Review: Modern South Asia

Title: Modern South Asia: History Culture, Political Economy
Author: Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal
Publisher: London: Routledge, 1998
ISBN: 0-415-16952

The Modern South Asia: History, Culture, Political Economy of Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal is an academic work. Not only in the sense of "drawing on the newest and most sophisticated historical research and scholarship in the field" (as says the back cover), the content of this overview of India is more analytic than explanatory, more exploratory than introductory. The work reflects a desire to go forward, to press the boundaries of knowledge.

An introduction Modern South Asia was never meant to be. Although there is an undercurrent of relating events as the book unfolds, perhaps to reacquaint rather than teach the reader with the history of the region, background and common knowledge is assumed throughout. The authors choose instead to analyze in-depth and present the results of their studies, the sources of which are listed at the end of the book. These results cannot necessarily be described as "facts", but rather "conclusions."

The conclusions offered are sometimes hard to relate directly to the sources without doing some of the same research the authors undertook. The authors claim, for example, that research shows that the famine of 1943-4 which killed between 3.5 and 3.8 million people in Bengal stemmed not from a food shortage but from "a drastic decline in exchange entitlements of vulnerable social groups" due to the economic conditions brought about by the borrowing of Indian funds by the British (157). The basis of other assertions are even more difficult to ascertain: referring to the death of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, they claim that "the death of an individual leader, however great, cannot be sufficient explanation for why Pakistan slipped off the democratic course" (213), but offer no reasons for this assumption.

Nevertheless, while the entire work adds valuable knowledge to an understanding of South Asia, its worth is derived from its conclusions on the history surrounding partition. The authors display the actions of Muhammad Ali Jinnah and the creation of Pakistan as largely if not entirely political, and certainly not religious. "An all-India federation offered no consolation to Muslims in provinces where they were in a minority. Separate electorates, even with weighted representation, were simply inadequate. Even if there was a miraculous convergence of their identity and politics, Muslim numbers in the federal assembly would be insufficient to override the Congress vote. So long as they remained a minority, Muslims could not expect anything more than a marginal role in settling how power was to be shared in an independent India" (173-174).

The authors claim that, without the ability of the Muslim League to have political clout in the current arrangement of an India with a strong central government, Jinnah advocated the idea of Muslims as a separate nation. Pakistan would therefore remain part of India but be way "in which Muslims would have an equitable share of power at a centre reconstituted on the basis of a partnership between two essentially soereign states, Pakistan (representing the Muslimi-majority provinces) and Hindustan (representing the Hindu-majority provinces)" (177).

In fact, Jinnah "In 6 June 1946... rejected such a sovereign 'Pakistan', paving the way for the All-India Muslim League's acceptance of the Mission's plan for a three-tiered federal arrangement" (181). "Jinnah soon realized that the Mission's proposals would not stick for long after the British withdrawal" and soon advocated "a 'Pakistan' with its own sovereign centre" (182). Jinnah's appeal for a Pakistan to gain political clout then became, the authors imply, more than Jinnah bargained for; Jinnah used religion as "less a device to be deployed against rival communities, and more as a way of papering over the cracks in the splintered ranks of Muslim India" (193).

The rest of the work break some new ground and bring out important points that may have been missed in other historical recountings. Mohammad Iqbal, the national poet of Pakistan, for example, "had no difficulty celebrating Hindustan as his own" in his "Tarana-i-Hindi" (The Anthem of Hind):

Sarey jahan sey achhaa, ye Hindustan hamara

Hum bulbulen hain iske, ye hulsitan hamara

(Better than the whole world is our Hindustan

We are its singing birds, it is our garden of delights)

The status of women in Indian history also brings some surprises: "One early Delhi sultan of the Mamluk dynasty — Raziya Sultana — succeeded in becoming the first Muslim woman ruler in the [South Asian] subcontinent." "One of the first mystics of Islam was a woman, the chaste and pure lover of God, Rabia, who lived in Basra during the eighth century and won the admiration of fellow male Sufis" (31).

On religious tolerance: "Akbar displayed impartiality towards his subjects, regardless of religious affiliation, by abolishing the jizya — a tax imposed on non-believers in Muslim states... In 1582 he announced his adherence to a new set of beliefs, drawing on elements from the mystical strains in both Islam and Hinduism and deeply influenced by Zorastrianism, which he called Din-e-Ilahi or the Divine Faith. He did not, however, try to impose Din-e-Ilahi as a state religion... His policies of public tolerance and private ecclectism were continued by his son and grandson, Jahangir and Shah Jahan. Indeed the mother of Jahangir was a Hindu Rajput princess, Jodhabai" (40).

