"South Asia" is a neutral term for the region, and has neither historical nor political baggage.
In the Urdu language goes a saying something like this: A cauliflower will not smell like a rose if you call it a rose. That is clearly not where the foreign policy mandarins of Pakistan drew their inspiration from last month when they protested the use of the term "Indian Subcontinent" by Indian Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani while on a visit to France.
Taking umbrage, the Foreign Office in Islamabad released an official statement: "As India is only one of the countries of South Asia, the term ´Indian Subcontinent´ is entirely inappropriate as a description for the whole region. Its use betrays India´s long-cherished dream of exercising hegemony in the region, a dream that India has failed to realise and it will never succeed in achieving. The Government of Pakistan there-fore hopes that the use of the term "Indian Subcontinent" to refer to South Asia will be avoided."
If there was an example of raising an issue unnecessarily —typical in what is rapidly evolving as the India-Pakistan non-relation-ship — then this was it. True, the 1947 transition has created certain problems having to do with the political meaning of words —Hindustani can no longer be used in either country to refer to mellifluous khari boli, and the entire history of ancient, medieval and colonial ´India´ has been willingly waved away by a modern Pakistani State which regards its history as having begun in 1947.