru, from the 1965 Immigration Act to Devon Street. This is a homeland that we can relate to and it is what makes us feel like we belong in something of a collectivity. Hence desi. And [the term] is under construction (Caswell, n.d.). 43 According to Susan Koshy, a desi identity offers: […] an alternative location for imagining communities that undoes the arbitrary borders drawn by colonialism and nationalism in the subcontinent; it offers a way of linking the fragments of the diaspora to each other and to the homeland; and it

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provides a framework for imagining cultural connection apart from the constraints of state power. Desi avoids naming the space of belonging in religious or national terms and thus, it offers a means of countering the fraught divisions that characterize South Asian politics and identities in the homelands. The word also overrides the distinction between those who live in the homeland and those who live elsewhere. This flexibility is a reflection of the period in which the term emerged, a period of growing economic, political and cultural connections between South Asian nations and their overseas populations. (Koshy 2008: 36) 44 Yet, ‘desi-ness’ is not completely consensual either, as it refers essentially to people originating from the North of the subcontinent. Furthermore, the term ‘desi’ does not seem to capture the diversity, the cultural hybridity and the leftist ideology that is implicit in the South Asian label: I think in a way South Asian emerges from the fact that all of us—Afghanis, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Indians, Sri Lankans, Mauritians—, the diaspora keep being lumped in with India when people see us. Funnily enough the broad term allows us to differentiate our identity. […] Desi grounds us in the contested terrain of India—it is not pan-South Asian. It doesn't necessary refer to the same kind of militantism—it just gives us a home, which is problematic in way because the ‘home’ is much more India. It is more ethno-cultural and geographically focused. However, if we don't fight for the Desi label, it could easily be associated with Hindutava—so using Desi is more subversive because of the ethno-cultural link. Too many people think of Desi as the traditional.27 45 Along with ‘South Asian’ and ‘Desi’, the term ‘masala’ aims at transcending both ethnic and geographic criteria, in order to focus on the artistic and cultural creativity inspired by the subcontinent.

46 As for the ambivalent label ‘Brown’, it re-appeared recently in North America in a new, positive context. The multiplication of online associations, websites and blogs such as republicofbrown.com, brownpundits.com or brownout.blogspot.fr, whose motto is ‘One in a million Brooklyn browns’, reflects the growing importance of ‘Browness’ in South Asian self-perception and identity politics. This term refers to pan-ethnic attributes close to racial profile, thus confirming Kibria’s intuition that a larger South Asian population will make ‘greater efforts to gain a political voice’ and that as part of this process, it will increasingly turn to ‘racial self-definition and positioning’ (Kibria 1998: 73). Interestingly, if this label is increasingly popular among people of South Asian descent, especially from the second generation, it is considered derogative, if not racist when used by ‘non-Browns’. This phenomenon echoes back to the ‘Black is Beautiful’ movement of the 1960s, which turned skin colour and ethnic attributes into a source of pride and a means of social protest. According to Karen Aguilar-San Juan, the label ‘Brown’ is not so much a self-designation, but results from North American racial categorizations, which were internalized by members of ‘coloured’ minorities: Many young Asian Americans ‘have been driven to affiliate as people ‘of color’ or ‘Third World’ people because they have been excluded from the mainstream, but not because they have developed a critique of racism—or of the poverty and violence racism often implies. As a result, many of these young people define their political activism solely in terms of asserting their identity, and are driven to accept essentialist notions of race and ethnicity. (Aguilar-San Juan 1993: 9) 47 Yet, the idea of ‘Browness’ can also be perceived as the promotion of ethnic and cultural hybridity,—a way to escape the traditional white or black dichotomy in North America, an alternative to cultural homogeneity and racial purity. Nevertheless, the ‘Brown’ identity claimed by some South Asians does not include other non-South Asian

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populations, even though some of them take pride in calling themselves ‘Brown’ in reaction to the terms ‘Latinos’ or ‘Hispanics’ for instance.

A limited impact in the subcontinent

48 Whereas South Asian diasporic mobilization is fairly influential in North America, it is difficult to measure its impact in the subcontinent. In theory, communication technology should stimulate the emergence of new forms of political engagement from a distance, as well as new forms of local self-representations, connected to the homeland and to the host society, thus making the South Asian mobilization and identity production in North America part of a transnational movement. In practice, the transnational dimension of North American South Asianism is more symbolic than real.

49 Indeed, the leftist South Asian mobilization in North America is not so much focused on South Asia, but aims at improving the migrants’ place in their host society. In the 1970s, a few diasporic organizations, such as the Indian People’s Association in North America, were dedicated to social and political change in the subcontinent, but as IPANA’s founder member Mahil Harinder stated: IPANA was directed in India, but we realized that Indians in Canada needed to improve their life in Canada, so we organized BCOFR. In the late 1970s, thousands of Indians were living here, but had no laws to protect them. We established ‘Canadian Farmworkers Union’. We lobbied the government.28 50 An exception to the local anchorage of South Asianism in North America is the SAARC of Canada, whose President, Zubair Choudhry, promotes inter-community harmony and a regional unity in the subcontinent, but more for economic, liberal reasons: In Canada, we are Canadians of South Asian origin. We are ‘one’, South Asians. No divisions. Why being divided? We, in our organization, have representatives of the 7 countries (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and Maldives). We think that South Asia should become one region without border, with one single currency and free trade. […] This organization is proposing to the government of Canada that Canada should join SAARC as an observer, and establish a SAARC fund, to put resources to find out what we can do. […] We try to promote peace and harmony within South Asian community in Canada. […] We want the government of Canada to officially apply for membership in SAARC, and help in trade, culture, tourism, build strategic relations.29 51 The movement in favour of a South Asian unity and cooperation, which emerged in the subcontinent in 1985 with the creation of the SAARC, does not have any connection with the diasporic production of identity and quest for integration in North America. The pan-regional organization, whose principal goal is to ‘promote the welfare of the peoples of South Asia, to improve their quality of life, to accelerate economic growth, social progress and cultural development and to provide all individuals the opportunity to live in dignity and to realize their full potential’ (SAARC Charter, 1985), failed to fulfil its objectives and to develop as a forum for discussion and conflict resolution. Its biggest challenge is the power asymmetry in the region (Kher 2012). Given the postcolonial hegemonic position of India in the subcontinent, small countries such as Nepal or Sri Lanka favourably rally the geostrategic idea of South Asia in order to benefit from their association with the major players in the subcontinent, while Pakistan and Bangladesh, on the contrary, refuse to be merged into a region centred on New Delhi. As for India, regionalism constitutes a challenge to its predominance in the

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area (Lal 2003). In fact, the idea of South Asia itself is questioned by its own supporters, who consider it a ‘set of inclusive and overlapping local and regional identities’, a ‘confederation of lifestyles and life-support systems’ (Ashis Nandy 2001).

