South Asia
South Asia is the southern subregion of Asia that is defined in both geographical and ethnic-cultural terms. South Asia, with a population of 2.04 billion, contains a quarter of the world's population. As commonly conceptualised, the modern states of South Asia include Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, with Afghanistan also often included, which may otherwise be classified as part of Central Asia. South Asia borders East Asia to the northeast, Central Asia to the northwest, West Asia to the west and Southeast Asia to the east. Southeast Asia and Maritime South Asia are the only subregions of Asia that lie partly within the Southern Hemisphere. The British Indian Ocean Territory and two out of 26 atolls of the Maldives in South Asia lie entirely within the Southern Hemisphere. Topographically, it is dominated by the Indian subcontinent and is bounded by the Indian Ocean in the south, and the Himalayas, Karakoram, and Pamir Mountains in the north.
Settled life emerged on the Indian subcontinent in the western margins of the Indus River Basin 9,000 years ago, evolving gradually into the Indus Valley Civilisation of the third millennium BCE. By, an archaic form of Sanskrit, an Indo-European language, had diffused into India from the northwest, with the Dravidian languages being supplanted in the northern and western regions. By, stratification and exclusion by caste had emerged within Hinduism, and Buddhism and Jainism had arisen, proclaiming social orders unlinked to heredity.
In the early medieval era, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism became established on South Asia's southern and western coasts. Muslim armies from Central Asia intermittently overran the plains of northern India, eventually founding the Delhi Sultanate in the 13th century, and drawing the region into the cosmopolitan networks of medieval Islam. The Islamic Mughal Empire, in 1526, ushered in two centuries of relative peace, leaving a legacy of luminous architecture. Gradually expanding rule of the British East India Company followed, turning most of South Asia into a colonial economy, but also consolidating its sovereignty. British Crown rule began in 1858. The rights promised to Indians were granted slowly, but technological changes were introduced, and modern ideas of education and the public life took root. In 1947, the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two independent dominions, a Hindu-majority Dominion of India and a Muslim-majority Dominion of Pakistan, amid large-scale loss of life and an unprecedented migration. The 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, a Cold War episode resulting in East Pakistan's secession, was the most recent instance of a new nation being formed in the region.
South Asia has a total area of 5.2 million km2, which is 10% of the Asian continent. The population of South Asia is estimated to be 2.04 billion or about one-fourth of the world's population, making it both the most populous and the most densely populated geographical region in the world.
In 2022, South Asia had the world's largest populations of Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Jains, and Zoroastrians. South Asia alone accounts for 90.47% of Hindus, 95.5% of Sikhs, and 31% of Muslims worldwide, as well as 35 million Christians and 25 million Buddhists.
The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation is an economic cooperation organisation in the region which was established in 1985 and includes all of the South Asian nations.
Definition
Ambiguity
The geographical extent is not clear cut as systemic and foreign policy orientations of its constituents are quite asymmetrical. Beyond the core territories of the Indian Empire, there is a high degree of variation as to which other countries are included in South Asia. There is no clear boundary – geographical, geopolitical, socio-cultural, economical, or historical – between South Asia and other parts of Asia, especially Southeast Asia and West Asia. Most of this region is peninsular, resting on the Indian Plate and being isolated from the rest of Asia by mountain barriers; it resembles a diamond which is delineated by the Himalayas on the north, the Hindu Kush in the west, and the Arakanese in the east, and which extends southward into the Indian Ocean with the Arabian Sea to the southwest and the Bay of Bengal to the southeast.The common definition of South Asia is largely inherited from the administrative boundaries of the Indian Empire, with several exceptions. The current territories of Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan which were the core territories of the British Empire from 1857 to 1947 also form the core territories of South Asia. The mountain countries of Nepal and Bhutan, two independent countries that were not under the British Raj but were protectorates of the Empire, and the island countries of Sri Lanka and the Maldives are generally included. By various definitions based on substantially different reasons, the British Indian Ocean Territory and the Tibet Autonomous Region may be included as well. Myanmar, a former British colony and now largely considered a part of Southeast Asia, is also sometimes included. Afghanistan is also included by some sources.
Organisational definitions
The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, a contiguous block of countries, started in 1985 with seven countriesBangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lankaand admitted Afghanistan as an eighth member in 2007. China and Myanmar have also applied for the status of full members of SAARC. The South Asia Free Trade Agreement admitted Afghanistan in 2011.The World Bank and United Nations Children's Fund recognises the eight SAARC countries as South Asia, while the Hirschman–Herfindahl index of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific for the region excludes Afghanistan from South Asia. Population Information Network excludes Maldives which is included as a member Pacific POPIN subregional network. The United Nations Statistics Division's scheme of subregions, for statistical purpose, includes Iran along with all eight members of the SAARC as part of Southern Asia.
