Anthropological Imagination of South Asia: Primary insights

Anthropological Imagination of South Asia: Primary insights Abhijay (M.Sc, M.Phil Anthropology) (Department of Anthropology University of Delhi) Many of us would have heard the famous story written by Muslim Sufi poet Jalaluddin Rumi about the conceptualization of an elephant’s anatomy by touching it by the blind men. Each of the blind men were to describe the respective part of the elephants’ body where their hands have touched. To one blind man the elephant looked like a pillar, to one it was a throne and other did have their say on their experience. But no was actually able to describe it as an animal as whole. This piecemeal approach is what through which South Asia has been conceptualized by various academia and organizations. A common census about the whole connotations of regional, cultural, political, and geographical has not been achieved yet. This illustration clearly portrays an image of south Asia being one of the least integrated regions of polarised world. This paper is an attempt to understand the Geo-political, historical, and cultural imagination of South Asia as seen from the author’s perspective “Unity in diversity” is a normal cliché discourse while concerning the history of south Asia that one can observe instead of focusing upon diversity in unity which will open up new directions for exploring various contours of the region. The geographical boundaries stretching from the snow clad highest mountain range ,the Himalayas to the seas and ocean encircling the region encompasses in itself different geographical terrains which somewhat creates a distinctness from other geographical regions of the world. There is an ancient shared cultural ambience among the people but simultaneously they have maintained the homogeneity of their cultural traditions, practices and beliefs. In order to structure down the whole framework for understanding the imagination of South Asia the paper is divided into multiple sub themes dealing with the issue. Beginning from the etymology of region to its historical roots and then progressing through the colonial encounters to formations of regional organizations, the paper will take into consideration such prospective. The availability of rich literature in the academic circles has definitely enhanced our understanding of the region through an interdisciplinary approach but simultaneously led to debates and predicament concerning the actual constructions and realities apprehending to address ‘South Asia’. Writing a paper which focuses upon the authors’ imagination of south Asia certainly presents multiple challenges. The first is related to the introduction to the notion of south Asia as there are multiple notions to the term depending upon its application, because for some south Asia is a region and a civilizational entity hence suggesting a constant vigilance upon the term as not to get confused. Second is related to the approach through which one have to progress ahead to study the area because hegemony of any single discipline can lead to deterioration of true facts and realities, so it is important to study the region in a multidisciplinary manner including the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, history etc. The third issue is regarding disparity of understanding the region in terms of certain facts for ex. Much of the understanding is linked to reference with Europe and side lining a magnitude of factors responsible for the existence of region. It can be culminated by a binary top-down and a bottom-up approach. A neutral subjection is therefore required to imagine what exactly constitutes ‘South Asia’. South Asia according to Bose and Jalal(1998) is a recent construction about some five decades old mainly illustrating geographical expressions. It encompasses seven diverse sovereign states of different magnitudes and establishments. India , Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and the Maldives can be clumped together to create a region known as south Asia, although ambiguities persists in clumping up of the states as some scholars and organizations take into account Myanmar, which was known by the name of Burma and was a province of British India until 1935. Tracing back the initial records for knowing the first coinage and usage of the word south Asia is not an easy task. One of the earliest mention of the term is mentioned in the book titled -A tour in southern Asia; Indo-China, Malaya, Sumatra and Ceylon, 1925-1926 by Horace Bleackley in the year 1928 from London. There is however a consensus among about the emergence of the term ‘South Asia’ as a category in wake of dividing the Asian continent with the establishment of area studies in United States. The work of prof. Norman brown The United States and India and Pakistan (1953) as perceived by Nicholas Dirks (2003) served instrumental in establishing the conjuncture shaping the South Asian area studies for some forty years say 1926-1966. From 1940s to 1970s the name ‘South Asia’ envisaged by policy making institutions such as American State Department, UN, World Bank came into more prominence. ASD publish a briefing document titled The Subcontinent of South Asia in 1959 and thus highlighted the term. The genealogy of the word thus shows that that it was officially conceived and applied outside the subcontinent testifying to its exogenity. The turn of reflexive co-operation came when the structural framework for establishment of a regional association came into existence. SAARC was thus established in the year 1985 for increasing regional cooperation, and strengthening regional consciousness. The creation of SAARC and its affiliated institutions thus popularized the term ‘South Asia’ with an official public