Session 161: Imagining a Region

Organizer: Alpa Shah, University of London

Discussant: David Washbrook, Oxford University

Keywords: politics, state, regionalism, imagining, anthropology, history, Uttar Pradesh, Kachchh, Jharkhand.

Movements for regional or national separation are common in South Asia, but raise many pertinent questions about the contested experience of imagining a region. This interdisciplinary panel, drawing on anthropological and historical research, will critically examine the complex relationship between regionalism, politics, and the state. It will do so by interrogating similarities and differences at different places and times in South Asia: In Kachchh, where independence from the government of Gujarat has been demanded, in Jharkhand, where the oldest regional movement in independent India bore fruit in the shape of Jharkhand State in 2000 and in Uttar Pradesh, where many Indian Muslims demanded Pakistan in the 1940s. Showing that regional identities are not fixed but ‘imagined’ and constructed, the papers will seek to expand our understanding of the intersections between these ‘imaginings’ and politics. The session will explore the way in which political uses and abuses of regionalism are intricately linked to local ethno-histories and cultural practices. A common theme running through the various papers will be the differential role of both elite and subaltern groups in shaping the appeals for separatism, and the ways in which these demands are framed to suit diverse ends.

Envisaging the Land of the Pure: Imagining Pakistan in the United Provinces in the 1940s

Yasmin Khan, Oxford University

Pakistan was imagined as a region long before a British judge carved its boundaries on a map in 1947. But major questions still hang over these conceptions of Pakistan in the 1940s. This is especially true of provinces where Muslims were in a minority. In the United Provinces, where Muslims were only 15% of the population, support for the Muslim League was very strong. Did supporters of the Pakistan demand here understand that they were championing a new nation, which was highly unlikely to incorporate all Muslims, and was certain to fall outside their own region? And, if so, were they preparing for migration to a new place, which would then become ‘home’? Where was Pakistan located in the imagination of League supporters in the 1940s? This paper will address these questions by analyzing how Pakistan was envisaged by different people, ranging from local politicians to elite businessmen and rural policemen. The conclusions will point to a more complex web of images and ideas, as the territorial conception of a new state was only one among several imagined possibilities linked to the demand for Pakistan. Thorough an analysis of these different ideas, some broader conclusions will be made about the relationship between individuals, communities, and land.

What is Cutch, Kutch and Kachchh? Newsprint, Territory, and Contest in the Democratic Era

Edward Simpson, London School of Economics

In recent years, some people in Kachchh District have publicly called for administrative rule from Delhi and for independence from the Government of Gujarat. While these calls are openly supported by a very small minority, the majority agree with the basis of their claim: Kachchh has little in common with ‘mainland Gujarat’ and is neglected by the State Government. Central to this claim are strong ideas about what Kachchh is, was, and should be. This paper explores the ideas of tradition, territory and sociality that combine to form a powerful kind of ethno-historical imagination which makes claims for political separation possible, if unrealistic. The aim is not to exhaustively explore what contemporary ‘Kachchhi identity’ is—if indeed such a thing is—but to make a series of statements about the evocations and uses of identity as a bargaining tool or as a lever in democratic political processes. The conclusion turns to assess the similarities and differences between the Kachchh case and other kinds of South Asian regionalism.

Imagining a Hindi Pradesh? Early Formations of the Region in Gangetic North India in the 1890s

Harriet Bury, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

The upsurge of movements for regional separatism in South Asia in recent years indicates the tenacity of identities based on notions of common territorial and cultural traditions. But the fact that these movements are often contested by those from within prompts us to ask what a region is and how is it conceived of by those who lay claim to it. To say that a region is neither fixed nor hermetic but imagined and constructed further implies that most regions, including those that have failed to achieve political expression, have been imagined differently by different people and via different intellectual and cultural formations at specific moments in time.

In 1895 the publicist from Kanpur Pratap Narayan Mishra coined the phrase Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan. Whatever the specific intentions of this slogan, the idea of a region defined by its linguistic homogeneity and religious community was taking root in Gangetic north India in the late nineteenth century. Attempts to determine what was and was not ‘Hindi’ were adopted by the Hindi-speaking literati, as were a series of efforts to construct a ‘tradition’ for the language that would furnish it with historical authenticity. The paper will focus on these debates over language shaped undoubtedly by larger political and economic concerns, but will ask questions and draw conclusions about the specific forms of knowledge which led to and enabled these debates.

The Idea of Jharkhand: Who Cares about a Jharkhand State?

Alpa Shah, University of London

The Jharkhand movement is acclaimed to be the oldest autonomy movement in post-independence India. The demand was for the formation of a separate Jharkhand state within the constitutional framework of independent India. Its basis was that the adivasi populations of the state had long been internally colonized and exploited by the caste Hindu Bihar State and that given their autonomous cultural identity, they should have the right to an indigenous, tribal or adivasi state. Jharkhand eventually became a separate state on 15 November 2000, the day I arrived in India for fieldwork. To my surprise not more than 50 kilometers from the celebrations in Jharkhand’s capital Ranchi, I found people of the Munda tribe who not only did not know that Jharkhand had gained independence, but who also did not care.

There is a line of recent thinking that argues that nationalism is a product of modernity. These arguments rightly remind us to be skeptical of the claims for a Jharkhand state being formed on the idea of a bounded and distinct indigenous cultural identity, that is almost an ‘archaic survival’ from a remote age. This paper turns to the Munda’s lack of concern with the formation of Jharkhand State to explore how the ‘idea of Jharkhand’ is a specifically political phenomenon, a project of a local political elite. In doing so, it explores the relationship between politics, ethno-regionalism, and the state.