Indian subcontinent
The terms "Indian subcontinent" and "South Asia" are sometimes used interchangeably. The Indian subcontinent is largely a geological term referring to the land mass that drifted northeastwards from ancient Gondwana, colliding with the Eurasian plate nearly 55 million years ago, towards the end of Palaeocene. This geological region largely includes Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Historians Catherine Asher and Cynthia Talbot state that the term "Indian subcontinent" describes a natural physical landmass in South Asia that has been relatively isolated from the rest of Eurasia.The use of the term Indian subcontinent began in the British Empire, and has been a term particularly common in its successors. South Asia as the preferred term is particularly common when scholars or officials seek to differentiate this region from East Asia. According to historians Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal, the Indian subcontinent has come to be known as South Asia "in more recent and neutral parlance." This "neutral" notion refers to the concerns of Pakistan and Bangladesh, particularly given the recurring conflicts between India and Pakistan, wherein the dominant placement of "India" as a prefix before the subcontinent might offend some political sentiments. In Pakistan, even the term "South Asia" was considered too India-centric and was "banned" within the International Relations department of Karachi University until 1989 after the death of Zia ul Haq. This region has also been labelled as "India" and "Greater India".
Asian context
According to Robert M. Cutler – a scholar of political science at Carleton University, the terms South Asia, Southwest Asia, and Central Asia are distinct, but the confusion and disagreements have arisen due to the geopolitical movement to enlarge these regions into Greater South Asia, Greater Southwest Asia, and Greater Central Asia. The frontier of Greater South Asia, states Cutler, between 2001 and 2006 has been geopolitically extended to eastern Iran and western Afghanistan in the west, and in the north to northeastern Iran, northern Afghanistan, and southern Uzbekistan.Identification with a South Asian identity was found to be significantly low among respondents in an older two-year survey across Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.
History
Pre-history
The history of core South Asia begins with evidence of human activity of Homo sapiens, as long as 75,000 years ago, or with earlier hominids including Homo erectus from about 500,000 years ago. The earliest prehistoric culture have roots in the Mesolithic sites as evidenced by the rock paintings of Bhimbetka rock shelters dating to a period of 30,000 BCE or older, as well as Neolithic times.Ancient era
The Indus Valley Civilisation, which spread and flourished in the northwestern part of South Asia from to 1300 BCE in present-day Pakistan, North India, and Afghanistan, was the first major civilisation in South Asia. A sophisticated and technologically advanced urban culture developed in the Mature Harappan period, from 2600 to 1900 BCE. According to anthropologist Possehl, the Indus Valley civilisation provides a logical, if somewhat arbitrary, starting point for South Asian religions, but these links from the Indus religion to later-day South Asian traditions are subject to scholarly dispute.The Vedic period, named after the Vedic religion of the Indo-Aryans, lasted from to 500 BCE. The Indo-Aryans were Indo-European-speaking pastoralists who migrated into north-western India after the collapse of the Indus Valley Civilization. Linguistic and archaeological data show a cultural change after 1500 BCE, with the linguistic and religious data showing links with Indo-European languages and religion. By about 1200 BCE, the Vedic culture and agrarian lifestyle were established in the northwest and northern Gangetic plain of South Asia. Rudimentary state-forms appeared, of which the Kuru-Pañcāla union was the most influential. The first recorded state-level society in South Asia existed around 1000 BCE. The Brahmanas and Aranyakas, and the Upanishads into which they merged, began to ask the meaning of a ritual, adding increasing levels of philosophical and metaphysical speculation, or "Hindu synthesis".
Increasing urbanisation of South Asia between 800 and 400 BCE, and possibly the spread of urban diseases, contributed to the rise of ascetic movements and of new ideas which challenged the orthodox Brahmanism. These ideas led to Sramana movements, of which Mahavira, proponent of Jainism, and Buddha, founder of Buddhism, was the most prominent icons.
The Greek army led by Alexander the Great stayed in the Hindu Kush region of South Asia for several years and then later moved into the Indus valley region. Later, the Maurya Empire extended over much of South Asia in the 3rd century BCE. Buddhism spread beyond south Asia, through northwest into Central Asia. The Bamiyan Buddhas of Afghanistan and the edicts of Aśoka suggest that the Buddhist monks spread Buddhism in eastern provinces of the Seleucid Empire, and possibly even farther into West Asia. The Theravada school spread south from India in the 3rd century BCE, to Sri Lanka, later to Southeast Asia. Buddhism, by the last centuries of the 1st millennium BCE, was prominent in the Himalayan region, Gandhara, Hindu Kush region, and Bactria.
From about 500 BCE through about 300 CE, the Vedic-Brahmanic synthesis or "Hindu synthesis" continued. Classical Hindu and Sramanic ideas spread within South Asia, as well as outside South Asia. The Gupta Empire ruled over a large part of the region between the 4th and 7th centuries, a period that saw the construction of major temples, monasteries and universities such as the Nalanda. During this era, and through the 10th century, numerous cave monasteries and temples such as the Ajanta Caves, Badami cave temples, and Ellora Caves were built in South Asia.