Continental Identities: the Fragility of South Asia

In 1871, following the debacle of the Franco-Prussian War, in which the French soldiers with their red pants were outsmarted by the Prussian Confederation, a new state was declared in the midst of Europe, Germany. The birth of Germany with the due midwifery of Bismarck was one of the many attempts at consolidation of European states in the nineteenth century. Italy united in 1861, and between the birth of Italy in that year and the European Union in 1993, lies a trajectory of the concept of what it means to be European, allowing an organisation such as the European Union to come into being. The very idea that the multiplicity of the ethnicities and cultures of the European continent could be stretched and fit into the term ‘European’ is demonstrative of the time consumed in the realization of the idea of a continental identity. While this is certainly not to celebrate the conceptual neatness of the idea of Europe, it is necessary to point out that the idea existed in order for the reality of the EU to be effected. This is another demonstration of the Platonic idea of the idea preceding the reality. Beheraal. That idea is proving to be leaky, with states like Greece running into debt and the larger question of collective responsibility being raised.

A hundred years after the birth of Germany, the state that was conveniently held responsible for both the World Wars, in 1971, following the debacle of the third Indo-Pakistan war, quite the opposite force was visible. The birth of Bangladesh did not need a Bismarck, for it had the potency of bangla. The rupture and fracture of the 1971 is certainly not the sole example, but is symbolic of the very oppositeness of the South Asian subcontinent. It is demonstrative not of that boring binary of Oriental-Occidental, East/West, Other/Self. For a pounding refutation of that, see Kate Teltshcer’s India Inscribed: European and British Writing on India – 1600-1800. Teltshcer’s work is demonstrative that, far from the homogeneity suggested by Said of the superiority of the Occidental being derivative from the inferiority of the Oriental, the Occidental has not always been an arrogant and presumptuous creature. The White-Man is just as anxious and timid in confronting the Other, the way Sir Thomas Roe, the first English ambassador to the Mughal court is preoccupied with the manners and courtesy expected of him.

The point here is therefore NOT to compare and contrast the continental identity of Europe, and South Asia, White and brown. The point is first, to question the very existence of the idea of South Asia and second, to investigate the contours of the imagination of South Asia. The underlying premise is of course, that much like the mimicry of the Westphalian notion of the nation-state, sovereignty and the secular state, the idea of a continental identity too is part of that mimicry. The imagination of the South Asian is hinged upon the idea of the European; SAARC on the European Union; both of which in turn are hinged upon the idea of uninterrupted unity of a continent, and thereby reverting to the etymological roots of the word ‘continent’, from Latin, terra continens, or continuity of land.

The notion of South Asia is a frail mimicry of the neatness of Europe and another way of the postcolonial imagination responding to European modernity by mimicking it. What is interesting however is that the fractures of this neatness come from within the imagination of what constitutes ‘South Asia’. Two examples of the academic imagination on South Asia illustrate the fragility of South Asia. The first is the work by Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal, Modern South Asia: History, Culture, and Political Economy, which is an uninterrupted and unapologetic investigation of the history of Hindustan. The use of the word Hindustan is deliberate: the word Hindustan invokes the image of a pre-colonial state, undivided by the contagious idea of the Westphalian sovereignty. Though the Hindu right has hijacked the word, maybe its time to reclaim it to recognize the idea of a pre-colonial India. Bose and Jalal’s work however, is focused not on South Asia, but on the trajectory of ‘Hindustan’ to India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Indeed, if the book had been titled ‘A History of India’, it would not have read differently. It is alarming therefore, that the continent of South Asia is subsumed under the twin giants of India and Pakistan. The new binaries governing the fate of the notion of South Asia is not the Oriental/Occidental but India and Pakistan.

This troubling imagination persists consistently in other works as well. The edited volume by Francesca Orsini, lusciously titled Love in South Asia: A Cultural History is a brave effort to redefine the concept of love, from an individualistic notion, a temporary feeling, subjectivity to a distinct ‘analytical phenomenon’. The volume turns to ‘South Asia’s’ richness and plurality of the idioms of love, in literature, history and music. Which is very fine indeed. What is not is the unquestioned assumption of this love, literature, music and idioms stemming from within the territorial confines of Hindustan. So again, Daud Ali’s explores the practices of love, as a bourdeiun concept, in early medieval India. Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Surbramanyam document the work of the medieval poet’s Faizi’s rendition of Nal and Damayanti, from Sanskrit to Persian. Interestingly, Faizi’s work informs readers that the task to re-write the original Sanskrit text to Persian was initiated by the Emperor Akbar. Instead of addressing the ‘staple question of love in general, why didn’t the poet Faizi address the specifics of love ‘as it happened in India’. This is a hugely significant India, suggestive that the political sphere of India/Hindustan can generate a notion of love distinct from others. In another essay, Sudipta Kaviraj maps the changing meaning of love, from passion or rasa to a different idea of companionship in Tagore’s novels. Vasudha Dalmia looks at the novels of Krishna Sobti to look at how love within the walled city of Delhi evolved and transformed with the passing of the seasons.

These essays are illuminating, splendid and refined. But whether they represent the richness of South Asia is doubtful. Despite that, Dalmia for instance, ends her essay with an open-ended question of how is marriage anchored in romantic love, ‘as it is realized in South Asia’. This deceptive phrase South Asia is too casually and carelessly used to cover the academic crimes of imagining India, and maybe Pakistan to be South Asia. Troubling indeed.

The last point is that, that even while the idea and imagination of South Asia is dangerously synonimized with India, the Sri Lankan artist Pala Pothupitiye’s work repeatedly questions this hegemonic through his brilliant cartographical artistry.