There are several noteworthy points brought out about the history of South Asia:

"Even before the establishment of the Mughal empire the Portuguese, led by Vasco da Gama, had landed on the south-western coast of India in 1498 and, by 1510, had set up a major settlement in Goa" (43).
"The English, who succeeded the Portuguese as the leading European traders in India in the seventeenth century, were also supplicants of the Mughals and simply sought permission from the emperor to carry on quiet trade" (44).
"Mughal India was, therefore, a great metropolitan magnet of wealth in the context of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century international trade" (44).
"Both the grandeur and the syncretism of the Mughal empire were reflected in the very considerable cultural achievements over which they presided. Persian was the court language of this Turkish dynasty. But at a more popular level Urdu became the language of Indo-Islamic culture in northern India, especially in the seventeenth century" (45).
"In music the basic grammar of north Indian classical music with its thirty-six raga and ragini was composed under Mughal patronage" (46).
"The death of Aurangzeb in 1707 is generally seen to separate the era of the great Mughals from that of the lesser Mughals" (48).
During the English conquest in Calcutta in 1756 at the battle of Plassey, "the bulk of nawab's army under Mir Jaffar's command looked the other way while the English defeated the small detachment led by Mohan Lal and Mir Madan which did fight. The name Mir Jaffar in time came to mean 'traitor' and remains even today one of the worst terms of political abuse in modern South Asia" (59).
The mercantilists had objections to English silver leaving the country. Later, "the availability of land revenue conveniently obviated the need to bring in silver from Europe. Bengal's revenues were not only used to purchase Bengal's goods, which were sold at a profit in markets abroad, but also to finance the colonial conquests of other parts of India" (60).
"In the decades following 1757 the English East India company which had begun its career with a charter to trade in Asia, established an elaborate state apparatus to govern its Indian territories. An organization originally created to accumulate profits from oceanic trade now drew its basic sustenance from land revenues" (66).
India was a six-month sail from London, which made it difficult for long-distance rule (68).
The British imposed a "shallow, if not fake, version of sovereignty reposed in the persons of 'traditional' rulers. This kind of sovereignty, which was merely the other side of the coin on which the supremacy of British sovereign power was clearly engraved, was later extended from the subcontinent to the coastal polities of the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea. The colonial reinvention of 'traditional' authority as part of its ideology of state had large consequences, helping transform princely India into a reliable base of support for the empire and freeing rulers legitimized by colonial 'tradition' from the trouble of seeking popular sanction.. In colonial India there were no citizens, only subjects of the empire and 'traditional' princes" (103).
Aurobindo Ghose in 1893 suggested that India "select the very best that is thought and known in Europe" and combine that with the strengths of the East; "Otherwise, instead of a simple ameliorating influence we shall have chaos annexed to chaos, the vices and calamities of the West superimposed on the vices and calamities of the East" (113).
Curzon's home secretary, referring to the partition of Bengal in 1905, stated that "one of our main objects is to split up and thereby weaken a solid body of opponents to our rule" (117). According to the author, the British apparently tried to further divide factions by associating the creation of a separate Muslim-majority partition with a resurrected Mughal empire (117).
The 1905-6 boycott of British cotton textiles and other consumer goods resulted in almost a 25% fall in certain imports. During this time the cry, "Bande Mataram," originally referring to Bengal, was used as a nationalistic slogan (120).
"Gandhi believed it was not sufficient simply to win political swaraj, for this would result in 'English rule without the Englishmen'" (135). He proposed extreme measures of getting rid of the railway, telegraphs, hospitals, lawyers, doctors, etc. (136).
"On his arrival in London [in 1931], a reporter asked Gandhi what he thought of Western civilization. 'I think it would be a good idea', the Mahatma replied" (151).
"In December 1930 Muhammed Iqbal, the renowned poet and philosopher, had asked the All-India Muslim League's council to endorse the call for the creation of a Muslim state in the north-west of India, including Punjab, Sind, the NWFP, and Baluchistan... In 1933 they inspired Chaudhri Rahmat Ali, a student at Cambridge, to invent the word 'Pakistan'..." (174).
"...in March 1940, without specifying the exact geographical boundaries, the All-India Muslim League at its annual session in Lahore formally demanded independent Muslim states in the north-west and the north-east of India on the grounds that Indian Muslims were a nation... [But] there was no mention of either partition or 'Pakistan'. The nub of the League's resolution was that all future constitutional arrangements be 'reconsidered de novo' since Indian Muslims were a 'nation' and not a minority, as had been presumed in the past" (175).
"I. I. Chundrigar, a prominent Leaguer from Bombay, explained to his followers that object of the Lahore Resolution was not to create 'Ulsters', but to achieve 'two nations...welded into united India on the basis of equality'" (176).
The Muslim League called for a "Direct Action" day to be observed on 16 August 1946, which resulted in thousands of Hindus and Muslims being killed by 20 August (182).
Jinnah at the first ever meeting of the Pakistan Constituent Assembly on 11 August 1947: "You are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this state of Pakistan. . . . You may belong to any religion or caste or creed — that has nothing to do with the business of the State. . . . We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one State"(194).
On 20 October 1952 Potti Sriramalu "began a fast unto death unless a separate state of Andhra was created based on the eleven Telegu-speaking districts of Madras. Nehru remained unmoved and on 15 December 1952 Sriramalu died of starvation" although three days later "the central cabinet decided that the state of Andhra would be created" (209).
Since the Bengalis in the east had a majority in Pakistan, "It was only by delaying the drafting of the constitution for nine long years and postponing general elections that the civil-military axis, in conjunction with segments of dominant social classes in the western wing, managed to forestall Bengali dominance" (214).

The analysis offered by Bose and Jalal is certainly worthy of acquisition by any student with a firm grasp on South Asian history. Its purpose is, after all, not an introduction but, to quote the back cover again, a "synthesis and interpretation." For exposing the reader to new viewpoints based on extensive research, Modern South Asia fulfils its purpose.