Abstract
The edited volume titled Another South Asia! punctuated with an exclamation denotes an element of excitement that runs through the volume. It also, denotes a palpable urgency in engaging with the question ‘What is meant by South Asia?’ Drawing upon an anecdote from Kathopanishad whose child protagonist Nachiketa, started out on his critical journey only when his father King Vajashrawa committed a questionable act that anguished the child, the volume traces its’ moorings from within the institutional framework of the South Asian University, which is sponsored by eight member nations of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, and wherein the term ‘South Asia’ is used abundantly in courses and lectures but where, the problematic is more clearer than elsewhere in the multiple, often scattered and loosely implied meanings that it is used in and the ways in which ‘South Asia’ plays out in the everyday lived experiences of teachers affiliated to the institution who in spite of the fluidity of thoughts and being that the ethos of a university promises experience restricted mobility and access to facilities outside of its’ premise, due to the passports they hold. Institutionalized bodies for regional cooperation while existing at the formal level have hardly managed to reach the core issues of the region, caught as they are in the politics of nation-building and play of regional dominance. The predominance of citizenship identities and nation-state loyalties only add more to the discomfort of understanding the region. It is against such a backdrop then that the desire to search for creative meanings, an ‘another’ South Asia becomes stronger than ever. This is where the volume steps in with a lucidly written introduction and a collection of 14 essays that search for an organic South Asia, the possibility of which is foreclosed by boundaries of the nation-states and the compartmentalized social science disciplines which are subservient to the ‘Nationalist imagination’.
The essays in the volume are neatly organized under four broad sections. The first section namely Conceptualizing the Region beyond Cartography, which has two essays by Shail Mayaram and Navnita Chadda Behera discuss South Asia as a world region, the processes of ‘de worlding’ through partitions and conflicts in the region and the failure of SAARC in creating trust and cooperation. These essays, however, search for possibilities for ‘another’ understanding of the region through civil society networks and their activism thereby pushing beyond demarcated cartographical conception of the region. The second section titled Socio-Political Dynamics: Presence and Absence includes four essays by Arjun Guneratne, Ravi Kumar, Santosh Singh and Laxmi Murthy. This section largely dwells upon the overwhelming presence of nation-state model in area studies and the corresponding absence of texts and literary writings signalling to the politics of selective inclusion and careful exclusion of writings in South Asian scholarship. A case in point is the absence of Andras Hofer’s study of Muluki Ain from anthropological works on caste in India. Such omissions continue well into history of the region which boasted of a robust intellectual history with likes of organic intellectuals such as Faiz Ahmad Faiz and Nazrul Islam who spanned an imagination with cross—cultural idioms and metaphors but whose imaginations are now endangered by official versions of regionalism (19). The final essay in the section keeping up with the optimistic tone of the volume points not to omissions but to the presence of feminist activist linkages that unite the region. These inter-linkages are marked by the burden of common wounds of sexual violence and acts of resisting them. The third section called Possibilities in the Quest: Utopias and Reality is etched through five essays by Irfanullah Farooqui, Dev Pathak and Avanti Chahatre, Anushka Rajendran, Jyoti Sinha and Abha Sur and Kiranmayi Bhushi. The first essay refers to Progressive Writer’s Association formed in 1936, which thrived on South Asian languages primarily Hindi and Urdu and which had poets and writers who reflected on immediate problems that they encountered in their societies but which resonated with the region at large. Such literary endeavours if undertaken in the present inclusive of writings produced in languages across the region, notes the author, can go a long way in acquainting us with the shared idioms and metaphors that exist in South Asia as a region (159). The essay that follows provides a synoptic overview of performative landscape in various parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka and focuses on the performative traditions across South Asia documenting ways in which their forms and contents have changed. Like the earlier essay here too the authors try to highlight the common strands that characterize different dramatic forms and argue that a shared predisposition towards melodramatic content can be seen in the region. The possibility of seeing the region through the prism of performance yet again allows an insight into shared experiences of the region that underlie local specificities (182). The next essay tries to grapple with the possibility of re-imagining communities by interpreting contemporary visual art from India and Sri Lanka. These artwork notes the author can be seen as sites of resistance and negotiations (199). Traversing from the possibilities that art, literature and performance can provide to re-imagining South Asia the remaining two essays in the section discuss South Asia as a source of subjective disposition and ethnic identification away from and outside of the region (20). The fourth and final section titled Towards Futures includes two essays by Sasanka Perera and Imtiaz Ahmed. While Perera argues that there is a possibility of formulating ‘experiential maps’ of the region of a kind that artists already operate with. Ahmed’s essay is desirous of harvesting new images for the region which can then show the way forward for rethinking roles of SAARC, policy formulations for trade and commerce and civil society across region in more concrete ways. The underlying tone connecting all the essays in the volume therefore is a critique of state-centred models of regional cooperation and a celebration of civilizational history and porous boundaries that have always allowed for fluidity of thoughts, ideas and being. An attempt is made to paint a mindscape rather than restricting to a cartographical demarcation of the region. Here too caution is taken to not trade off a national identity with a parochial regional identity. The pursuit then is for a much wider shared world, the volume thus resonates with imaginations of artists, performers, poets, travellers and scholars who have engaged with the South Asian sensibility. Befitting such a discursive presentation in the volume are the exquisite artworks by the Colombo-based artist Pala Pothupitiye, which add an aesthetic dimension to the collection. Description of these artwork plates adds richer texture to the palette.
The essays in the volume draw upon myriad sources such as mythology, oral and written traditions, aesthetics, life histories, politics and history to search for alternative imagination of the region. Methodologically speaking this volume achieves well and is refreshing in the perspectives that it brings to fore for mapping South Asia through civil society networks, people-to-people connections, literary imagination, art networks so on and so forth. It takes a concrete step to open up avenues of discussing newer facets about the region, each of which merits a sustained engagement. Almost every essay in the volume ends on an optimistic note, harbouring the hope that it is indeed possible to continue the quest that this title sets out to achieve. It must be said here that the collection does achieve fairly well the modest goal that it sets out for itself, that is to provide for a psychoanalytical opening for a therapeutic release from the dominant discursive frameworks about South Asia (22). However, it must be added that such an endeavour can do well to continue exploring further and at length the concrete pathways that this volume identifies for articulating an ‘another’. It could also benefit from a more widespread set of contributors representing the regions in a fuller way. Lastly, the fact that the project is steeped in Utopia gives it a subtext of the ‘desired’ South Asia rather than ‘another’ South Asia. It is essential, therefore, to be mindful of avoiding any foreclosures. The text would be of interest to researchers and scholars from disciplines such as International Studies, Sociology, Social Anthropology, Art History, Cultural Studies, and Performance studies. It would also be of value to diplomats, think tanks, civil society activists and to anyone interested in understanding the region.