Opinion Tracing the shadow lines

Cricket commentators kept referring to the UAE as “part of the subcontinent”,or even part of South Asia. Michael Atherton,Geoff Boycott,David Gower stated England had seldom won on the “subcontinent”. Others,analysing England’s loss,argued it was their inability to solve the mysteries of playing spin in “subcontinental” conditions that caused another humiliating collapse,while some stated England had only been able to beat Bangladesh on the “subcontinent”. Had England won the series,Pakistan would presumably have been defeated on the “subcontinent” as well. To include Dubai and Abu Dhabi,or the Gulf states,into some expanded/extended notion of the subcontinent or South Asia,opens up interesting interpretations of location,geography and identities.

While the Indian subcontinent is a region that,until some decades ago,was called British India,with Nepal and Sri Lanka attached (neither was part of the British Empire in the manner that undivided India was),the current notion of South Asia seems to be less rooted in history or geography. Most academics and scholars limit South Asia to Pakistan,India,Bangladesh,Nepal and Sri Lanka,and more expanded notions include Bhutan and the Maldives. Complications of definition and limiting the boundaries of a South Asia arise when Afghanistan is added to an official concept of South Asia in the guise of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). If the history of British colonialism is to play a role in defining notions of South Asia in the form of SAARC,one should not be surprised to see Myanmar become the next member of a forum in which there is next to no regional cooperation.

While British colonialism and geography may have helped craft a region named South Asia,in the era of 21st century globalisation,it is culture and commerce that define regions,unbound by history and geography. Dubai is a case in point. Cosmopolitan,polyglot,representative of a new,artificial and plastic South Asian culture,Dubai perhaps best represents what South Asia is today,with cricket,food and Bollywood,defining “South Asianism” better than regional trade can. Dubai also allows political and underworld exiles to continue to live their South Asian lives outside of South Asia. The same applies to unskilled and highly skilled professionals from the actual South Asia. For South Asians,Dubai must be the most utopian of South Asian cities.

In some ways,Dubai has been taken over by a South Asian sense of identity and is home or playground for many who live in South Asia. But so are London’s Southall and New York’s Jackson Heights,yet neither would ever be considered to represent the subcontinent. The rawness and newness of Dubai,however,lets it claim greater affinity with South Asia — so does its proximity — but numerous other non-South Asian influences also challenge any singular identity.

South Asia is a social construct,subject to interpretation and contestation,and always changing. Within the more accepted boundaries of South Asia — excluding Afghanistan and of course,Dubai — the notion of who a South Asian is has changed over the last six decades,when the term was coined. From a north Indian hegemonic identity of a South Asian then,it is remarkably heterogeneous now,and also subaltern and non-elitist.

Where would one draw the boundaries of South Asia? The nature of what constitutes South Asia — Dubai,Afghanistan,Burma — is just as arbitrary and contested as is what constitute nation-states — Balochistan,the Chittagong hill tracts,India’s north-east,Kashmir. The lines that create nation-states and smaller regions are just as constructed as those that create categories like “South Asia”.

The writer is a political economist based in Karachi. He is also a visiting professor at Columbia University,New York