and political meaning embedded in the local context with while pressing forward the regional idea. A significant structure for imagining the historical backdrop of current South Asia on a subcontinental scale might be given by the twin rationalizations of centralism and regionalism, and of patriotism and communalism. David Gellner in his edited book ‘Borderland lives in northern South Asia’ ,has proposed a sub region within south asia-Northern South Asia.States in northern south asia ,their territoriality is actually apprehensive and they have been described as ‘fearful states’ that suffer from ‘cartographic anxiety’ On a similar node south Asia serves a region to understand the evolution of genus homo with discoveries of Narmada man, Ramapithecus fossils done here. The evidences of ancient civilizations such as Indus valley and other archaeological sites generated a long term interest among the scholars of different disciplines. Almost every corner of the sub Asian region has been explored by anthropological writings. Eminent anthropologists like Robert Redfield, Edmund Leach, Kathleen Gough, Fredrik Barth etc. have contributed immensely in moulding the waves of anthropological tradition in the region. South Asia being such a diverse region was again in light for post-colonial and sub altern studies that gradually make people realise about their colonial legacy and hence create distorted realities. South Asia is home to a significant percentage of world population. One of its constituents, India is home to about 1.23 billion people and ranks second in terms of world population. The surrounding nations such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc. have a high density of persons residing per square kilometre. Only the smaller in size countries have a small proportion of population such as Bhutan, Maldives, and Nepal. Afghanistan also doesn’t have much density of population compared to its area. The region is also home to some of the major practicing world religions such as Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism and others. Ancient civilizations flourished in the region for ex. Indus valley civilization and it is was also much romanticized by the poets and writers. The pathway to its entrance from different gateways has invited a vast number of invaders and letting them settle down, plunder and loot and also establishing the kingdoms for ex- the Mughals, Britishers etc. Seeing the enormous potential of development of the region has been the vision of many but due to unstructured policies and further policy paralysis has negotiated the growth of region as a whole. The countries comprising the region ranks and perform below average on certain parameters of development. The economic, health, sustainability, and other sectors suffers from redtapism or incapability of government to introduce reforms at a significant level. Billions of dollars have been sanctioned for uplifting the status of the region in terms of its overall development by various agencies but the results show a minor percentile of it. It is home to highest number of malnourished children, corrupt governments, and extremist groups such as Taliban. In short the region in reciprocity has served the wider interests of core countries as perceived from world systems point. As the world moved towards increased globalization the south Asia too organically became more linked with the capitalist world, there were certain critical alterations taking shape in social relations within the subcontinent. The alterations occurred through the axis of class and were refracted through a myriad of social and cultural relationships as well on the level of gender and generation. These social and cultural relationships were not only inheritances from the past but were in the process of constant renegotiation and reformulation during the colonial era. To have an practical knowledge about the understanding the category of South Asia a field survey was conducted in Bangalore in August 2012 among a small sample of working middle class and educated people to know their awareness of the category and identification with the region and many other aspects. The survey yielded some interesting but fuzzy knowledge about the word itself, the region encompassed in the term etc. It was also found that there were confusion and overlapping of certain regions such as inclusion of china and Saudi Arabia and so on. The results clearly connotes the ongoing confusion and tussle among the common man regarding south Asia. The eight countries namely -Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Maldives, and Bangladesh as per the majority of world scholars and organizations constitute so called South Asia. The Geo-politics of this region has attention of and influence on major world politics. This can be observed during the cold war period when India joined the NAM and Pakistan was involved with the United States. As India was of not much importance to the US apart from using it for resisting Chinese global uprising Russia served as an alley to it for increasing its dominance. The cold war period served in strengthening the position of local powers such as India, Pakistan and China on the global level. The restructuring of regional relationships were played down in order to find solutions for internal and regional disputes. The mere role of serving as proxy actors has now been broken down and new roles were introduced for channelling down the world political heavyweights. Historically there were connotations and representation of an Indian subcontinent which has now with addition of some more states came to known as south Asia. The shared civilization characteristics matured up in different time periods and maintained the cliché of unity in