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HT Grand Tamasha: A fresh look at the history of 20th century South Asia
The historian Joya Chatterji’s new book — The South Asian Twentieth Century — tells the subcontinent’s story from the British Raj through independence and partition to the forging of the modern nations of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh
Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century is a sweeping new book by the historian Joya Chatterji. The book tells the subcontinent’s story from the British Raj through independence and partition to the forging of the modern nations of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. This is no ordinary book of history, however. While there is plenty of politics and an in-depth discussion of citizenship, nationalism, and political leaders past and present, there is equal attention paid to unconventional topics—such as food, leisure, and household dynamics.
Chatterji, a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge and Reader in International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science, discussed her unconventional new work on last week’s episode of Grand Tamasha, a weekly podcast on Indian politics and policy co-produced by HT and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Although South Asia is often described as a region undergoing significant change, Chatterji sees greater signs of continuity. One of Chatterji’s principal arguments is that the challenge of making citizens identify with their nation’s character and ambition has dominated South Asian politics for the latter half of the twentieth century. Even today, she writes “It remains an ongoing project, hotly contested in all three countries, since there is no unanimity about what each nation’s character really is.”
From a stylistic perspective, one of the author’s unusual choices was to break the “fourth wall” between the author and the reader, often reverting to first-person narratives while recounting the region’s post-1947 history. “What I wanted to do was place myself alongside [the readers] as this bug-eyed child, teenager, woman, becoming adult, growing old—still struggling with an incomprehension,” of the complexity of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, explained Chatterji. “[South Asia] is a very difficult place to understand so I wanted to put them at ease with that sense of incomprehension. I also wanted to help them engage with the questions that that little girl had about the society around her. Those questions, to some extent, have remained my questions all my life, but I have not been able to ask them quite this way.”
In addition to her unique narrative style, Chatterji also chose to explore unorthodox issues like food and cinema in this career-spanning volume. In the book, she notes that “South Asians care more about ‘whose food they eat’ than any other people in the world.” Asked why she devoted so much attention to this subject, Chatterji told host Milan Vaishnav that food provided a clear way of characterizing the diversity of South Asian society where, on the surface, so much culture appears to be shared. “I think this is the darkest chapter of the book, the saddest chapter of the book because you really get to see some of the harshest playing out of caste and tribal [dynamics]—and how poverty plays itself out among vulnerable people,” explained the author. While there is an enormous celebration of Indian food in the West, “I really want to say: ‘Stop! There’s actually a lot that you’re not seeing behind this celebration” because food and inequality are so deeply intertwined.
