The Newsletter No. 85 Spring 2020 29 The Focus

Recentering the Connected spaces in an inter-Asian bordersea

Jayati Bhattacharya and Carola Erika Lorea The interconnected world history of the Bay of Bengal is re-enacted in people’s memories, habits and everyday practices. The word for ‘star anise’ in Central India is Singapoor ke phool [Singapore flower], a colloquial echo of a pre-modern network of maritime trade. The Bengali word for window [janala] is directly borrowed from Portuguese, a reminder that language witnessed the syncretic impact of early European settlements around the Bay. Epic stories from the Ramayana, originating in ancient India, are re-enacted daily in Javanese traditional theatre. These are just a few of the examples that can serve as metaphorical mappings of the past and present of a network of interdependent livelihoods, a busy seascape, and a web of littoral hubs, which constitute the life of the Bay of Bengal.

Above: Sadarghat harbour in Dhaka. Right: A monsoon day in southern , June 2011. Photos by Carola Lorea, 2019.

he Bay of Bengal, a web of maritime waterscape has been characterized by an and ideas across the region. The hegemonic deeply embedded in academic, political, highways as well as a chessboard of absence of any major territorial conflicts (British) colonial domination over the seascape and public discourses. It is only recently Trelationships and mobilities, is a vital or claims; perhaps one of the reasons for and adjoining hinterlands and littorals was that increasing globalization and inter-state region for several countries; both littoral traditionally receiving less attention – in the often achieved through destruction and interactions have facilitated looking beyond (India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, larger realm of Indian Ocean studies – than violence. Yet, administrative subjugation the conventional categories sanctioned Sri Lanka, Thailand) and landlocked (Nepal, the western Indian Ocean region. Yet, the also generated a sense of unity in the Bay. by the history of Area Studies. The Bay of Bhutan, China, Northeast India, Nepal). eastern Indian Ocean has been one of the This complex area has thus witnessed Bengal thus emerges as an incredibly fertile Often disregarded as the periphery and the busiest seascapes, with overlapping circuits multiple and mutual borrowings across the field of inquiry as an in-between space of liquid borderland between South Asia and of interaction between the regional nodes seas, littorals and borderlands, with strong borrowings, contacts and interactions that Southeast Asia – two macro areas that came of exchanges and the global economic legacies of circulations in culture, economy, shape the vision of the past, the present to define much of the modern scholarship order. The ‘monsoon winds’ established life-style and languages. and the future of a considerable part of the about this region – the Bay of Bengal can and connected the dominant trade routes However, porous borders and circular global population. Moreover, the increasing be seen as the nodal crossroad and the and shaped migratory trends till the onset migrations slowly turned into isolationism importance of borders, borderlands and cultural hub for a network of exchanges of colonial intervention and consequent and rigidly monitored frontiers in post-colonial trans-border studies in academic discussions1 and contacts of diverse kinds. introduction of steamship navigation. Asia, with the emergence of decolonized has often laid more emphasis on mainland In the new millennium, the Bay has emerged European trading settlements, experiments geopolitical territories, the dominance of ‘barbed-wire borders’ rather than on maritime as a significant subject of debate in popular and ambitions, left a trace of Portuguese, nation-centric visions and inward-looking borders, shared maritime heritages, and the as well as academic discourses, particularly Dutch, Danish, French, British and other policies for most of the states around the hydroscapes of bordering regions, pointing with rising sea levels, and attention to maritime presences. A successive period of colonial rim of the Bay. Borderlands and borderseas to another lacuna that our focus on the Bay trajectories in policy approaches of different intrusion and governance both separated and were divided into South and Southeast Asian of Bengal region aims to fill.2 Asian states in and around the region. This united communities, commodities, cultures states, a binary conception that became Continued overleaf 30 Recentering the Bay of Bengal The Focus Connected spaces in an inter-Asian bordersea

