Review of Joya Chatterji's book Shadows At Noon | Our common history

Conjure for a moment the stern photographic image of Quaid-e-Azam dissolving into a liberal constitutionalist Congressman, co-author of a Hindu-Muslim alliance, falling in love with a Parsi heiress. Ruttie reciprocates Jinnah’s love by forsaking her family for him. Joya Chatterji’s Shadows at Noon weaves together hard archival data with (often surprising) anecdotes that open multiple windows into the heterogeneous past of the three nations of South Asia in (mainly) the twentieth century. The stories range from personal tales of national leaders, the lives of humble constables, adivasi, ‘lower castes’ and clerks to the protocols of middle-class gluttony and family relationships.History is brought alive not least because the narrator unfolds her own life. It’s for a good reason. Her presence ties together historical facts with living memory. Shadows at Noon draws on Ernest Renan’s axiom that the nation is made from remembering—and forgetting. As child, Chatterji believed her cook, that everything in Pakistan was perverse. Yet she doted on Imran Khan, the cricketer. Later research betrayed her cook: the histories of the two countries, she learnt, were comparable. Chatterji dons the anthropologist’s hat with that of a historian. With her formidable scholarship and capacity for life experiences, she radically complicates the ‘them versus us’ story of homogeneous nations.The book has seven large, self-contained (idiosyncratic, in keeping with her personal presence) chapters that readers can peruse in the order they fancy. These are disparate: from nation-making to leisure and food. Still, three themes can be isolated.The most provocative argument is the central one. The first three chapters on nation-making propose that Pakistan and India are like mirror images. There are sectoral differences (the Indian judiciary is stronger), but the overall thrust of nation-making in both countries is driven by the will to centralise. In this, they arguably extend the colonial ambition (only partially fulfilled) to provide a rationalised, information-gathering administration. Jinnah abolishes all provinces; Nehru only reluctantly gives in to the formation of linguistic states. Ironically, both nation-states concentrate armed power in their hands, but are unable to rule large parts of their territories.Counterpointing centralisation are heterogeneous elements, especially language conflicts. Declaring Urdu as the only national language violently births Bangladesh; the same move with Hindi encounters Tamil resistance. Chatterji argues that India has a stronger state as much of the personnel and spoils of the Raj—including its prized buildings—came to it. The Pakistan administration had to begin working from tents!Both countries committed themselves to equal civic citizenship. But with India and Pakistan assuming the guardianship of Hindu and Muslim refugees, respectively, citizenship was overlaid by religious majoritarianism.A tapestry of stories, data and insights depicts two contrary trends to the violent interplay of centralisation and heterogenisation. For instance, the Bombay films. Their “workers” (actors, technicians, etc.) cut across religious lines. The films draw their power, among other things, from the (pre-Independence) inter-communal tradition of wrestling (embodied in the legendary Gama) that shapes the “fight scenes”.Secondly, the social world is unstable and mobile. While states see themselves as immovable and parental, the book points out that the household is a node of dynamic, intersecting relationships, structured by blood, dependency and servitude. Mobility of many kinds (including the migration of girl children to the households of their husbands) is the medium that many social worlds inhabit.It is impossible to dwell on the many merits of (and some quarrels with) this gargantuan, 800-plus-page feast in a 600-word review. Part textbook and original research, part memoir and anthropological investigation, woven by a voice that is humorous, scathing, self-critical and always interesting, Shadows at Noon exceeds the compass of a history. To reformulate a self-description of the early novel, it is a historical epic in prose—masterly, original, provocative— and, yes, compellingly readable.Pradip Kumar Datta has been a professor at Delhi University & JNU

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