Evolving Identity with Geography
The two maps pictured above with the attached quotes from famous poems represent the evolution of identity in South Asia. In the first map, the borders are expanded outside of the modern day frontiers of India and Pakistan to include Afghanistan and parts of Central Asia. This expansive vision of South Asia calls back to the incredible influence of the Turko-Persian world on the language, culture, and practices in South Asian societies. It also calls back to a time when borders were not fiercely guarded as is done in the modern nation state. The first map has blended colors of green, orange, and yellow throughout this conception of the South Asian subcontinent to express the fluidity of affiliation in the ever-changing landscape of kingdoms during and before the Mughal Empire. The quote, “I know not who I am” is from a famous Sufi Punjabi poet Bulleh Shah, whose poetry has had universal appeal to Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, and practitioners of many religions. This quote in particular speaks to the ambiguity in affiliation proposed by Bulleh Shah: the rest of his poem goes on to speak of how he is neither “hindu or turk,” “believer…or infidel.”
The second map represents a vastly different conception of identity post-partition and the independence of Bangladesh. In this map, each nation state has its own color and there is no mixing across boundaries, representing the mentality of nationalism that can be seen in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Dominant conceptions of nationalism function on negative notions of identity, by excluding other groups. As a result, Pakistan defines itself as the Muslim state, India the secular but dominant Hindu state, and Bangladesh the ethnically Bengali state. The quote in the middle from the Second Coming is a reference alludes to the horrors that were a part of creating these exclusive notions of identity: Partition and the Bangladesh Liberation War that left destruction in its path, separating communities, instigating bouts of unmitigated violence and massacres, and a refugee crisis of internally displaced persons rejected by both sides. These modern notions of religio-political identity leave little space for the ambiguity of Bulleh Shah.