Continued from previous page Besides migrations and connections, the history of the Bay of Bengal is also a history of natural calamities and catastrophes, of A new phase of Bay of unkind weather conditions and of tragic disruptions that mark the social and political Bengal studies: economic history of maritime borderlands and islands. and cultural contexts beyond The 2004 tsunami, for example, acts as a geopolitical strategy watershed in the history of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in terms of conservation This Focus section of The Newsletter has policies, development of mass tourism, threats been inspired by the need to emphasize the to vulnerable ecologies, and to the coastal spaces and trajectories between the two livelihoods of fishermen and informal settlers. macro areas of South and Southeast Asia, The contributions in this Focus remind strongly embedded in popular imagination us that the northern Bay, spreading from and academic discourses. Transcending the unique ecological reality of the Bengal methodological nationalism, it focuses on Delta seamlessly into the Indian Ocean, is transnational and transregional movements, a space that challenges established notions practices and institutions that connect people, of water, land, soil and sea. Whereas histories and knowledge across the Bay. disciplines at the service of the Empire, For example, present-day impermeable such as cartography and oceanography, borders and nationalist rhetoric in countries like have striven to separate navigable sea from Burma and Bangladesh are better understood taxable land, the Bengal Delta defies these if compared to a long history of exchanges binary notions through its tidal landscape, and colonial connections between the historical its ubiquitous ponds, swamps and wetlands, province of united Bengal and British Burma. its métissage of salt and fresh waters, and its Above: The Conflagration Contrary to the dominant discourse in of Dalla, on the Rangoon cyclical reshaping of sandbars, flooded soil, contemporary Myanmar, which strives to River. From Series 1 of temporarily emerged land, and submerged identify members of the Rohingya community ‘Views taken at or near coastlines. Studying the nature and the Rangoon, and Combined as '' or foreign infiltrators, making way operations in the Birman human course around the Bay of Bengal, with for a tragic humanitarian crisis, nineteenth and Empire’, by Lieutenant its fluid and moving relation between water early-twentieth century histories of the Bay Joseph Moore. and land, can help us to shift conventional Description: Plate 17: of Bengal demonstrate that the two regions moonlit river view, with paradigms surrounding land-water visions, were linked through common movements of smoke rising from fire on a starting point to secure the future of resistance, intellectually constructed pan-Asian the right horizon, near coastal cities in a world of rising waters. sentiments, but also mutually influenced by pagodas, seen from the The backwaters of the Bengal Delta, with river in the foreground anti-colonial political activists. where ships and boats their forbidding wilderness, thick forests, Whereas mainstream popular discourses are mooring or rowing, merciless salinity and natural impediments, depict the Bay of Bengal as a strategic some figures on them discouraging settlement and cultivation, spotting the fire. Year: area both at the convergence of two geo- 1826. Hand-coloured opened up to the markets and routes of the Bay political blocks (ASEAN and SAARC) and at aquatint with etching. of Bengal and the greater Indian Ocean long the confluence of two competing maritime before the coming of European sea voyagers. Left: Delta. powers (India and China), this special Focus JPL space images. This pre-European cosmopolitanism of trade considers not only the high politics but also This image was taken across the Bay was not only made of traffic the everyday lives of the Bay of Bengal from the Space Shuttle and exchanges between Malacca, Sumatra, on January 13, 1997. by gathering perspectives from historical, Image credit: NASA/JPL Borneo, the Persian Gulf, Bengal and the anthropological, sociological, literary and /UCSD/JSC Coromandel Coast, Sri Lanka and Malabar; multidisciplinary research. but also of raids of pirates and fortune-hunters. The nine contributions by scholars from This inter-littoral world of trade, of spices and different disciplines and areas of expertise fabrics, sugar and silk, sandalwood and muslin, are