South-Asianism & South Asia Hands

Guest Post by Samyak Dixit

Read Part 1 of the “South Asia” Series Here

As we move beyond the first part of this series, where we explored the origins of the term “South Asia”, it is only right that we stay a little longer in the U.S. to see how the “South Asia” idea evolved and metastasized in the American academy. No matter how pragmatic the origins of the term were, it has grown in the last few decades to acquire a life of its own. Far removed from being a tool of categorization, it has become an ideological system, complete with a set of principles that its priests abide by with strict discipline and vigor. It has now become “Southasianism”. After all, one generation’s tacit and pragmatic position often becomes another generation’s deeply held belief…

In this section, we will understand “Southasianism” through one of its most vocal priests.

Carol Christine Fair is a 52-year-old American professor at Georgetown University. Her official position is as a Professor in the Peace and Security Studies Program within Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service.

She is the kind of person that the silver-haired folks in the Indian Foreign Policy establishment would call an “Old Hand” of the Subcontinent. An “Old Hand” is a vague term used to describe an American academic or security apparatus person (usually an academic with a past in the security apparatus) whose long-term work has been focused on covering a specific part of the world. If you are a semi-regular follower of Indian foreign policy (or even domestic) discourse, you will have come across some of the other semi-famous “India Hands”: Ashley Tellis, Walter Russel Mead, Christophe Jafferlot, Salvatore Babones, etc. These priests write papers, publish books and opinion pieces (usually in the English-language press of the target country), go on conference circuits and media tours to create the institutional consensus among the liberal American ruling class regarding their specific country of focus. If you’re aware of how the American Regime works, you will know that it makes its decisions based on the consensus among experts (i.e. academics, i.e. priests) in any field of governance. Therefore, the work of the foreign policy “Old Hands” helps decide which country the State Department is “concerned” about at any given point of time. And we all know what the State Department’s “concern” about “what is going on in” in another country means for the latter – increased Western media pressure and scrutiny, eventually leading to Americans wrangling over doing business in the country, color revolutions, increased NGO funding and activity, and eventually, if all goes well, regime change.

Now, of course, foreign scholarship and interest in India has a long history that goes back to the likes of Frederich Max Müller and Arthur Schopenhauer. A lot of the ideas related to India (which are even treated as axioms by English-educated Indians) that we know today were established by European and British scholars translating ancient Indian texts and discussing among themselves the varying observations about the then-existing Indian society. Combine this with European racial theories (“Aryanism”), a general interest in the foreign and exotic (“Orientalism”), a drive to convert the heathen idolator (“Proselytization”) and a pragmatic British study of their subjects for the purpose of efficient administration (“Colonialism”), and you get the cocktail of views about India that exists in the Western mind today.

So, “India Hands” are not exactly a new phenomenon. But their modern iteration in the priestly halls of 20th-century American academia, which is a reservoir of Power due to the function it performs in the running of the American Empire, definitely is.

However, unlike “China Hands” or “Middle East Hands”, the “India Hand” hasn’t had a very fruitful time since … well … 1947. To understand the plight of an “India Hand”, one must realize that the American academy, like any other priestly institution, does not run on measurable performance or objective output. Instead, as a priestly institution, the lubricant of American academia is power acquired through prestige. And prestige is something that “India Hands” have unfortunately never had, until very recently.

The reasons for this are quite simple. In the post-World-War-II period, which coincides neatly with the Partition of India and the British Departure from the Subcontinent, India has simply never been a country of major importance for the American Regime. It has not been a major economic partner (e.g. China), a major political partner (e.g. Israel), a key ally in an otherwise-troubled region (e.g. Saudi Arabia), or a major enemy nation (e.g. the Soviet Union). India has not really even been a “troubled” nation that is constantly internally unstable (with obvious exceptions like Kashmir, or a few decades of insurgency in the Indian Panjab). India has not even been the site of decades-long civil wars, or the hub of globally-organized and armed terror groups. Over the decades, the most India has ever been is a large country that cannot get its act together economically and politically, that threw up bizarre personalities and Bollywood dance numbers (the first thing my freshmen hallmates asked me when they learned I was from India, was what “Tunak Tunak” meant), and that chugged along at the Hindu Rate of Growth (a demeaning term that only an Indian could’ve coined). Because of this relative dullness and inactivity, there hasn’t really been that much of an incentive for a young and ambitious American academic (say, who wants to go to the very top of the State Department and change the world) to specialize in India and become an “India Hand”.

Indeed, for an American academic, Pakistan, with its central role in the Cold War, its role in educating and arming the Afghan Mujahideen, its cooperation in the two Afghan Wars and the “War on Terror” (American wars waged against nouns have a stellar record of success. See also: The War on Poverty), and eventually, the location of the killing of Osama bin Laden (The West’s friend-turned-foe), would have been a far more enticing area of specialization in the 20th and early-21st century. And this can be observed by looking at the areas of specialization of any “South Asia Hand” plying their trade in the last two-three decades. These academics had a disproportionate focus on terror, security, Islam, etc. Because this is where the action was! Pakistan was a major part of the “Security” hustle for any American academic.

