"The idea that political projects such as nation-making can ever be totally successful is a misconception"

Joya Chatterji talks to Matt Elton about her book charting the tumultuous course of south Asia's 20th-century, including the violence that followed the creation of three new countries after the withdrawal of the British empire

- By Joya Chatterji

Matt Elton: Your new book covers what you describe as “the South Asian 20th century”. What do you mean by that term?

Joya Chatterji: I focus on the area ruled by the former British Raj, formally or informally. I think of there being a kind of united south Asia in which glimmers of the British empire (and the social structures that predated it) could still be made out throughout the latter half of the 20th century – long after the British themselves had left.

I’m also keen to push back against the idea that the history of India, Pakistan or Bangladesh can be understood independently of that of the others. They’re too intertwined. It just wasn’t the case that they were all somehow born entirely anew after partition in 1947 or 1971. In trying to understand the processes by which they were fashioned, and the effort that was put into trying to create new nations and new citizens so apparently different from each other, we can also see much about the parallels and the commonalities.

One of the landmark political moments in this history is the 1947 Partition of India. Do you think that the events and repercussions of that episode are misunderstood outside south Asia?