based on the discussions held at a preceded the advent of the big European day-long intensive roundtable session at prominent outcome of which was the big boost Cosmopolitan connections, overseas trading corporations. It is from this the 11th International Convention of Asia to the organization of the Indian Navy and liquid borders, and time period that our contributors retrace the Scholars (ICAS) in Leiden, on 18 July 2019. naval installations. China’s rise as a potential steps of the social, cultural, economic and The roundtable titled ‘The Bay of Bengal: global power had already been spectacular endangered livelihoods political history of the Bay of Bengal. Perspectives across Disciplines’, was in different ways by then. In 2013, China Looking at the history of communication, divided into four different thematic clusters announced the One Belt One Road (OBOR, now transportation and connectivity across the (‘Cosmopolitan Connections’, ‘Contested better known as BRI, Belt and Road Initiative) Bay, our contributors highlight a past of In this Focus Heritages: Arts and Politics’, ‘Liquid Migration project that would connect the Mediterranean movements and mobilities populated by elite The articles of the Indian historians and Solid Borders’ and ‘Environment and to the Pacific through a network of overland travelers, nationalist intellectuals, colonial Sonali Mishra and Smarika Nawani look at Littoral Ecologies’) and featured fifteen roads, pipelines, economic corridors and also proto-tourists, and upper-class locals. the early-colonial life of port cities around the participants from different parts of the globe, maritime routes. Though we are not discussing However, migration in the modern and early- Bay and their importance in studying power along with an enthusiastic international Chinese or Indian foreign policies and modern Bay was also populated by subaltern dynamics, but also religious networks, and audience. The discussions consciously looked strategies in this Focus, it is indeed significant people and marginalized communities, by cultural etiquette. Sonali Mishra points out beyond the mainstream geopolitical debates that China’s Maritime Silk Road (MSR) plans laborers and pilgrims. This long history of that neutrality regulated the trade regime of that dominate the mediatized discourse to traverse the Bay of Bengal, implying the subaltern migration connects the past to the the cosmopolitan port of Masulipatnam, where around the eastern Indian Ocean. The possibility of significantly impacting bilateral present. For example, some of the contributors Europeans, Asians and several indigenous participants focused instead on historicizing, relations, economies and communities. follow the history of migration and resettlement merchants collaborated. Their opportunities contextualizing and problematizing the flows While the BRI is much larger in scale, of indentured laborers and post-Partition transcended normative categories based of people, ideas, livelihood and traditions. vision and economic prowess, India’s LEP, refugees from mainland South Asia to the on caste, religion, ethnicity and political The presenters analyzed travel narratives, later renamed as Act East Policy (AEP), has Andaman Islands. belonging. She argues that this relative entangled histories, material culture and gained ground through its benign and non- maritime heritage across the Bay. Rich in assertive approach both within the region and ethnographic detail, some of the papers further to the east. Partly as a joint attempt discussed the local variants of environmental to counter Chinese assertiveness in their activism and ecological histories, the maritime borderseas, India and Indonesia disruptions of coastal livelihoods, and the are strengthening their ties, from economic, experiences of disconnection, forced migration diplomatic and military angles. Their maritime and displacement, which also constitute partnership unfolds in the Bay of Bengal and the living fabric of the Bay of Bengal. in the Andaman Sea, with regular bilateral Critically responding to an idealized and naval exercises, with the Indian endeavor to often romanticized focus on flows and assist and access ports in Aceh, and with the connections around the Indian Ocean, expanding trading opportunities between the participants underlined the instances Sumatra and Port Blair. Similar diplomatic of inequality and power struggles that endeavors are equally at play between India dictate connectivity or lack thereof within and other states around the rim of the Bay. the Bay of Bengal region. The