South Asia in Motion

A new book series aims to capture the tectonic transformations of the subcontinent.

by THOMAS BLOM HANSEN

The Taj Mahal next to the Yamuna River, India. CC-BY-2.0 via Wikipedia.

It is often said that South Asia is the graveyard of all universal theory. Everything that seems true in one part of South Asia is not true in another region of this densely populated part of the world. At one level this has to do with an extraordinarily old and complex fabric of overlapping cultures, languages, economies and religious imaginations. At another level, South Asia’s proverbial diversity is also a product of many generations of relative political and cultural freedoms. First emerging in the interstices of many fragmented and overlapping kingdoms and dominions and later entrenched by a relatively liberal British empire that encouraged formation of a vast range of cultural associations, and many vernacular public cultures—newspapers, educational institutions, standardization of scripts and expression, and much more.

While these liberal institutions and freedoms initially aimed at incorporating elite groups within the wider orbit of empire, they were gradually embraced and claimed by larger groups and communities in the postcolonial states across South Asia.

Ideals of dignity and equality, along with strong cultural nationalism and majoritarian chauvinism, have slowly spread and taken root throughout South Asia.

Democracy has been unstable, imperfect, at times suspended, and allowing deep inequalities and violence to persist across the region. But ideals of dignity and equality, along with strong cultural nationalism and majoritarian chauvinism, have slowly spread and taken root throughout South Asia. The results are bewilderingly diverse, highly articulate, and deeply volatile and contradictory public cultures.

In India, unprecedented corporate funding and the vast organizational machinery of the Hindu nationalist movement swept the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power in May 2014 on a vague promise of ‘acche din’ (good days) for all. Nine months later, the same party was unceremoniously defeated in the symbolically important elections in Delhi by a combination of young voters and the urban poor.

In Sri Lanka, the majoritarian Sinhalese government that defeated the Tamil Tigers in 2009 and unleashed a frenzy of militarized populism, was defeated in January 2015 at the polls by a coalition of minorities and liberal forces, vowing to re-establish the rule of law and proper democratic institutions.

In Bangladesh, middle class activists have mobilized growing numbers of people in a campaign for punishment of war criminals—many associated with the conservative Islamist party Jamaat-i-Islami—during the country’s bloody war of liberation from Pakistan in 1971. The result has been a massive revival of language-based Bangla nationalism that had declined since the heady days following independence. The outcome of this could strengthen political and cultural freedoms in the country, or could turn into an anti-democratic sentiment.

Every region and corner of South Asia are scenes of complex, historically deep and often violent conflicts.

These examples could be multiplied endlessly. Every region and corner of South Asia are scenes of complex, historically deep and often violent conflicts born out of social aspirations, demands for autonomy, demands for justice and social recognition pitched against entrenched elites and intransigent local officials. Every region in the subcontinent also has many rich and deep religious traditions, sometimes co-existing in harmony but as often competing over space, symbols and legitimacy.

Meanwhile, spectacular economic growth rates are fueling the movement of people, goods, movies and works of art across the subcontinent and beyond. In another decade South Asia will have more megacities above 10 million people than any other part of the world. Millions of people from South Asia build and run the gleaming new cities of Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Qatar—among others—along the Persian Gulf . Meanwhile, major global cities like Toronto, London, New York, and Singapore are now crucible nodes in the emergence of South Asian cultural production, and the production of the subcontinent’s economic and technocratic elites. In short, South Asia is on the move in every way imaginable and we are only witnessing the beginning of this rich, troubled, and populous region returning to its former status as one of the major centers of global economic, political, and cultural flows.

The tectonic significance of this re-emergence precipitated a new book series—South Asia in Motion—which will enable and promote scholarly work across the disciplines that unites all of these characteristic features of the region: its rich vernacular publics; its vigorous debates about everything from morality to politics, religion, and art; the deep diversity of perspectives and competing interpretations of the past; the pervasive commitment and interest in political matters from high to low; the defiant sense of freedom and rights; the importance of religious practices and the attachment to symbols and ideals embodied in thousands of discrete caste and cultural communities.

Books of this series will explore this fecund culture of debate, conflict and complex social experiences. The work we are looking for is deeply embedded in South Asian realities, theoretically sophisticated, and committed to contributing to larger conceptual debates of global importance.

South Asia in Motion wants to think about the world from South Asia because there are few places in the world that are more challenging and complex to any general theory, but also few places in the world that are more connected with and entwined with global flows in the 21^st century. If social scientists and scholars in the humanities want to rethink their assumptions about their discipline, and about the world, in a truly global perspective they will have to understand crucial dimensions of modern South Asia and South Asia in Motion will be an indispensable source for this necessary endeavor.

Thomas Blom Hansen is professor of anthropology and the Reliance-Dhirubhai Ambani Professor of South Asian Studies at Stanford University, where he also directs the Center for South Asia.