As an anecdote, I will share a little bit of my own experience at the University of Virginia. UVA is a major public school and one of the most important schools in the vicinity of Washington, D.C. In my time as a Political Science major at UVA (between 2013-2017), I encountered countless people whose families were either academics or worked for State or Defense. I met countless ROTC students, aspiring-journalists, TAs and PhD students who were broadly in the “foreign policy space”. And hardly any of them were specializing in India or learning an Indian language (or even wanted to). It’s a stark representation of a reality that I have written about before: that from an American point of view, India has long been the least important/thought-about major nation in the world. In this period (with the Syrian war in our backdrop), nearly every person in this space that I met was studying either Arabic or Mandarin. You can learn a lot about where the “action” is in academia through the revealed preferences of young and ambitious students.

The point is, being an “India Hand” has been hard. It’s the equivalent of slaving away to find gold in a mine where there has been no recorded instance of gold ever being found! This is where the election of Narendra Modi in 2014, and the decade in Indian politics that has followed, comes in. Suddenly, India has gone from a country of zero importance to one which is attracting a lot of “concern” from the State Department, and consequently, the liberal Institutional Media. It is the best thing to have ever happened to “India Hands”… Suddenly, the new “concern” about India means that they don’t have to settle for a low-key conference appearance at the Raisina Dialogues (we know where the ORF’s bread is buttered anyway) in Delhi. Suddenly, they’re getting invited by Brookings, by the Council of Foreign Relations. The American Regime is now looking towards our “India Hand” to explain to them “what is going on in India” as they tut-tut and finish their latest drink of the night, the “concern” about “recent developments in India” being visible all across their brows…

The India Hand is in the Big Leagues now. Her work is important. It is making a difference. Business is good!

And this brings us back to C. Christine Fair. As an “Old Hand” in the region, she must have seen some lean years on the conference circuit. Which is why we see that most of her scholarly work has been focused on terrorism, security, Islam, etc. These were the issues in “South Asian” countries that attracted a lot of “concern” in American academia in the 1990s-2000s, as the region was the base of many terror groups that the U.S. was involved with, and later turned against (e.g. the Taliban, Al Qaeda). Additionally, the neoconservative dominance of American foreign policy in the late 1990s and early 2000s meant that any Moslem country in the region was attracting a special amount of “concern”.

With this background and the knowledge about the plight of the “South Asia Hand”, we begin to pull together the profile of the kind of person who would be involved in this field.

And Professor Fair fits the bill beautifully. Her account description on Twitter/X proudly reads:

South Asianist, Punjabi translator, inter-sectional feminist, pitbull apostle, scotch devotee, and nontheist resister. Views are mine. No rubes. RT≠endorsement.

Carol Christine Fair. South Asianist.

But what does Professor Fair mean when she describes herself as a “South Asianist”?

Let’s try and answer this question by studying her own words. A post from her from June 2023, reads:

How to trigger Bhakts? Insist upon using “South Asian” to describe people from South Asia. When they yowl, block them. Very effective bhakt identification and blocking strategy.

Bhakts? I have to say that I really chuckled when I first saw this one. The nature of our terminally-online political discourse means  that we all now live a world where a demeaning term (co-opting a Hindi/Sanskrit term that in India has historically had a very positive connotation) used regularly in the Indian culture-war sphere is now being used liberally by a foreigner teaching your children “Peace and Security Studies” at Georgetown in Washington, D.C.!

But let us indulge the good Professor for a bit.

Professor Fair’s approach for “triggering Bhakts” is to use the term “South Asian” to “describe people from South Asia”. We can see that she is nothing if not persistent. The Professor, as a South Asianist, is standing by the American imposition of this term on more than a billion and a half people. And so what if the very people who are supposed to be described by this term have a problem with it? You just have to indulge in “Bhakt identification” and, et voila, you have a reliable blocking strategy!

Professor Fair continues, replying to a poster who has the temerity to claim that “South Asianist is a new term”:

South Asianist is a well-established term for scholars of South Asia. It’s been around for decades. Surprised this is new to you.

Of course, how could we Indians not have known! The American academics have been using this term to describe us for … over six decades now. We were never asked if we were okay with being called this … but … it’s all good, because “scholars of South Asia” have been using it for a while now!

One really shouldn’t be surprised by this. A priestly class is defined by its usage of specific and sui generis language. In that sense, the American academy is living up to its function.