extent of this east-looking influence may In the new millennium, the rise of China be reverberated in the transformation of the and India as emerging global powers and rhetoric of ‘Asia-Pacific’ region into ‘Indo- the restructuring of their respective foreign Pacific’, introducing the concept of ‘extended policies have steered and influenced regional neighborhood’ and claiming larger inclusivity geopolitical interactions in Asia, thus leading of maritime and territorial spaces. Interestingly, to the emergence of the Bay of Bengal as a India has not joined the grand vision of the BRI, significant subject of research in the larger and yet the Bay of Bengal region remains the realm of Indian Ocean studies. India’s Look converging ground of India’s Look/Act East East Policy (LEP), introduced in the 1990s Policies, and China’s ambitious MSR projects. led to a rediscovery of its historic ties with its Drawing in the participation of many located eastern Asian neighbors and reintegration ‘outside’ its periphery, like the USA and Japan, with a primarily maritime Southeast Asia. these contemporary dynamics enhance There was also a shift of policy orientation geopolitical complexities and increase global Above: A 1650 map by Jan Jansson of ‘sinus gangeticus’, or the Bay of Bengal. Titled Sinus Gangeticus, from the territorial to the maritime, the most attention for this waterscape. vulgo Golfo de Bengala nova descriptio, printed in Amsterdam: Apud. I. Ianssonium, 1657. The Newsletter No. 85 Spring 2020 Recentering the Bay of Bengal 31 Connected spaces in an inter-Asian bordersea The Focus

freedom in the complex socio-political milieu instances of disconnections, disruptions, and of the region, requires us to re-evaluate the unequal mobilities within and across the Bay. parameters to understand the pre-modern Available scholarship on the region has state in South Asia. Smarika Nawami’s already established that the Bay was never contribution focuses instead on the Portuguese a static region, nor an impenetrable web presence around the Bay, which provided of political boundaries, but interactions and long-lasting cultural and linguistic influences, power dynamics across the Bay in different and on the town of Mylapore, a cultural heart time-periods played out in multifarious of Catholic Christians for locals, Portuguese manners. Thus, the colonial port city and Eurasians. Both articles highlight examples connections of Calcutta, Penang, Singapore, of cosmopolitanism and inclusive living of Rangoon and Colombo, gave way to different communities in two different ports. Chittagong, Sittwe, Hambantota, The essence of similar co-existence continued and Colombo, connecting the eastern section into the colonial phase, particularly in the port of the ‘String of Pearls’ in the contemporary cities around the rim of the Bay, like Penang, politico-economic order. The increasing interest Singapore, Calcutta, Madras, Akyab, of the nations-states in the maritime resources Rangoon, and Colombo.3 of the region has added another dimension With the territorial establishment of the to the competition and collaboration, adding East India Company and the Dutch VOC in to the vulnerability of marginal people and South and Southeast Asia, trajectories and delicate ecosystems. At an important juncture interactions across the Bay of Bengal took a of history, when we are moving beyond different shape. Mikko Toivanen’s contribution strictures and demarcations of Area Studies, looks at specific transport nodes at Singapore, this platform provides us with an opportunity Penang, Calcutta and Galle, extending to to explore transregional issues, cosmopolitan Batavia in the Dutch East Indies. Following Above: A Calvinist Church in Batavia. 1806. From "A Voyage to Cochin China, in the years 1792, linkages and heritage, communities and the introduction of the steamship in the and 1793” by Sir John Barrow, page 221. cultural traditions. It also attempts to address region, these points were closely connected the concerns of a post-disciplinary academia, by overlapping circuits of trans-colonial elite San Rebellion), the Chittagong Armory Raid Partition-induced displacement, she argues encouraging inter-disciplinary research and travelers seeking leisure, convalescence, (1930-1931) in Bangladesh, and the Malabar that statist vocabulary permeates the settler influencing future pedagogical frameworks. healthier climates, and sightseeing. Their /Moplah Rebellion of southern India, in this women’s speech. These primarily English words Keeping in view the significance of the