52 In parallel to official attempts to bring South Asian states together, social movements, civil society organizations, labour unions, peasant organizations, women’s groups, ecologists and human rights activists from the entire subcontinent gathered in 1995 to create the People’s SAARC, a grass-roots lobbying group based in Kathmandu whose mission is to forge a ‘people’s union of South Asia’. Local associations dedicated to the defence of underprivileged minorities, the promotion of peace, education, democracy, human rights and inter-communal harmony, and the protection of the environment, have multiplied throughout the subcontinent, and some of them are connected to the network of diasporic leftist South Asians, such as the South Asia Forum for Human Rights (SAFHR), Sangat South Asia and Act Now for Harmony and Democracy (ANHAD). Nevertheless, most of the initiatives taken in the subcontinent in the name of pan- regionalism are centred on South Asia itself. 53 South Asianism thus seems ambivalent, embodying different ideologies and identities, whether formulated in the subcontinent—where it promotes cooperation and social change at the regional level, in the name of cultural commonalities and economic and political mutual interests—or in the diaspora in general. In North America in particular, South Asianism constitutes a space of dissent, where alternative identities and narratives are produced by some activists of South Asian descent, in a double quest for integration and differentiation.

Conclusion

54 In this digital age, information and communication technology weakens the ties between culture and locality, and generates new forms of mobilization, able to transcend borders and defy hegemonic narratives. Are these social movements yet more transnational? Unlike the primo-migrants’ pan-South Asian solidarity, which aimed at changing the political map in the subcontinent, today’s South Asianism is mostly focused on the migrants’ local preoccupations in their host societies. The ideal of inter-communal harmony between South Asians, formulated by leftist migrants of South Asian descent, seems to be more a strategy for local empowerment than an objective to reach in the subcontinent. Nevertheless, this wishful dream, formulated in the diaspora, and sometimes accompanied by transnational initiatives, does certainly have an impact—limited but real—in the subcontinent. Acting as a transmission belt from one country to another, overseas South Asian mobilization undoubtedly resonates in the subcontinent, where it not only raises political and cultural consciousness, but also transforms social practices through transnational associations, family connections and the media.

55 This article highlights the role of the diaspora in North America as a singular site of construction and contestation of identity and ideology, between partisans of a Hindu nationalism on the one hand, secularist nationalists on the other hand, and regionalists, supporters of a cultural, political and economic pan-South Asian unity. Indeed, overseas leftist activists, or ‘South Asianists’, have produced an original, post- national, post-diasporic, ideological movement, based not only on common ancestral origins, but also shared values such as pluralism, secularism and the protection of

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marginalized minorities, in response to both local and transnational factors. The evolution of the South Asian concept, and the transformations of the identity to which it refers, illustrate the equivocal and ambivalent relationship between identity and category. Indeed, the categorization process has a dual, performative influence on the production of identity. ‘South Asian’, this once meaningless, if not depreciative label, turned out to become the very means of resistance to traditional, homogeneous and pre-defined identities, both within the community of migrants and in the society at large. More than an abstract concept, a mere intellectual construction, South Asianism is, for many people, part of their reality, it constitutes their cultural background and the framework of their social life. As Toronto-based activist Maya Bhullar sums it up: ‘I found my community in the people the term ‘South Asian’ attracts’.

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NOTES

1. This paper is a substantially revised version of an article published in the E-Atlas diaspora, Paris, Editions de la FMSH, April 2012. It has been presented at the conference: ‘The Idea of South Asia’, Centre d’Etudes de l’Inde et l’Asie du Sud (CEIAS), EHESS-CNRS, Paris, 13 November 2012. 2. These eight countries are members of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), an organization created in 1985 to promote ‘peace, stability, amity and progress in the region’, see http://www.saarc-sec.org/SAARC-Charter/5/. 3. The neologism ‘South Asianism’ was coined by journalist Siddharth Varadarajan in 2001 at a Himal roundtable. 4. In this article, the term ‘queer’ is used to refer to all the different types of non-conventional sexuality-based identities, also mentioned under the acronym LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual). 5. The term ‘Satyagrahi’ refers to members of the civil resistance movement, known as ‘Satyagraha ’ (Truth Force), initiated by Mohandas K. Gandhi in South Africa in 1906. 6. The term ‘Girmitiyas’ refers to Indian indentured workers brought to Fiji in the XIXth century, after having signed an ‘agreement’ (hence its name). 7. Indentured workers were people transported from India to the French, British and Dutch plantation colonies between 1838 and the 1920s, in order to replace the slaves in the plantations. The ‘indenture system’ has been compared to ‘a new system of slavery’ (Tinker 1974). It is now

