A Region in Name Only (Happymon Jacob, Foreign Affairs)
For decades, policymakers and scholars have been trained in the West and elsewhere to think of the countries of the Indian subcontinent as part of a coherent region: South Asia. Home to around a quarter of the world’s population, the region consists of eight countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Its diverse peoples speak hundreds of different languages and follow numerous different religious traditions, but they have shared histories, including the experience of British colonialism, and shared cultural connections, including a love of the sport of cricket and Bollywood films, ethnic ties.