experiences are embedded in a colonial view, can emerge as connected histories of – for example, riot, border slip, dole, colony, region and tremendous possibilities of reinvention and re-appropriation of local the Indian Ocean. Sanjukta Dasgupta offers a etc. – entered the unlettered Bangla-speaking research, we aim to establish a long-lasting spaces and local histories as culturally precious reflection on Bengali travel accounts women’s vocabulary because of the experience network of scholars from diverse disciplines ‘European’. This created walls between the of Burma, with particular reference to the of forced migration from and across the humanities and social sciences. colonial (and local) elites and the subaltern experiences and perceptions of Indumadhab resettlement in the Andaman Islands. Sprouting from the fruitful discussions at the local population on the one hand, but Mallik, and Sarala Debi Chaudhurani, who Equally resulting from extensive fieldwork, roundtable sessions during ICAS 11, this Focus also fashioned and reproduced replicas of demonstrate diverse, complex and layered the contribution co-authored by Philipp in The Newsletter is the first concrete step in European-styled living in certain locales. approaches to the idea of Asia, determined Zehmisch and Ruhi Deol looks at the this direction. We have been receiving further Linking ancient and modern sites of by their own class sensibilities and specific subsistence livelihoods of farmers, fishers, and expression of interest from different scholars interaction across the Bay, Himanshu Prabha social and political interests. Their response forest villagers in post-Tsunami Andamans. and institutions, and our network is expanding Ray’s article explores the stratified history of to visiting Burma and their comparisons The Tsunami exacerbated a shift in India’s quite rapidly, suggesting a very promising coastal shrines. Prior to the development of between the self and the ‘other’ was to a large state policies, from commercial exploitation future for the studies of the Bay of Bengal oceanography and the making of nautical extent shaped by internalized Orientalist to the conservation of resources. As in other as both a physical region and a conceptual charts, sailing vessels largely depended assumptions. Their views, however, are also a parts of the globe, the conservation paradigm framework. on coastal shrines and structures that result of the contemporary nationalist rhetoric has created new vulnerabilities, especially connected the coast with communities and Pan-Asian discourse. While they shared an related to human activity in marine and forest Jayati Bhattacharya, Senior Lecturer, living inland, while functioning as visible understated, yet tangible antagonism towards ecosystems. Their article reveals the ways in South Asian Studies Programme, coastal markers and recipients of devotion. the British, they had also internalized much which aspects of the conservation discourse National University of Singapore [email protected] For example, a lighthouse was built in 1887 of the racial and civilizational categories of impact local perceptions of environmental on top of the Mahishasuramardini cave the colonial gaze through which British rulers change in the Andamans. The authors argue Carola Erika Lorea, Research Fellow, at the Mahabalipuram temple complex established cultural and political hegemony. that the 2004 Tsunami functioned as a Asia Research Institute, National University on the Tamil coast in proximity to an older Bengali refugees and Burmese early “revelatory shock” for the island population. of Singapore [email protected] seventh century structure that had possibly settlers live side by side on the Andaman Accompanied by the increasingly popular served the same function. These coastal Islands, an emblematic site of the entangled conservation paradigm and the rapid rise of structures were religious spaces maintained national histories of India and Burma in the tourism in the Andamans, the event of the by communities who lived close to them. Their heart of the Bay of Bengal. Geographically Tsunami triggered both ecological awareness Notes distribution constitutes an important and yet and geologically closer to Burma, the Andaman as well as debates on the vulnerability of the 1 Some exemplary works in this field are: van underestimated mapping of the economic, and Nicobar Islands became an Indian island ecosystem and its populace. In some Schendel, W. 2005. The Bengal Borderland: social and religious life across the Bay. Union Territory in 1956, although disputed