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the object of a more nuanced interpretation, which positions it halfway between forced slavery and chosen migration (Carter 1995). 8. Razib Khan, June 15, 2011, http://sepiamutiny.com/blog/2011/06/15/what_is_brownde/. 9. Late Hari Sharma, Professor of Sociology at Simon Fraser University, militant activist, interview by author, Burnaby (BC), October 2006. 10. The notion of ‘model minority’ was first coined by William Petersen (1966) to describe Americans of Asian origin as ethnic minorities who, despite their marginalization, reached a success level higher than the average in the US. Their success was measured in terms of average income, high educational achievement, high family stability and low criminality rate. According to critics (Prashad 2000 & 2006, Leonard 1997, Lessinger 1999, Sabbagh 2003, Dumm & Jain 2004), this stereotype sets up high expectations and understates the achievements of individuals within ‘model minorities’. It ignores factors such as selective immigration, affirmative action and cultural influences which might privilege some groups over others. It also tends to generalize the socio-economic level of success of a few migrants to a whole population, thus embarrassing the non-successful members of a model minority by implying that they are responsible for falling short of the expected level of achievement and assimilation. Furthermore, this idea pits minority groups against each other by ethnicizing socio-economic success, and implying that the non- successful communities are either at fault for not reaching the same level of achievement, or are ‘culturally’ not endowed to do so. Finally, this stereotype is used to justify the exclusion of model minorities in the distribution of assistance programs, based on the very cultural and ethnic (mis)conceptions which, less than a century ago, were used to vilify the same categories of people. At the same time, this myth is invoked to counter the demands of groups such as Blacks and Hispanics for equal rights and socio-economic change. 11. University of Pennsylvania Bulletin, South Asia Regional Studies, Announcement for the Academic Year 1949-50 and Summer Session, 1949. 12. Zubair Choudhury, interview by author, Mississauga (Ontario), November 2006. 13. Such as: Coalition against Genocide, Coalition against Communalism, Stop Funding Hate, Communalism Watch, South Asians against Police Brutality and Racism, International South Asian Forum (INSAF), South Asia Research and Resource Centre (CERAS), Forum of Indian Leftists (FOIL), Friends of South Asia (FOSA), Alliance for a Secular and Democratic South Asia, South Asia Left Democratic Alliance (SALDA), South Asians against Police Brutality and Racism (SAPBR), Campaign to Stop Funding Hate, the coalition Building Bridges etc… 14. http://www.sapac.org/about.htm. 15. Maya Bhullar, interview by author, Toronto, October 2013. 16. The ‘curry brigade’, a self-identifying term that circulates in the US based ‘Silicon India’, not only refers to the culinary habits of South Asian migrants, but also to their collective, army-like organization. This expression implicitly alludes to the right wing, nationalist, conservative and religious movement Hindutva, which promotes the ‘hinduization of politics, and the militarisation of Hinduism’. 17. Navicrawler is a tool of exploration of the web, which analyses the contents and the structure of web pages and their hypertext links. Gephi is an interactive visualization and exploration platform for all kinds of networks and complex systems, dynamic and hierarchical graphs. See http://ediasporas.ticmigrations.fr/?lang=en. 18. The research was only conducted in English, on the assumption that this is the common language that most of the migrants originating from the subcontinent share, especially in a diasporic context, all the more so online. It was also assumed that, had there been websites published in South Asian languages, they would have a translated version in English, for obvious outreach and practical reasons. This English-only research, based on a specific term highly popular in North America, undoubtedly constitutes a geographical and socio-economic bias. By using this method, the research explicitly focuses on South Asian-ness in North America.

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Although a comparative approach with South Asian-ness in the United Kingdom would be particularly interesting, it goes beyond the scope of this article. 19. Hypertext links are defined as ‘text composed of blocks of words (or images) linked electronically by multiple paths, chains, or trails in an open-ended, perpetually unfinished textuality described by the terms link, node, network, web and path…’ (Landow 1992: 3). 20. This graph (Figure 1) helps visualize the South Asian e-diaspora’s network, constituted of ‘migrant sites’, that is websites made or managed by, for or about migrants. The hypertext links (in grey) connect various websites to each other. Each website of the corpus is materialized by a knob. The orientations up/down and right/left of the graph do not have any correlation with North/South and East/West. Likewise, the distance between different knobs has no importance: only the position of the knobs and their inter-connectivity matter, with the exception of the insulated ones, which could have as well been represented by a list. When a set of sites form a relatively dense and homogeneous cloud, it is called a ‘cluster’. If a number of sites are connected to each other in the shape of a spider web, they are considered a ‘community’. A ‘hub’ is a knob with many outbound links. An ‘authority’ is a very influential knob, with many inbound links. The more inbound links a knob has, the bigger it appears on the graph (Diminescu 2011). 21. A virtual community can be defined as a space ‘in which people still meet face-to-face, but under new definitions of both ‘meet’ and ‘face’ … virtual communities [are] passage points for collections of common beliefs and practices that unite people who were physically separated’ (Stone 1991: 85). 22. Taz 2012, URL: http://sepiamutiny.com/blog/2012/04/01/tazs-top-ten-and-thanks/ #more-8827. 23. http://www.shobak.org/. 24. Visible Collective (2004-2007) was a coalition of artists, activists, and lawyers looking at hyphenated migrant identities. 25. Alaudin Ullah, interview by author, Toronto, October 2013. 26. Simrit Chatwal, interview by author, Montréal, October 2013. 27. Maya Bhullar, interview by author, Toronto, October 2013. 28. Mahil Harinder, Deputy Chief Minister, Former President of the Human Rights Commission, interview by author, Toronto, October 2006. 29. Zubair Choudhry, South Asian Regional Cooperation Council of Canada, interview by author, Mississauga, November 2006.

ABSTRACTS

Traditionally, states see the diaspora at best, as an instrument of long distance nationalism, and at worst, as a source of internal conflict. Yet, migrants who define themselves as South Asians in North America transcend subnational and national borders in the name of a pan-regional identity. Beyond cultural or ethnic commonalities anchored in the Indian subcontinent, ‘South Asianism’ is emerging as a form of political consciousness and radical activism, mobilized against racial discrimination and socio-economic injustice. This article, based on ethnographic fieldwork combined with an analysis of digital networks, explores the construction and the limits of the South Asian category, identity and ideology in North America. It sheds new light on the paradoxes of a transnational, post-diasporic mobilization, which claims roots in the subcontinent

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but is essentially anchored in the host society, where it is dedicated to migrants’ cultural affirmation, civic participation and socio-economic empowerment.

INDEX

Keywords: cultural activism, South Asian diaspora, ideological mobilization, identity politics, ethnicity

AUTHOR

ANOUCK CARSIGNOL

Research fellow, Centre d’Etudes et de Recherche sur l’Inde et l’Asie du Sud (CERIAS), UQAM, Montréal

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From South Asia to Southasianism: A Nepalese Activist’s Perspective An interview with Kanak Mani Dixit

Blandine Ripert

About Kanak Mani Dixit

1 Kanak Mani Dixit is an intellectual from Nepal, a journalist since his high school days in the early 1970s in Lalitpur (Kathmandu Valley) and a well-known publisher, editor and writer. He founded the bimonthly regional magazine Himal in 1987, which became Himal Southasian when he enlarged the area it covered, as he says, ‘from Afghanistan to Burma and from Tibet to the Maldives.’ The magazine offers informed critical commentary on social and cultural issues in South Asia. He is also the publisher of the Nepali language political newsweekly Himal Khabarpatrika.

