The Past as Presence

This book explores South Asia's postcolonial politics through the lens of circulatory networks—of objects, people, and ideas—as the region navigated pivotal historical junctures. The contributors reexamine epochal moments in South Asia's international relations, including the Second World War, the 1947 Partition, and the 1971 Liberation War, drawing insights from social history, memory studies, and popular discourses. Through thematic case studies, the historically informed contributions illuminate the complex entanglements between elite and everyday politics. By investigating diverse sites—borderlands, diaspora communities, battlefields, memorials, visual archives, and personal chronicles—the volume demonstrates how practices of remembering, forgetting and commemorating are intrinsic to the region's ongoing identity formation. The folding of time, colonial with postcolonial, is repeatedly brought home in these contributions. This nuanced engagement with the international realm reveals how macro-politics and micro-histories are inextricably linked in South Asia's postcolonial experience.

This volume will appeal to students and scholars across multiple fields, including International Relations, political science, history, South Asian studies, postcolonial studies, memory studies, and cultural studies. Researchers and policy analysts working on South Asia and interested in the intersection of identity politics, historical memory, and state formation will find the book's theoretical and historical framing of South Asian politics particularly valuable.

The chapters in this book were originally published in India Review.