![]() ![]() This endows peoples of this region (not states) by common structures of intelligibility, reflected in their easy commingling when they are outside their countries and free of the pressures of state nationalism, or gather in artistic public spheres. These state forms and gestalts of affect make it impossible to think of South Asia seriously as a space of emotional inhabitance.Ĥ Yet, despite these state-nationalist borders of consciousness, there still exist long-term historical commonalities which people spontaneously practice and enjoy-in food, material culture, literature, art, music-which have a deep and long history. A sequence of nationalist ideologies appeared in this space-in 19 th century Bengal, and eventually through the institution of state-nationalisms of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. In the paper, I shall follow some significant points of this dual process of emergence of new state structures in British colonial India and their animation by various emerging forms of nationalism. Though these two processes are intertwined in the rise of nation-states, for analytical purposes it is better to see them as separate. It was only the iron frame of the colonial state that made it a single political entity.ģ Two political processes of modernity introduce a new kind of space-making-nationalism and state-formation. But British colonial thinking would not have regarded this event as either surprising, or as a loss, because of their long-standing belief that nothing held India together from the inside. They saw this area as primarily the space of two states, India and Pakistan, born out of a partition of British colonial India. ![]() In British and European discourse, this term was relatively rare, or absent. a term by which outsiders designated a territory for purposes significant to them, but devoid of any affective significance for its inhabitants. South Asia emerged in the 1950-60s as an academic-governmental term of American coinage designating a spatial area of concern for American strategy and foreign policy. I shall run two arguments together-the first about the historical transformations of identity in modern times, and the second about the poetic construction of affect for space-related terms like India, and Pakistan, but not South Asia.Ģ Spaces or space-terms are constituted by specific purposes. I shall explore three spatial conceptions of South Asia-strategic, geographic and cultural and I shall try to explain the patterns of space-thinking underlying each one of them, show their connection with modernity, and discuss why and how South Asia is still not a space that can be conceived as a space of belonging. Top of pageġ In this paper I shall try to explore how the idea of space in what we call ‘South Asia’ today got reconfigured by modernity. This marks peoples of this region (not states) by a common intelligibility which is reflected in their easy commingling when outside their countries, and free of the pressures of state nationalism, or in artistic public spheres. Yet, despite this state-nationalist borders of consciousness, there still exist long-term historical commonalities which people spontaneously practice and enjoy-in food, material culture, literature, art, music-which have a deep and long history. These state forms and gestalts of affect make it impossible to think of South Asia as a space of emotional inhabitance-like India or Pakistan. ![]() ![]() In the paper, I shall follow some significant points of this dual process-of the emergence of new state structures-of British colonial India-and its animation of the rise of variant forms of nationalism-in 19 th century Bengal, in the Islamic imagination of the 20 th century, and eventually through the institution of state-nationalisms in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Two political processes of modernity introduce a new kind of space-making-nationalism and state-formation. I shall explore three spatial conceptions of South Asia-strategic, geographic and cultural and I shall try to explain the patterns of space-thinking underlying each one of them, show their connection with modernity, and observe why and how South Asia is still not a space that can be conceived in nationalistic or state terms as a space of belonging. In this paper I shall try to explore how the idea of space in what we call ‘South Asia’ today got reconfigured by modernity. ![]()
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