2 After a Bachelor of Arts degree in Katmandu and a Bachelor of Law in Delhi, he went to Columbia University where he studied international relations, then journalism (Master’s Degree in both, in 1982). He worked for eight years at the United Nations Secretariat in New York, before deciding to return to Nepal in 1990. At that time, he helped bring four-colour printing to Nepal, and also joined the effort at archiving. He played a significant role in the development of press and media in Nepal in the years after the establishment of democracy in 1990 and also involved himself in the Nepali language media. Subsequently, printing became an industry as many other presses followed his, enabling Nepal to no longer import from other countries—especially Thailand—to satisfy its printing needs, a critical factor during the period of political effervescence in the 1990s. 3 Beyond journalism, Dixit chairs the ‘Film Southasia’, a documentary festival that he founded, and is also involved with the Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya archives, the Shikshyak magazine for Nepal’s school teachers, the Sajha Yatayat public transport cooperative company, and the Kathmandu Valley Preservation Trust, which preserves and restores architectural heritage. He has published many children’s books, including

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the much translated ‘Adventures of a Nepali Frog’. Dixit follows a family tradition as he comes from a clan of several generations of writers (Dixit 2003). In the late 1990s and early 2000s, he became involved in the civil rights movement amidst the Maoist insurgency and King’s Gyanendra’s autocracy. He participated in the People’s Movement of 2006, which led to the fall of the king’s autocracy, which eventually led to the birth of the Nepali republic. His last book, Peace Politics in Nepal (2011), deals with issues related to the peace process in Nepal since 2006, notably with regard to the writing of a new Constitution for the country, which is on-going. 4 Taken together, Kanak Mani Dixit may best be described as a South Asian activist. In 2009 he was the first Nepali national to receive the Prince Claus Award from The Netherlands, honouring him for ‘his outstanding contributions to public debate, for creating platforms that enable South Asians to connect, interact and network transcending national and cultural boundaries, and for his socially engaged, multidisciplinary approach to creativity and development.’1

The interview

After almost 70 years of separation between the countries of South Asia, with borders mostly closed to the movement of people and commodities, not to mention recurrent conflicts between states, what is left of the heritage of what could be today South Asia? 5 The heritage of Southasia is intact, but it is evolving in different directions because the restricted frontiers between most of the countries greatly do injustice to the shared historical experiences of the ‘Indic’ region. When Partition broke the region apart in 1947, most leaders did not believe that this would be so permanent, or at the very least thought that the borders would remain open. However, nothing of the sort happened, worst, the region was prey to several wars. In the meantime, the dominant state narrative developed on the basis of ultra-nationalism, which was a populist tool used to drive the larger populace. As a consequence, today you have a region that is culturally similar but divided by what I call the capital elites; only repeating the refrain that ‘we are alike, culturally similar’ will not move the regional idea forward. You have often made an appeal for a federal South Asia, through a process that would not be top-down, and would come from the local scale. How do you think this could happen in practice without the participation of states, given the obstacles to direct contact between people? Does it mean that South Asian regionalism is mainly a question of scale? 6 The proposal for engagement between the provinces of the two larger countries, with each other and with the other smaller sovereign countries of Southasia, is an attempt to break through the nation-state logjam. To begin with, a federally devolved India and Pakistan will benefit the far-flung people of these two countries, which in my view cannot countenance a centralized state administration in the long term. If such devolution happens, providing the provinces of Pakistan and the states of India with a larger autonomy of action, much of the battle for ‘Southasia’ will be already won. This will also help to tackle the asymmetry in Southasian regionalism created by the size of India, in terms of population, land area, economic and geopolitical power, and geographical centrality.

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If South Asia is more a ‘sensibility than a geographical region,’ as you wrote, how would you defnite this sensibility? 7 It is important not to be trapped by determinism. With that caveat, I would say that the ‘sensibility’ evolves from shared history, penumbra demarcations between identities, soft boundaries between states/principalities, and syncretism of cultures. Going down a by-lane in Peshawar or Indore, to be hit by the aroma of the same spices, to find the similar dirt and distress, perhaps can also be described as similar sensibilities. How all this translates in the relationships between individuals and communities is the display of empathy, the ability to look at issues from the point of view of the other protagonist. So, when I suggest that Southasia is more a sensibility than a geographical region, I am making an idealized (perhaps romantic) argument that in order to go beyond the coagulation of nation-statism that has all of us in its grip, we need to look at Southasia not in terms of national citizenship identities but through the sensibility of anyone who is able to look at things from the other’s point of view. Are there symbolic icons in the construction of South Asia? What seems to you to operate as cementing vectors? 8 The icons have unfortunately been overtaken by parochial national identities. To begin with, if ‘India’ had not been taken over by the nation-state of India in 1947, we would not have to import a geographical term, ‘South Asia’, to describe the place where we live. The evolution of politics and geopolitics has similarly taken away ‘Hindustan’. Mahatma Gandhi was an Indian citizen for hardly six months of his life; before that, he was a citizen of undivided India, which would have made him Southasian in today’s parlance. Cementing icons such as the Taj Mahal have been mostly ‘taken over’ by state identities, and hence can be hardly projected (at least for now) as symbols for all Southasia. You once said northern South Asia was the ‘problem-child’ of the region. Could you tell us more about this? 9 When we started Himal, we felt that Southasia was too vast, multilayered and complex to be defined only according to the ‘SAARC formula’ of eight nation-states. We should go beyond SAARC to include China’s Tibet—linked through trade, the Sanskritic tradition, as well as Himalayan Mahayana Buddhism— as well as Burma. We should understand the penumbra of identities where the various sub-regional entities meet. We should think of people at the local government level as contributing to the Southasian sensibility. Amidst all this, we should also mark the divide or differentiation between Northern Southasia and Southern Southasia. The north is where there is massive poverty, where there are great societal polarisations, as well as where the capitals are—that is where the national security state of each of the larger countries (except Sri Lanka) is located, and where the statist vision unfolds. The north is where the wars are fought. North Southasia is where there is need for more Southasian sensibility than South Southasia. Do you see any major differences between activists from different countries that contribute to the emergence of Southasianism? What are the main obstacles to their actions? 10 No, there are few such activists but they exist in each country, in the same proportion in each society large and small. They may not even be espousing Southasian regionalism, but they are Southasia activists because they have the ‘quality of empathy’ inbuilt, are practical enough to accept the nation-state but sceptical of its hubris, and have a fine understanding of the historical inter-connectedness of all of Southasia.

