ABSTRACT

STATE OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN SOUTH ASIA
BEYOND HEGEMONIC DISCOURSES
IMTIAZ AHMED

International Relations or IR in South Asia came a long way since its birth in undivided Bengal, more precisely in Dhaka University in July 1947, incidentally merely a month before the British left the Indian subcontinent. This fact itself is significant from at least three standpoints. Firstly, the colonizers probably did not want to wholly detach themselves from their colonies and therefore the hope was that such a discipline would provide for intellectual interactions long after decolonization of South Asia. Secondly, the colonized subjects probably pleaded for a discipline of this kind while convincing themselves of the idea that replicating the colonial power is not a bad thing and a discipline of this kind would prove handy if such a goal is ever contemplated by the post-colonial state. Finally, the colonizers and the colonized both probably had reconciled to the view that interactions between the two can no longer take place in its old ‘colonial’ form but only in the context of a mutually beneficial relationship between the two, and therefore a discipline of this kind would help subside colonial animosity and empower the respective sovereign entities.

In the light of the above, it is no surprising that the statist or realist understanding of IR came to dominate the discipline in the early phase of its birth, but then post-coloniality is a state of mind as well as a state of reality, and therefore is subject to change and transformation. With respect to IR, three developments could easily be identified. The first one could be referred to as the domain of geopolitics. It had its roots in Eurocentrism, including colonialism and imperialism, and therefore could be traced back to the Westphalian notion of territoriality, which further got entrenched following decolonization and the empowering of the newer states. But the phase could not be sustained in its pure ‘territorialized’ form. Multinational companies, the growth of petrodollars and trading compulsions proved no less critical in the understanding of IR, and this paved the way for geo-economics to displace IR’s obsession with state structures and territoriality. In this phase, realism gave way to neo- or structural realism, indeed, within the fold of an intense debate of whether to abandon or bring the state back in! However, the discipline of IR became even more attentive to deterritorialisation with the arrival of globalization, which in its multiversed form (economic, reverse or subaltern) laid grounds for yet another phase called psychogeography. A critical assessment of all these phases, with particular reference to South Asia, would be the subject of my presentation.

 

Presented a key note address in a conference, “State of International Relations in Pakistan organized by the Department of International Relations, University of Karachi in collaboration with the Higher Education Commission and Hanns Seidel Foundation, Islamabad at the Arts Auditorium on March 26-27, 2008.
Professor, Department of International Relations, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh
E. Mail: imtiaz@bangla.com; imtiaz@gmail.com

 

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