But Professor Fair is not done. One truly appreciable thing about is her clarity and lack of subtlety. She does not hide what she believes in the shadows of apologetics. We first see her post below from September 2023 in response to an Indian journalist mocking the use of “South Asia”:

Bhakts think all of South Asia is just “India.” See the mural in the parliament as evidence. I will use “South Asia” because it is geographically descriptive while refusing to cater to Savarkar’s wet dream of Hindusthan.

Let’s just say that as a political science student at an American university in the 2010s, I never expected to read the phrase “Savarkar’s wet dream of Hindusthan” from an American professor…

When an Indian poster respectfully says to the Professor that Indians do not like being called “South Asians”, Professor Fair’s elegant response is:

Bro here thinks all of South Asia is India…

(Clearly poetry in motion!)

When an Indian American poster points out how “South Asia” is a Cold War term invented by the Americans, the Professor replies:

No it isn’t. Bhakts in particular prefer the term “Indian Subcontinent” for the same reason Iranians prefer the term “Persian Gulf” over “Arabian Sea.” South Asia, in contrast, refers to a geographical rather than political entity.

Finally, when a now-deleted poster must have responded by saying that they consider themselves to be Indians and not “South Asians”, the Professor concludes:

You might be. But Pakistanis aren’t. Nor are Sri Lankans, nor Nepalese. South Asia >> India.  It’s quite simple to anyone who isn’t a Bhakt.

Having considered the good Professor’s social media outbursts and the consistency of the propaganda (the single most important ingredient of propaganda is repetition), one has to ask:

Why is it so important for her to refer to this region using the term “South Asia? **Why is this a matter of such grave emotional resonance for a foreigner who has no ties to this region?

Not wanting to psychoanalyze the Professor, the best-faith answer (not to be found in Professor Fair’s ranting) I can come up with would be something like:

“South Asia is the more inclusive term to refer to the region and does not injure the sensibilities of the other (non-India) countries in the region”.

So let’s unpack this answer.

“It is a more inclusive term to refer to the region”.

Inclusive of what?

Presumably, the answer would be that the term is “a neutral way to include the different sensibilities of the different countries of the region”. The spidey-sense of any well-read person should immediately be going off here. One can see that the second answer is a non-answer, and just a restatement of the first. You keep pushing, and you ask the Southasianist, “what different sensibilities are you referring to here?” The answer one would presumably get is the pre-prepared answer about the smaller countries in the region and how they live in the constant fear of encroaching Indian imperialism.

But we know the actual answer. The “different sensibilities” are actually, substantively, referring here to the feelings of the countries of Pakistan and Bangladesh. In particular, the relevant “sensibilities” are a euphemism for the divergent and contradictory stories of nationalism that were created in the backdrop of the Partition of India into two countries. As the region contains three (after 1971) countries now that were party to this division and have been continuing down their respective courses for nearly eight decades, it has created two-three extremely divergent views of the history, culture, and identity of the Indian Subcontinent. This is what Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal were alluding to when they stated that South Asia is “an empty category, whose sole heuristic value might be that the word is politically neutral”.

It is to negotiate and sterilize this divergence of world views that the American academic seeks to create the emotionless and dull term “South Asia”. In doing so, it has to be “inclusive” of Pakistani nationalism, an idea whose instinct and demonstrated achievements are those of religious separatism and identity essentialism, subjugation of minority populations and whose creation required one of the most ruthless achievements of religio-ethnic cleansings of the modern era.

How the American academic squares the circle of being inclusive of this patently illiberal idea, I cannot understand. That is the contradiction for her to unwind on her own conscience. But for our purpose, this exploration helps us cut to the very heart of the instinct driving the American academic in her quest for linguistic and epistemological imperialism.

So let’s recap this section of our series: The core instinct driving the ideology of “Southasianism”, which is an evolved form of the pragmatic categorization attempt of a region with a complex history (that is still alive politically) is to remove India’s centrality to the region through the means of scholarship and rhetoric. In their mind, doing so makes the language regarding the region much more “inclusive” by including all “sensibilities” of the other countries in the region. But what this actually represents is an attempt to whitewash the bloody and divergent history of the Subcontinent during the Partition, 1971, and beyond. As we will see in later sections, this instinct has a few other, logical, conclusions. An obvious one is the fact that among these “other sensibilities” in the Indian Subcontinent, not all “sensibilities” are created equal. We will see later on in the series how the “sensibilities” of one nation in particular are curiously and completely-coincidentally served beautifully by the term “South Asia”. However, another logical conclusion from this instinct is going to be our focus in the next article.

For those of us who can connect the logical dots, it would not be surprising to find that the same instinct that is so eager and desperate to erase India’s epistemological centrality in the Subcontinent would take this line of thinking further and reach its obvious conclusion:

A blanket denial of Indian nationhood and nationalism.

This is the second part of a multipart series. To follow along & find more of Samyak, follow him at his Twitter & Substack