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What is missing is Southasian scholarship to back up the activists, and we therefore spend a lot of time trying to build Southasian regionalism through the SAARC formula, but with limited success. I would add that the average activist in India may have a Southasian sensibility but does not need to act on it as much, because India is already large enough to encompass much of Southasia as a region—the visceral need of the Southasian for regionalism as a link to shared history, demographic diversity and geographic spread is more easily available to the average citizen of the Indian nation- state. As I like to say, ‘India is already much of Southasia.’ What role do you think Nepal (and its inhabitants) could play in the construction of a South Asian regionalism? What are the consequences, in your opinion, of the absence of British colonization in Nepal on the imaginary and the ideas of Nepalese people on what is or could be South Asia? 11 Nepal is perceived as the most ‘neutral’ country in Southasia, so once it gets over its own internal political challenges it could emerge as the country to provide additional impetus to the Southasian regionalism process. History has given us a country that could fill that role, but for this the Nepali intelligentsia and civil society need to come out of the nation-state mentality a bit, and be more empathetic and less ultra- nationalist. For instance, the fact that Shakyamuni Siddhartha Gautam was born in Nepal is used for a nationalistic sloganeering (‘Buddha was born in Nepal’) rather than for evolving a national ethos based on peace and non-violence, cooperative spirit and transparency according to the teachings of the Buddha. The fact is that Nepal is the oldest nation-state of Southasia (though nation-building is just beginning some would say), and therefore has probably some level of national self-confidence that can (or should) make it amenable to internalising regionalism more than others. But recent years of internal political buffeting and external interference have made Nepal geopolitically weak and lacking in self-confidence. If it comes out of this period of low self-esteem, it can play a major role in moving forward Southasian regionalism. Let us take three examples, entrenched in history: Nepal has the most open visa regime in Southasia, which makes Kathmandu a genuine meeting place; Nepal has a historically evolved open border with India, which stands as exemplar for the other land frontiers of Southasia; in the absence of colonisation, Nepali has been the language of discourse of the intelligentsia, which makes it possible to discuss the idea of Southasian regionalism in a vernacular language. If the concept of Southasia has to gain traction and political significance in any of our countries, then the Southasian discourse has to be carried energetically into the vernacular, which is possible in Nepal and Bangladesh more than others because of the vibrancy of the discourse in Nepali and Bangla. What was your project about when you founded the journal Himal in 1987? What made you decide, ten years later, to transform this journal into HimalSouthasian? 12 Himal was founded in 1987 to provide long-form journalism (reportage mostly, but also essays) covering the Himalayan region. This required a cross-border format, and the imperative to evolve editorial skills attuned to a cross-border publication. As time went on, we came to realize that the economics that drives the people as well as the media tends to be north-south (for example, Nepal’s linkages with the north-Indian states Uttar Pradesh and Bihar) rather than east-west along the Himalayan chain. The Himalayas as a physical entity stretch from East to West but the economic geography of the region has north-south linkages. The editors felt dissatisfied with a publication that seemed to be removed from the day-to-day interests of the subject peoples. At that point, we decided that it was important to use the same cross-border formula as the

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Himalayan Himal and to apply it to Southasia as a whole. This is how in 1996 Himal converted from Himalayan to Southasian. What were the roots of your motivation to create such journals? 13 I was brought up in the liberal tradition and believing in the social-democratic ideals of B.P. Koirala of Nepal. I was then sensitised in the decade of the 1980s while living in New York to the power of long-form journalism and essays. Also my family tradition of seven generations of writers may have played a part, but most importantly was the spread and depth of learning of my father Kamal Mani Dixit, who is an historian, archivist and linguist who makes the perfect bridge from Southasia’s past to the present. He has been my guide in many ways to a felt history—as a modern man who is also in organic touch with tradition, unlike my generation of English-educated who have been cut off. What about the Film South Asia festival you founded in 1997? Are the main goals related to building up South Asia, and if so, how? 14 Driven as we were by the need to spread the Southasian consciousness in a region brought low by national ultra-nationalism, the editors of Himal decided that it was important to harness the audio-visual medium, especially its non-fiction output. We also felt that the documentary filmmakers came closest to what Himal was trying to do with its long-form reportage and essays. This is how we started the documentary festival Film Southasia, which happens every two years, while the travelling edition goes around Southasia and the world in the interim.

Cover of The Southasian Sensibility: A Himal Reader, edited by Kanak Mani Dixit (Dixit 2012).

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dixit, Kanak Mani & Shastri Ramachandaran (2002) State of Nepal, Key Porter Books.

Dixit, Kanak, Mani (2003) Adventures of a Nepali Frog, Rato Bangala Kitab: Kathmandu.

Dixit, Kanak, Mani (2009) Dekheko Muluk (The Country Witnessed), Jagadamba Prakashan: Kathmandu.

Dixit, Kanik Mani (2011) Peace Politics in Nepal, Kathmandu: Himal Publishers.

Dixit, Kanak Mani (ed.) (2012) The Southasian Sensibility: A Himal Reader, Sage Publications.

NOTES

1. See http://www.princeclausfund.org/en/network/kanak.html.

INDEX

Keywords: Kanak Mani Dixit, Southasianism, South Asia, Himal

AUTHOR

BLANDINE RIPERT

CNRS Research Fellow in geography and anthropology at the Centre for South Asian Studies (CEIAS), EHESS, Paris

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Afterword. On Region and Nation

Sanjay Subrahmanyam

1 Geography, the Greek philosopher and geographer Strabo (d. 24 CE) is alleged to have thought, was Destiny. Many major political thinkers have disputed this claim in one fashion or another over the past some centuries. In his celebrated lecture entitled Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?, delivered in Paris in March 1882, Ernest Renan (1823-1892) declared: A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Two things which, properly speaking, are really one and the same constitute this soul, this spiritual principle. One is the past, the other is the present. One is the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories; the other is present consent, the desire to live together, the desire to continue to invest in the heritage that we have jointly received. (Renan 1992 [1882]) 2 Speaking only about a decade after the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871, and heavily aware of other arguments on nationhood being made across the border (by the followers of Fichte, for example), Renan also declared: Man is a slave neither of his race, his language, his religion, the course of his rivers, nor the direction of his mountain ranges. A great aggregation of men, in sane mind and warm heart, created a moral conscience that calls itself a nation. As long as this moral conscience tests its strength by sacrifices that require the subordination of the individual to the communal good, it is legitimate and has the right to exist. If doubts are raised along the frontiers, consult the disputed populations. They certainly have a right to express their views on the matter. (Renan 1992 [1882]) 3 Nation in this view then was neither natural nor inevitable, nor indeed flowing from geography and ethnicity; rather it was something based, as it were, on elective affinities, akin perhaps to a marriage built on romantic love. As for the people on the frontier, they were perhaps comparable to the children divided in a fraught marriage.

