A Historian in Diaspora: On Pakistan and India

I was debating with myself, throughout the past two weeks, whether or not I should write this. Voices in the back of my head were saying “it’s too reductive, nuance cannot be summarized,” or “it will incense an onslaught of criticism you cannot fathom on your own.” But, with what has unfolded in South Asia within the past two days, I suddenly found it necessary to disclose my thoughts on the matter.

The narrative, both abroad and continental, surrounding South Asia has always been riddled with violence. I remember the keynote speech at a conference where I presented in 2014. The speaker, Dr. Yasmin Saikia, told her listeners “you cannot talk about South Asia without talking about violence.” Saikia was referencing her book, Women, War, and the Making of Bangladesh: Remembering 1971. But, what she was doubly alluding to was the overall history of South Asia. It’s been a land consistently conquered and re-conquered throughout much of the pre-modern era. With conquest comes death and the institution of the state. This is nothing new for historians and the general population alike.

I found myself thinking back to Dr. Saikia’s introduction when I happened to wake up in the middle of the night, in some sort of randomly-inspired urgency, and check my phone. On it, plain and simple, was a headline that inspired frustration, dread, and, with that, an inconceivably deep sense of loss: “India-Pakistan Rivalry Takes a Dangerous Turn.” India had ordered an airstrike across the border, an act of vengeance for recent Indian lives lost. This, of course, was in the retaliation of the terrible suicide bombing in Pulwama, Kashmir on February 15th, 2019. Again, I was alarmingly (though I question why I was surprised) reminded of the never-ending turmoil in South Asia. It was expected. I sighed as I put my phone down and begrudgingly, yet groggily, tried to get my last winks of sleep before the work day.

But something didn’t settle with me.

Today, at work, I ruminated on the issue. Kashmir, the long disputed territory between Pakistan and India—while also having separatist campaigns within—has been a battleground for nationalism between the two established states. Despite all arguments made superfluously, the contest is a result of deep scars that run deep in the nation-linked religious identity of Pakistan and India. In the spring of 2018, Kashmir saw a terrible rape and murder of an 8-year-old Muslim girl. Asifa Bano died at the hands of far-right Hindu nationalists because they believed her people were not entitled to the land on which they grazed and settled with the seasons. They didn’t belong because, in the perpetrators’ eyes, they were Muslim. As such, they were not seen as Indian (despite having lived in the area for generations). To those men, Muslim and Indian are mutually exclusive.

As such, there is a hatred between the two countries, which is something, as a woman raised from the outside, is hard to grasp. Why do two countries like India and Pakistan despise each other so much? As a history student, from undergrad to graduate school, I found a myriad of sources that could explain why—and learned how detrimental they are to the people of the subcontinent when misapplied.

South Asia was a land once full of various kingdoms and dynasties, from Rajasthan to Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Bengal, and Kerala. It was conquered repeatedly (the British are the last known conquerors) and as such, has been a place of violence. But, what I found as a wide-eyed college sophomore, was the consistent contemporary misconception and misapplication of religious concepts to a number societies that existed over hundreds of years.

A vignette that comes to mind is the typical Pakistani/Indian elder argument: “Hindus/Muslims conquered us and threatened our lives because of our faiths. Pakistan/India was made to protect us, but they are constantly trying to regain control.” No doubt a testament to the narratives they were exposed to growing up—I don’t deny their experiences. But, what is so utterly destructive is the fact that these anecdotes are based on misconstrued histories to serve a political purpose. First and foremost, conquerors of years past were not identified by their religious affiliations. They were rather associated with their ethnicity and culture—for example, the Muslim Ghaznavids (often taught as Islamic conquerors) came from a Turkish background and used plunder from India to fund its battles with Safavid armies (also Muslim) in present-day Iran. To call them Muslim or Hindu invaders is unjust to the true context of the pre-modern era, which ran on a series of political systems of kingdom and dynastic identity affiliation. But, these misconstructions and doctored histories are what is used as fuel for hate on both sides of a very arbitrary border. A hate, that while nascent in typical kingdom conflict, was exacerbated by British rule, further uniting those with similar religious backgrounds and using the opposite faith as a scapegoat for the infrastructural and resource desert South Asia had become.

And, unfortunately, that false narrative led to real violence—and sources for animosity—towards those of another faith, which has compounded since independence in 1947.

But, what I find, is when we are taken away from those arbitrary borders, we, the young generation, thrive together. I'm in no way saying South Asia is a monolith--different ethnicities, cultures, languages, and socioeconomic classes pepper the subcontinent. But, we share many different foods, tongues, clothes, we even watch the same movies. Invented tradition is left at the door.

First generation diaspora has shown that we get along outside of arbitrary borders. As immigrants. We bond over haldi doodh being called moon milk. We go to the one shop on the other side of town--the only one--to get some late night samosas and dosas. We have Bollywood (or Tollywood or Sandalwood or Lollywood) dance parties in our living rooms. We sleep over at each others’ houses, with bellies full of the Bengali food aunty so lovingly made in anticipation of the visit. We watch Coke Studio and sing along to Ali Sethi songs. We laugh over chai while burning our tastebuds being a bit over-eager. Remember that time your friend from Tamil Nadu helped you wrap a Banarsi sari you wore to your other friend's Sindhi wedding? Remember how at that same wedding, you met up with your friend who invited you to dance garba at her sister’s sangeet?

I’m tired of being told taking the groom’s shoes is a “Hindu thing.” I’m tired of hearing about the renaming of cities to represent their “true origins.” It is clear, taken away from the milieu of politics and religious-state identity, that we are more similar than different.

My experience is singular—I cannot be reductive and apply it to all South Asian individuals within the diaspora. But, I can offer it to the corpus of collected experiences in hopes that somewhere, someone else can relate.