Democratic enlightenment and cultural production

Europe is often held out as a model of what Southasia could become. I do not think that is an appropriate model for emulation, however. First of all, the concrete emergence of Europe as a supranational entity occurred initially through the creation of a common market. It was perceived that a single Europe-wide economic zone would be beneficial for European businesses generally in competing globally against US and Japanese multinationals. Second, this general perception was credible because, even in terms of the earlier structure of national industries, there were several that were significantly strong and viable – German, British, French, Dutch, Swedish – so that there was no real fear of one national corporate formation monopolising the European market. Third, with the inclusion of Britain in the European Community, even political balance was equalised, lessening the fear of French-German domination. Fourth (and this a fact that is rarely mentioned), on the vital matter of national security, it was not so much the sudden blossoming of democratic enlightenment that produced the recent half-century of peace in Europe – unprecedented in European history – but rather the underwriting of the security of Western Europe by the nuclear and conventional military power of the United States.

European countries have been at peace with one another because they have effectively signed away one of the most important aspects of national sovereignty – namely, the power to make war and peace – to the United States. None of these features of the European situation tally with those of the Southasian. To put it plainly, whether in economics or politics, the prospects of cooperation between Southasian states have been perennially troubled by the spectre of Indian overlordship. The facts here are too obvious to need extensive restatement. Starting from its sheer territorial and demographic size, India clearly has a far more substantial and sophisticated structure of economic institutions, both public and private, and an armed force that is hugely superior to its Southasian neighbours.

These facts quite naturally come in the way of every attempt to take even the smallest step towards free-trade agreements, or more politically charged areas of cooperation involving India and the other Southasian countries. No regime in the region could afford to be blind to charges that their markets are being flooded by Indian manufactured goods, or that their waters and other resources are being plundered by Indian capitalists and farmers. The long shadow of the big brother, bullying everyone in the neighbourhood into sullen submission, is an apparition that will not easily go away.

Underlying this fear is a set of beliefs and practices – indeed, a mindset – that grew during the 20th century in the course of anti-imperialist national struggles and efforts to build viable postcolonial nation states. No matter how much international-trade theorists may argue that a dogmatic belief in independent and balanced growth of national economies is naive and harmful – that it is much better to specialise in sectors in which a country has a comparative advantage, and to obtain other commodities through trade – the politically grounded conviction that dependence on other countries for vital resources is a potential Trojan horse that can threaten and destroy national sovereignty is still very much a fundamental tenet of nationalist ideologies today, and has a deep resonance in popular political understanding. There is little chance that this sentiment will disappear in a hurry.

The shared stock
Is there, then, no prospect for the emergence of a shared Southasian imaginary? I think there is, provided that one can look away from agreements between states and towards cooperation and collective efforts that are non-official, even if they may be in quite limited fields. I am not merely gesturing in some abstract and idealistic way at transnational crossings and affective relations in the domain of the personal. Rather, I am thinking of efforts that could have larger institutional impact in changing the ways we think, or do not think, about Southasia. These could be mainly in areas of education and culture. It is true that, even in those fields, there remains a fear of Indian domination.

Like everything else, educational institutions in India are more numerous, and often larger and better endowed, than in the other countries of the region. Similarly, in the field of culture, the mainstream Indian film, music and publishing industries pose the threat of overwhelming other local cultural productions in the region. One fact has been amply demonstrated, however, by the recent history of cultural change in the era of globalisation. The greater flow of cultural products across national borders, even when undertaken by large corporate producers, does not only homogenise cultures. Indeed, they often produce the regional and the local in new ways. New technologies may have aided the consolidation of giant multinational corporate empires in the fields of information and culture; but they have also, very effectively, enabled the emergence of independent producers who not only operate in specialised niche markets but often manage to break into the mainstream.

In addition, there is the ever-renewed phenomenon of cultural piracy, of products circulating outside the zones of copyrights and licences, with results that are not necessarily deleterious to the cause of cultural exchange. What I am thinking of, then, are efforts to launch common projects and institutions involving writers, artists, academics, musicians, craftspeople and others engaged in educational and cultural production across Southasian. Some of this is already taking place, but mostly in forms that have consciously avoided any contamination by the 'germs' of commerce. I am suggesting something else. The history of nationalism has shown us that the community called the nation was imagined most effectively when the production of national culture – through newspapers, novels, museums, gramophone records, radio, cinema, etc – came together with the industrial and commercial production of cultural artefacts in education and the media. Something similar has to happen if an imagination of Southasia as a community of feeling is to emerge. We do not necessarily need to start from scratch.

After all, the fact that, even in our chance encounters with people from across the border, we recognise each other as belonging to a community of neighbours, is not due to state-to-state agreements but because we share affinities of language, food, habits, lifestyle – a shared stock of material and cultural resources drawn from our daily lives. So there is enough to go on.

~ Partha Chatterjee is a social scientist teaching at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, and at Columbia University, New York.