4 Renan did not write in a world of nations, but rather one where the nation-state as a ‘modular form’ was only beginning to emerge fully into its own. On the other hand, the twentieth century, which began as a period when the world was still dominated by a series of empires—British, French, German, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, Qing and Russian—ended, as is well-known, with the nation-state as its dominant political and sovereign form. Indeed, the second half of the century saw a veritable explosion in the number of nation-states the world over. The United Nations, which at its foundation in

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1945 only had some 51 nation-states as members, had as many as 80 by 1956, then 122 by 1966 (largely on account of African decolonization), 147 in 1976, a small further expansion to 159 by 1986, thereafter a major push to 185 in 1996 (essentially due to the collapse and disaggregation of the Soviet bloc), and eventually had reached the number of 192 by 2006. This progressive overall proliferation of nations was accompanied, curiously enough, by a scholarly production which regularly proclaimed that the nation-state as a form was obsolete and doomed, especially on account of large and levelling forces such as ‘globalization’, or the extreme neo-liberal dream of the ‘end of history’. But if ‘world government’ was the notional telos, there were few proponents of a road-map of how this would in fact come about. The UN’s predecessor, the League of Nations, had already had as many as 58 members at its height in the mid-1930s. A substantial number of these were what could be called post-imperial nations, having emerged either from the break-up of the Spanish empire (largely in the 1810s and 1820s), or that of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires in the immediate aftermath of World War I. Again, of the ‘new’ nations that were born after 1945, a very great number came out of the debris of empires, in particular the European colonial empires in Asia and Africa. Their logic was varied and complex. Some referred above all to ideas of ethnicity in order to define their limits; others harked back to administrative divisions that had existed under colonial rule; and still others drew above all on religious distinctions. If the borders between some used precisely the natural divisions such as rivers, lakes and mountain ranges that Renan decried, in other cases the frontiers were apparently made using a simple ruler and pencil on a map, often in the context of earlier inter-imperial rivalries. The current frontiers of Mali and Namibia are interesting examples of this phenomenon, but by no means the only ones. 5 Almost all of these nation-states have had ideologues, proclaiming (unlike Renan) their inevitable and ‘natural’, and even near-eternal, character. Yet, the historian is usually struck, quite on the contrary, by the highly contingent character of the processes that permitted these states to emerge. We may take the case of Spanish America, where decolonization initially led to the formation, amongst other significant entities, of the state of Gran Colombia, under the leadership of Simón Bolívar between roughly 1819 and 1831. This state, which emerged from the Spanish viceroyalty of Nueva Granada (that had itself been created in the first half of the eighteenth century) and also used its rough boundaries, eventually was dissolved on account of internecine disputes to produce the separate states of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Panama, which have existed ever since. Yet, should we see this process of fragmentation as inevitable, rather than the product of difficult negotiations between fractious elites and their larger followings? Had Bolívar himself not had excessive centralizing ambitions, bordering on the dictatorial, and also not wished to push the physical limits of this state further, and well into the Andes, could Gran Colombia not have held together in some form and thus provided a more substantial bulwark against the ambitions of the United States, and the ‘doctrine’ of its President James Monroe (1817-1825) in the region? These questions may not be entirely absurd. After all, in 1830, even the limits of the United States itself, which was sometimes apt to use the providentialist language of ‘manifest destiny’ by the mid-nineteenth century to justify its own westward expansion, were far from being set in stone. In sum, the relationship between region and nation is anything but self-evident to the modern historian, and is itself the centre of ongoing debates.

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6 The collection of essays to which this brief text serves as an afterword emerged from a day-long meeting held in November 2012 at the Centre d’Etudes de l’Inde et de l’Asie du Sud (or CEIAS) in Paris. Its subsequent evolution as a collective enterprise has been briefly explained in the introduction, and involved both an expansion in the themes treated, and a modification, so to speak, in the cast of characters. However, from the very outset, the intention of the organizers was to open up the conversation beyond the now all-too-familiar revisiting of the dyad of India and Pakistan. This is how a key section of the initial statement for the meeting ran. South Asia, another name for the Indian Subcontinent, is a recent concept (only about six decades old), forged outside the region in the wake of the establishment of area studies by American universities. While it may be preferred to Indian subcontinent for its political neutrality, it is nonetheless a contested concept, both externally and internally. Whether in South Asia itself or in international institutions or research centres outside the region, there is no general consensus about the countries the concept encompasses: it primarily refers to India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, the Maldives, as per the definition of the SAARC, which has however included Afghanistan lately (2005) among its members. Some would also include Burma (Myanmar) as it was a province of British India till 1937. Internally, the concept is contested on the political level but in a fairly paradoxical way: on the one hand, as a concept closely associated with India, it is in some contexts rejected by its neighbours; on the other hand, neighbouring countries (especially Nepal and Sri Lanka) have been instrumental in making the concept exist through the creation of journals, associations, and websites that mobilise the term. 7 At the same time, it was clear both to the organizers and to the other participants that a problem of asymmetry, or considerably unequal weight, existed when all these national entities were set side-by-side. On the one hand, there was the Indian behemoth, and on the other, countries such as Nepal and Sri Lanka, which barely measured up—whether in terms of demography or economy—to one of the Indian provinces. This, for example, is how the demographic comparison looks in the baldest terms.

Table: Comparative Demography of South Asia, ca. 2012

Country Population (millions) Regional share (%)

India 1267.40 76.3

Pakistan 185.13 11.1

Bangladesh 158.51 9.5

Nepal 28.12 1.7

Sri Lanka 21.33 1.3

Bhutan 0.76

Maldives 0.35

TOTAL 1662 100.0

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Afghanistan 31.28

Myanmar 53.72

TOTAL 1747

Source: http://data.worldbank.org

8 This is a level of disproportion that is considerably more extreme than many of the other salient cases of regional hegemons: the United States in the context of North America, or Russia in relation to Eastern Europe. Mexico’s population, for example, is today around 120 million compared to a US population of around 316 million, greater than a third; Ukraine has a population of 45 million in comparison to 143 million for Russia. It is only in East Asia that one finds a similar situation to that in South Asia, with South Korea (50 million), North Korea (25 million), and Japan (127 million), providing a relatively slim counterweight to China (1350 million), although the economic importance of Japan exceeds its demographic weight by some margin.