diversity. Under the British Raj there was no such extensive usage or application of the term south Asia but they preferred to call the defined geographical region of their subservience as Indian subcontinent. This term was frequently employed by various scholars and for administrative accounts. With the partition of India and formation of newly founded states Pakistan first and then Bangladesh second the term ‘Indian subcontinent’ started losing its threads of compliance. Although democracy became the chief mode of governmental operation in, the countries now accounting for south Asian region were not able to adapt it for a better machinery of administration and governance. There were internal inconsistencies within these countries whereas India alongside matured its democratic machinery and also became a key player of the region. The south Asian experience tells us that there is clearly an unequal distribution of power and relations between the members vary according to the ongoing strategies and policies of political party in power. India is the central player of this power relation and after establishment of SAARC and post liberalization it has maintained its role as the power house of the region. Although SAARC has not been quite a success despite of the ancestral and historical connections as compared to other regional organizations such as SCO, ASEAN etc. The European concepts and of nationality, territoriality and political organisation have left an indelible mark on the process of state formation in post-colonial period. The post-colonial emergence of new states having their exclusive notions of identity, citizenship and nationality has altogether imparted new dynamics to the region. The presence of geo-political and economic imbalances and advent of continuous suspicion among each other has made the regional dynamics tense and fragile. In such a scenario, perceptions about each other showcased a change as old historical narratives were substituted by exclusive, and sponsored histories, binary furcating in terms of ‘us’ and ‘others’. Nepal is struggling for establishing a performing democracy, Sri Lanka is recovering with the impact LTTE has left over, and Bangladesh with illegal trade and migrants and Pakistan has struggling democratic machinery and army serves as a decisive role and Afghanistan is still struggling with the extremists group such as Taliban. The cricket politics and the Indo centric perspective has certainly managed to make more of disturbances in terms of uniting the region as a whole. Mutual suspicions and negative attitudes and perceptions about one another have played a dominant role in in keeping the region out of a collaborative theme and hence disbanding the regional integration. These factors disturbs the overall functioning of south Asia as a region characterized by shared sense of history and geography among the people of the region. Imagining south asia in anthropological terms is also challenging as the region have amalgamation of a large number of ethnic, linguistic and social groups which although share a cultural unity of the past but now creating identities of their own through rewriting the narratives of their history in influence of post-colonial or subaltern discourses. Since the times of British Raj there has been a continuous exploration of the region by Christian missionaries, travellers, scholars etc. Despite of initial works being largely confined to description of various social groups and tribes it was also conducted for administrative purposes. Anthropologists under the influential traditions of their times visited the region in large number especially after World War 2 and conducted fieldwork to understand social and cultural organisation. For anthropologists the region serves as the hotspot for anthropological research and its diversity at large. To understand the dynamics of south Asia and its existential realties one has to look deeper into the new meanings elaborated through the mutual relationships between the member states. The shared geo-cultural entities have been on a mode of continuous reshuffling with internal inconsistencies and declining mutual trust. In short south Asia can be characterised by the following points. The points are not exhaustive but a simple description. 1. South Asia is a geographical entity with the constituent members sharing their international boundaries with each other. The region is basically Indo centric in nature. 2. There is a shared cultural past and history among the state members. From invasion to independence there are mutual connections of existence. 3. These shared traditions are in mode of continuous reshuffling for creating new cultural identities and realities. 4. The members of South Asian region has one of the lowest rankings in various indicators of health, economy, and other frontiers 5. Due to mutual suspicion and mistrust among the states south asia is one of the most least stable and integrated regions of the world which have their own associations . References. 1. Aminah Mohammad-Arif, « Introduction. Imaginations and Constructions of South Asia: An Enchanting Abstraction? », South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal [Online], 10 | 2014, Online since 25 December 2014, connection on 30 September 2016. URL : http://samaj.revues.org/3800 ; DOI : 10.4000/samaj.3800 2. Bose, Sugata, and Ayesha Jalal. Modern South Asia: history, culture, political economy. Routledge, 2017. 3. Gellner, David N., ed. Borderland lives in northern South Asia. Duke University Press, 2013. 4. Massey, Reginald. South Asia: definitions and clarifications. Abhinav Publications, 2009. 5. Vishal Chandra (ed.), India and South Asia: Exploring Regional Perceptions, (New Delhi, IDSA / Pentagon Press, 2015)