Names and labels matter. They are redolent of identity and neighbourhood. 'Southasia' is, therefore, not merely a geopolitical expression, but also an association of ideas, experiences, interactive cultures and aspirations straddling the past and future. Southasia encompassed the monsoon lands cradled by the Himalaya-Karakoram to the north and the ocean to the south. These natural barriers defined a civilisational space with some outliers, within which, prior to the nation state, there was an ebb and flow of kingdoms and empires, often with a similarity of racial, linguistic and ecological types. The Asokan-Mauryan and Mughal empires were followed by the British Raj, which entailed a drawing together and then a falling away of the political entities that survive today.
It is not a shared past but rather the allure of a common future that now beckons and binds the seven (now eight) partners that first came together in December 1985 to form a South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, an entity that remains very much a work in progress. Southasia was never closed to the lands beyond, being connected by the Silk and Spice Routes along which sages and merchants travelled in both directions. During the middle of the 16th century, Sher Shah Suri built the Grand Trunk Road from Dhaka to Delhi and on to Peshawar and Kabul, a progenitor of the Asian Highway. The Buddha was born in Nepal and found enlightenment in India, from where his message radiated in every direction. Christianity and Islam came to Southasia very early on, and have long coexisted with Hinduism and other faiths that grew out of the soil.
The areas to the northwest and northeast were crossroads that brought together peoples from other lands to create a plural society, which kept churning and evolving new languages and lifestyles in what is today the most plural of societies anywhere, still striving to forge new unities out of myriad diversities. The British labelled what lay on either side of Southern Asia as the Middle East (West Asia) and the Far East (Southeast Asia). During the mid-1960s, the Japanese went so far as to excise the Indian Subcontinent from Asia, arguing that it was a large and unique region in its own right, and should be treated as such. The Partition of the Indian empire, coupled with de-colonisation, brought independence to Pakistan/Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Burma and the Maldives, and influenced the erstwhile hermit kingdoms of Nepal and Bhutan.
Despite and during the course of many vicissitudes and much trauma, conflict and population movements, Southasia retains its core identity as a coherent geopolitical entity and a natural resource region. Its monsoonal climate gives birth to common river systems (now uniformly impacted by climate change), similar cropping patterns and a broadly common administrative and legal system. All are in somewhat similar stages of growth, and share problems and opportunities that offer optimal solutions if tackled cooperatively. Harnessing the region's water resources is a striking example.