respects, local migrants and settlers internalize Beyond State and Nation in South Asia. The contributions of Sanjukta Dasgupta sovereignty on some of the islands continued these vulnerabilities; in others, they develop Anthem Press; Scott, J. 2009. The Art of and of Maitrii Victoriano Aung Thwin explore until 1986. Two of our contributions, both rich contextual ways to cope, respond, or adapt to Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History connections and parallelisms between British in ethnographic material, are dedicated to their changing environment. of Upland Southeast Asia. Yale University India and British Burma. Maitrii’s article the contemporary history of the Andaman Climate change and the rising sea levels of Press; van Schendel, W. & de Maaker, E. highlights the need to contextualize key Islands through anthropological perspectives. the Anthropocene are problematically evident 2014. Special issue on ‘Asian Borderlands’, events of national history, such as the 1930- Raka Banerjee explores the intersection of in the Sunderbans, the largest delta and in Journal of Borderland Studies 29(1). 1932 Burma Rebellion, in a transnationalist gender and migration in the language and the estuarine mangrove forest of the world, shared 2 Some exceptions that do address these perspective that embeds local resistance oral histories of the Bengali refugee women between the southern coast of West Bengal concepts are, for instance, Ray, H.P. 1994. The Winds of Change: Buddhism and the movements within the larger scenario of settlers on the Andamans. In a considerable (India) and Bangladesh. Calynn Dowler’s Maritime Links of Early South Asia. Oxford rebellions and insurgency across the Bay. departure from existing approaches in piece explores the as a changing University Press; Ray, H.P. & Chandra, S. The Burma Rebellion (later called the Saya understanding the gendered experience of waterscape, with particular attention to how (eds) 2013. The Sea, Identity and History: the meaning of water in the Bengal delta is From the Bay of Bengal to the South shifting as a result of intersecting socio-natural China Sea. ISEAS Publishing; Ray, H.P. transformations. A focus on the materiality of 2015. Beyond Trade: Cultural Roots of the Bay of Bengal – its rivers, sea, estuaries, etc. India’s Ocean. Aryan Books International; – and on the everyday ways in which coastal Bhattacharyya, D. 2018. Empire and communities engage with water, can challenge Ecology in the Bengal Delta: The Making of Calcutta. Cambridge University Press. some of the flattening assumptions of global 3 For a broad view of connectivity across climate change discourse, allowing for a more the Bay in the colonial period, see nuanced understanding of human-nonhuman Bhattacharya, J. 2019. ‘Connectivity agency and the meaning of water for the Across Colonial Bay of Bengal in the 19th ritual life of the delta. and 20th Centuries’, in Ludden, D. (ed.) Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History. Oxford University Press. The relevance and future 4 For some groundbreaking work in this direction of research, see Bose, S. 2006. avenues of Bay of Bengal A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean studies in the Age of Global Empire. Harvard University Press; Bose, S. & Manjapra, K. The articles in this Focus contribute to the (eds) 2010. Cosmopolitan Thought Zones: understanding of the history, the socio-cultural South Asia and the Global Circulation of ecologies, and the geopolitical interactions Ideas. Palgrave Macmillan; Mukherjee, R. across the Bay, by adding complexity and (ed.) 2013. Oceans Connect: Reflections texture to the public discourse around the on Water Worlds across Time and Space. strategic importance of the Bay of Bengal. Primus Books; Amrith, S.S. 2013. Crossing Inspired by and indebted to the recent the Bay of Bengal: The Furies of Nature and academic scholarship on the historical the Fortunes of Migrants. Harvard University Press; Laffan, M. (ed.) 2017. Belonging Across connections of the Bay,4 which is dominated the Bay of Bengal: Religious Rites, Colonial by arguments of continuity and circularity Migrations, National Rights. Bloomsbury; of interactions throughout history, our Acri, A., Blench, R. & Landmann, A. (eds) Above: Currents in the Bay of Bengal. From ‘The Bay of Bengal Pilot: A nautical directory’. contributors also seek to de-romanticize 2017. Spirits and Ships: Cultural Transfers Compiled by James F. Imray. London, 1879. Page 341. notions of transnational flows, and bring up in Early Monsoon Asia. ISEAS Publishing.