South Asia's fault-lines of identity

Joya Chatterji's book explores the complexities of South Asian history and identity, providing a wide sweep of the many realities of a crucial region in the world

Shadows At Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century

Author: Joya Chatterji

Publisher: Penguin Random House

Pages: 842

Price: Rs 1,299

Even for a historian of modern India with a daunting reputation, the topic of this book runs the risk of intellectual overextension. Joya Chatterji’s first two books were scholarly explorations of communalism in Bengal from the early 1930s to partition in Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition, enhanced by The Spoils of Partition: Bengal and India, which examines how the state was socially, politically and economically devastated by partition. But in Shadows at Noon, the author manages skilfully to keep an ambitious narrative on track.   

The clue to what triggered the book, lies in the pages many readers skip — the “acknowledgements”. In this shortest “chapter” rests the information that it was a doctor who “planted the seed” of writing a “big” book and giving the author the confidence to do so. 

This and the fact that it was prioritised over the author’s other plans, the book certainly gives the impression of being researched and written in mission mode. But this only makes it more engaging, which is due, in no small part, to the evocative style of writing.

Dr Chatterji states at the outset that this book is not strictly a political history; where politics arises, it is interpreted “from a bold new perspective: that of relentless nation-making”. This it does in good measure and, if I may add, portrays persistent nation-unmaking too.  During research, writing and editing, memories play a vital role and we have a myriad of them here: Personal, families, friends, communities, regions, states and nations that are bound —as she writes in the epilogue — by a tectonic fault line, but were divided into two (and later three) different nations.

The author argues that there were critical years for the nation(s) from the point of view of change in the narrative. For the sub-continent, the way it exists now and did during the colonial era, the year 1947, was certainly a crucial turn in the narrative. Likewise, 1971 was a momentous year, for this was the year of the separation of East Pakistan and its rebirth as Bangladesh and a “loss” for Pakistan. Dr Chatterji argues that for the people in South Asia, the year 1992, with the demolition of the Babri Masjid being the central development, was more important than 9/11 was to people in other continents. But didn’t the attack on the World Trade Centre impact both internal and intra-South Asian politics?

This is particularly plausible because almost a decade had elapsed since the demolition and after a long lull, the politics of prejudice that prefaced the events of December 6, 1992 required only a tiny spark, which was provided by the gory Godhra incident.

The book is structured precisely, striking the right balance between standard historiography and avant-garde exploration of themes and subjects around people of not just the subcontinent, but also the collective diaspora — in the chapter on migration to other countries the author mentions that on the eve of independence in 1947, South Asians had spread to as many as 58 countries.

The examination of the political history of South Asia is focussed on three areas — competing ideas of nationalism; issues related to citizenship and nation-building post-partition; and, finally, the evolution of the State in the three South Asian countries. The other four chapters, including the one detailing the spread, movements and political concerns of the multiple diasporic communities, provide unique accounts of diverse issues: Families and marriage traditions and the rituals that are followed, the cultures of fasting and feasting that is spread across communities. This chapter also examines, rightly, the issue of their absence because of non-availability of food among the poverty stricken, and finally the varieties of leisure.

Muslim consciousness and identity were certainly principal issues through the past century. But the idea of the Indian Muslim, a post-1947 identity, is rightly seen as distinct from the pre-independence Muslim identity. The Indian Muslim’s identity is currently more challenged than ever and the author repeatedly leads readers to question how much of this identity is Indian and how much is Muslim with no sense of Indian-ness. The review will be incomplete without the mention of the paradoxical Bengaliness of the author despite growing up and being schooled in north India , besides being the daughter of a British mother. Through various personal accounts and from stories of other family members, the reader is exposed to Indians who carry multiple identities.

For an epic work that seeks to include such a wide canvas of themes and subjects, there are inevitably areas of deficiency. The examination of the ideas and politics of Hindu right organisations is certainly one of these. Some errors have crept in, too. Mahatma Gandhi wrote Hind Swaraj in 1909 on his way back to South Africa from England and not the other way around; the protest of Lala Lajpat Rai that led to his death was mistakenly advanced by almost a decade; and it was not Bal Thackeray, but his father, Keshav Sitaram Thackeray, who was among the many spearheads of the Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti that fought for a separate state of Maharashtra in the 1950s.

Many would contend that such slips are unavoidable in a book of such length. But diligence is never enough, especially when the errors are very rudimentary. That apart, this is a book to which every reader will be able to relate in some parts more than the others. The book will touch every South Asian heart and for others, provide a wide sweep of the many realities of a crucial region in the world.

The reviewer is an NCR-based author and journalist.@NilanjanUdwin