9 If these macro-regions of the world are thus internally constituted quite differently today in terms of geopolitics, their histories do share something, especially in the centuries after 1600. East Asia can be seen as being in fair measure heir to the political tradition of the Qing (or Manchu) dynasty, founded in the 1640s, and its at-times difficult coexistence with the Tokugawa shogunate and the Korean Chosŏn dynasty; the political map of eastern Europe emerged from a complex negotiation with the processes of Tsarist and Habsburg expansionism; and North America was formed in the crucible of the struggle for power between the Spanish and British empires (with the French in a tertiary role). In South Asia, again, the long-term legacy of an early modern empire weighs heavy, and it is that of the Mughals (or Indian Timurids), who emerged out of Central Asia and dominated the area between the mid-sixteenth and the mid- eighteenth century, but formally continued to be present there as a dynasty as late as 1857-1858. The geographical limits of Mughal power extended, at its height, from Kabul and Qandahar in the north-west, to the Brahmaputra valley and the Chittagong Hills in the east, and from Kashmir in the far north to Mysore and Tanjavur in the extreme south. Significantly, at least two parts of South Asia fell outside the Mughal ambit, and these were Kerala and Sri Lanka, of which the Mughals were quite well aware, but never seem to have coveted in their imperial ambitions. 10 Can we think of South Asia then as an entity with strong ‘natural boundaries’, which lend it a certain stability as a macro-region in world history? If the Himalayas on the one hand, and the Indian Ocean on the other, support this thesis, both the north-west and the north-east suggest a fair greater degree of porosity. These were also areas of failed Mughal expansion; their campaigns against the Ahom kingdom were prolonged but ultimately unsuccessful, and the campaign under Shah Jahan in the 1640s to take the area of Balkh, and make a claim to the southern part of Central Asia (the Mughal ancestral watan), also failed. But a close examination of their histories shows that these failures were not entirely inevitable, and might also have eventually produced a different geopolitics. It was only the consolidation of the British Empire in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and the slow and painful definition of

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frontiers that followed, that actually set clearer limits to what we think of now as South Asia. It has often been erroneously claimed that the British were solely responsible for producing the ‘idea of India’; it is possible, on the other hand, to defend the view that the British in their dealings with the Qing dynasty and Tsarist Russia eventually produced at least two rough boundary-lines to complete a sense of South Asia. Further, even the consolidation of the Nepal kingdom as a stable political entity dates precisely to this moment of the emergence of British hegemony, effectively culminating with the Anglo-Nepalese War of 1814-1816, which shrank that kingdom’s borders to more-or- less its present limits (and which thus remains a matter of ongoing resentment in some circles).1 11 There is thus plenty of evidence to show how national boundaries as they exist today in South Asia are artificial and contingent, and the consequence of both deliberate political acts and more inchoate political processes. Even fervent Indian nationalists implicitly admit this when they dedicate a cult to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (1875-1950), who they sometimes refer to as the ‘Indian Bismarck’. Among Patel’s more notorious actions was the mounting of ‘Operation Polo’, the military intervention in September 1948 to bring the Nizamat of Hyderabad into the Indian Union. Estimates of the deaths in this ‘police action’ (as it was euphemistically termed) range from thirty to forty thousand at the lower end, to as many as 200,000 at the upper end. Perhaps a geographical logic eventually would have dictated the incorporation of Hyderabad into India, but geography often provides no real answers to the directions or ends of such processes. The enduring dispute over the region of Kashmir, which is now nearly in its seventh decade, has over that period cost a far larger number of lives than the relatively pointed intervention in the Deccan. As in the case of Palestine, which the British pulled out of and partitioned at roughly the same time as South Asia, it has thus turned out to be extremely difficult (if not entirely impossible) to establish stable national boundaries in South Asia even over an extended time-span. In both these instances, therefore, some theory of ‘incomplete territorial sovereignty’ as an enduring feature may be necessary, rather than a view where the emergence of the nation as a stable entity is inevitable. 12 In a recent and more-or-less persuasive essay on the question, entitled How India Became Territorial (2014), political scientist and international relations theorist Itty Abraham points to how internal compulsions and external drives (the latter to be understood under the broad head of ‘foreign policy’) have closely interacted in the past decades to produce an Indian national state that ‘is hostile to the provision of equal citizenship’ and based on the creation of ‘a hierarchical political community that defines minorities as social collectives of lower standing.’ Abraham is concerned to break down the convention that separates questions of borders and ‘international relations’, from the internal politics of nations, as well as question the fraught relationship between nation and national diaspora. As is well-known, the Indian diaspora in the West (and especially in North America) has played a significant role in ideological terms in the past three decades, including in sharpening tensions between India and its neighbours and has also contributed to pushing forward the agenda of hindutva. Yet, concluding his work, Abraham returns to a familiar left-wing trope. He writes: ‘The prevailing tendency of the international community has been to affirm how important it is for global order not to challenge or overturn existing territorial

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boundaries. The far greater and [more] important challenge, in my view, is how to transcend territory as the basis for the formation of political community.’ 13 But what precisely does it mean to speak of ‘transcending’ territory in the early twenty-first century? Many different answers are possible. To some, a revamped pan- Islamism or the arrival of imported Muslim ‘jihadi’ fighters in Kashmir in the 1990s is precisely a form of transcending territories. To others, vast class-based solidarities that trump borders and boundaries remain a utopian horizon. Certainly, we know what the major debates on this question looked like a century ago. On the very eve of the First World War, Vladimir Lenin famously launched a vigorous polemical attack, centring precisely on the ‘national question’ and taking as its principal target many of his fellow leftists such as Rosa Luxemburg. The latter had expressed strong scepticism regarding the legitimate role of any form of nationalism, which she saw as being no more than a cunning political device of bourgeois interests, to the exclusion of other classes in society. On the other hand, Lenin—here making common cause with Karl Kautsky and some others—insisted on taking a ‘realist’ line, in which many (but not all) national movements should be supported for strategic reasons. This Leninist doxa was then both a resource and burden for other Marxist ideologues in the decades that followed. Stalin, participating in the same debate, had for his part defined a nation as ‘a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture’ (Stalin 1950 [1913]) Yet, neither he nor his direct political successors considered this a sufficient reason to afford extensive political autonomy—let alone political independence—to the various ‘republics’ that eventually formed a part of the USSR. In a similar fashion, the Communist Party in post-1949 China did not for the most part believe that the western regions that had only quite recently been conquered by the Qing merited a place as separate ‘nations’. Indeed, profiting from the shifting frontier of influence that Qing confrontations with the British and Russians had produced, Mao Zedong and his supporters even went on to make claims over regions and peoples over which the Chinese state did not have a deep historical claim of hegemony or even dominance, let alone a commonality of ‘language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up’. In other words, the USSR and Communist China have, despite their ostensible claims of loyalty to Leninist and Stalinist dogma, in fact followed the inertial territorial and expansionist logic of the Tsarist and Qing states respectively. 14 Yet, a hostility to considerations of territory still persists amongst certain sorts of Marxist analysts. In a muscular exchange with South Asian historians in the late 1980s, referred to in collective work South Asia and World Capitalism, the ‘world-systems theorist’ Immanuel Wallerstein declared: ‘South Asia is an invented abstraction (…). And world capitalism is an extremely complex and dense historical phenomenon which is not merely singular but unique. Nothing could be more concrete, empirical, idiographic than world capitalism. Nothing could be more abstract, theoretical, nomothetic than South Asia’ (Bose 1990: 162). On the face of it, this is a nonsensical deployment of Kantian categories, since Wallerstein’s devotion to the ‘empirical’ is contradicted by practically every line of his slapdash œuvre. But it can only make sense if we ask by whom South Asia has allegedly been elevated to the status of the ‘abstract’ and the ‘theoretical’. Here, the only identifiable culprits are the defenders of a concept of an ‘Indic Civilization’, which would provide the abstract essence of South Asia, of which concrete and variant manifestations are then identifiable. On the other hand, most of those who use the concept of South Asia in the social sciences today would

