Session 1: Nation and Community Re-imagined - Class Discussions

continuing my reply to the post summing up our first session,

1 - It just occurred to me that historians working on ancient and medieval India do not write "India" but rather refer to the "Indian sub-continent"

2 - Book by Dilip K Chakrabarti - I haven't skimmed it or found a review but found the back cover interesting from the point of view of our discussion on pre-colonial India (For reference historians broadly divide Indian history into three periods - ancient, medieval and modern)

Geopolitical Orbits of Ancient India: The Geographical Frames of the Ancient Indian Dynasties by Dilip K. Chakrabarti

How did different parts of the Indian subcontinent interact through out its ancient history? This book presents a new approach for understanding the political history of ancient India. It underlines how politics was enacted in various geographical orbits that kept interacting throughout the period without any fixed boundary or 'divide'. Dilip Chakrabarti closely examines the focal geographical points along which ancient Indian dynasties tried to expand their political power and interact with other contemporary dynasties. The author highlights the range of geographical possibilities of the regional power centres of various periods in ancient India. He also underlines the extent to which they operated within that frame. The Geopolitical Orbits of Ancient India argues that the web of inter-regional interaction was not limited to a particular set of regions but had a pan-Indian ramification. None of the regions could therefore thrive in political isolation. It underscores that regions in ancient Indian history never had any immutable historical shape or identity but were fluid, both in their interactions and outlines.

3 - Chakrabarti's interview in Dawn - https://www.dawn.com/news/1238453 - most of it is about his politics which is natural given the topic of conversation but some of his answers touch on issues we raised in class on pre-colonial formations - specifically ancient India

For e.g. the bit about nationalist thinkers not relating history to land but choosing to focus on 'spiritual' India which Guha-Thakurta addresses quite thoroughly in her work. 

Session 1: Nation and Community Re-imagined - Class Discussion

16th Sept

We began the session by discussing the context in which Anderson wrote Imagined Communities and engaged with the multiple forms of nationalisms he outlined – official nationalisms, popular, long-distance etc. We also discussed Kaviraj’s notion of the imaginary institution of India. Both scholars have highlighted the idea of the nation being a modern and invented concept, yet resting heavily on notions of antiquity, traditional communities and the past. The role of symbols of the past (monuments), heritage etc. play key roles in the creation of this narrative.

We discussed some of the mechanisms by which this invention is engendered – print capitalism, technology, literacy, print languages etc.

Kaviraj’s work addressed some of the issues raised about Anderson’s work, such as how elites expand the nationalist narrative to incorporate different groups in society by relying on anti-colonial sentiments.

The questions that emerged from this discussion included

1) how do we account for the proliferation of communities/groups in society  when it was assumed that identities would coalesce, as societies became modern?

2) what is the difference between how people relate to notions of state and nation today and  kings/dynasties/administrative structures/ in pre-colonial times? Is it through the emergence of ‘citizens’ instead of  subjects? Democracy over monarchy?

To assume that kingdoms/dynastic rule were not coterminous with language, culture, politics, as is seen with the idea of the modern state , is a problematic assumption.

3) Did pre-colonial forms of rule and administration differ greatly from those introduced by the colonisers?

It appears that practices of border maintenance, enumeration of populations, taxation and surveillance techniques existed before the arrival of the British and are not necessarily specific to the modern state.

4) What is this ‘fuzzy’ community that Kaviraj and others refer to?

Watt’s piece on Nigeria confirms some of these issues when he looks at how colonial forms of administration were in fact grafted on to existing structures of  chieftainships/councils etc. and not some novel approach to governance. His piece goes on to discuss how capital  (petro-capital) makes, breaks, shapes identities in Nigeria thus leading to an ‘unimagining’ of community.

Sumathi Ramaswamy’s piece on Maps and Mother Goddesses ties in with Anderson’s and Kaviraj’s claims on how images/ideas/narratives of a nation get fixed. The feminine nation that requires masculine protection (by citizens- largely imagined as male) was an important take away from Ramaswamy’s piece. Some larger concerns were raised in the discussion of this piece, reflecting upon how regional-language literature has explored this theme at great length, and yet are not available to disciplinary/academic knowledge production.