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probably prefer a weaker and more contingent notion, broadly compatible with Lewis and Wigen’s well-known ‘critique of meta-geography’ (Lewis & Wigen 1997). 15 The nation-states that make up the region of South Asia thus respond to a number of different principles, sometimes evoked separately and sometimes in combination. In some, such as Sri Lanka and Nepal, a combination of ethnicity, language and religion provides a power motor for majoritarian nationalism, and a consequent and ever- present tension with a minority. Despite the fact that the Sri Lankan uplands and lowlands had never been unified under a single state after 1500, the brute fact of being an island geography has thus been deployed by Sinhala nationalists—especially in the face of a dominant northern neighbour. In other instances, such as Pakistan, religion alone is largely meant to suffice—and that too a notion of religion that has become progressively narrower and more exclusionary (even within the fold of Islam) in the past seven decades. Elsewhere, as in Bangladesh, language and religion combine in an effective way, to ensure that neither pan-Islamism nor linguistic nationalism can triumph. In India alone, it would seem, an older imperial legacy still plays a significant role, though this is seldom admitted openly or made a key element in political discourse. Analysts of the 1950s and 1960s often assumed that it was precisely this imperial dimension that rendered the Indian Union fragile and would lead to its break- up over the course of the second half of the twentieth century. This prediction has proven false, not only for India but for almost all of the very large, multi-ethnic states that emerged from the Second World War. But nor has it turned out to be the case that all or most smaller states have fused to produce larger agglomerations, and the early experiment between Egypt and Syria (running from 1958 to 1961) has had few if any successors. For the foreseeable future then, a more likely scenario is a continuation of the constellation of highly unequal states that make up this region, with all their festering resentments and border wounds. 16 How confident can we be then regarding the stability of South Asia as a concept? A salutary lesson in this matter is provided to us by a major work from a quarter-century ago on Southeast Asia. Its author, the New Zealander historian Anthony Reid, begins by asserting in no uncertain terms that ‘few major areas of the world have been so spectacularly demarcated by nature as has Southeast Asia.’ This specificity is all the more marked because the region ‘has been relatively free from the mass migrations and invasions from Central Asia which affected India and China.’ Moreover, Reid states, when one looks at ‘the popular beliefs and social practices of ordinary Southeast Asians, the common ground becomes increasingly apparent.’ This common ground includes linguistic elements—the dominance of Austronesian languages; what he terms ‘adaptation to a common physical environment’, leading to the ‘dominance of rice and fish in the diet and the small part played by meat and milk products’; the ‘predominance of forest and water’ which determines patterns of housing; and a variety of other cultural usages (from the cockfight to the bronze gong) that also apparently give the region both unity and an air of homogeneity. In this whole seamless pattern extending from Arakan to Maluku, only Vietnam poses a problem to Reid, on account of its proximity to the culture and lived environment of China. Yet, what of the commonalities between Myanmar (Burma) and parts of eastern India? Can we indeed assume a robustness to the concept of ‘Southeast Asia’, purely given by geography, and especially physical geography? Even the most fervent ideologues of the ASEAN seem less sure than the historian. Striking a far more sceptical note than Reid, I would propose that the macro-region is never quite a finished product, but one that

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ever continues to be in-the-making. The boundaries of the nations that make up South Asia will remain to an extent unsettled, but so will the limits of South Asia itself— depending on the usage to which it is put. If nations are contingent products of political and social negotiations, so too are macro-regions.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abraham, Itty (2014) How India Became Territorial: Foreign Policy, Diaspora, Geopolitics, Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Ali, M. Athar (2006) ‘The Evolution of the Perception of India: Akbar and Abul Fazl’, in M. Athar Ali, Mughal India: Studies in Polity, Ideas, Society and Culture, Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 109-18.

Anderson, Benedict (1991) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised edition, London: Verso Books.

Anderson, Perry (2012) The Indian Ideology, New Delhi: Three Essays Collective.

Bose, Sugata (ed.) (1990) South Asia and World Capitalism, Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Lewis, Martin W.; Wigen, Kären E. (1997) The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography, Berkeley: University of California Press.

Löwy, Michael (1976) ‘Marxists and the National Question’, New Left Review, 96, pp. 81-100.

Mosca, Matthew W. (2013) From Frontier Policy to Foreign Policy: The Question of India and the Transformation of Geopolitics in Qing China, Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Reid, Anthony (1988-1993) Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450-1680, 2 vol., New Haven: Yale University Press.

Renan, Ernest (1992) Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?, Paris: Presses Pocket, translation by Ethan Rundell, [1882], URL: http://ucparis.fr/files/9313/6549/9943/What_is_a_Nation.pdf.

Sherman, Taylor C. (2007) ‘The Integration of the Princely State of Hyderabad and the Making of the Postcolonial State in India, 1948-56’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 44(4), pp. 489-516.

Stalin, Joseph V. (1950) Marxism and the National Question, Moscow: Languages Publ. House, [1913].

NOTES

1. A number of conservative nationalist websites and blogs thus refer to the Sugauli Treaty (1816) as an ‘unequal’ one, and demand the restitution of the ceded lands to Nepal.

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INDEX

Keywords: region, nation, regionalism, South Asia, Marxism

AUTHOR

SANJAY SUBRAHMANYAM

Distinguished Professor & Irving and Jean Stone Endowed Chair in Social Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles

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