Uniting the monsoon lands

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.

Then again, none in the SAARC region enjoys contiguity except through India. Yet the Indian Northeast is in a sense Bangladesh-locked, while India's traditional access to landlocked Afghanistan has been through Pakistan. A great many complementarities thus call for collaborative development. It is this vision of a larger, shared future that prompted the leaders of SAARC to establish an Eminent Persons Group, which would project a plan of action. In 1998, this yielded a roadmap with time-bound stages within which to see through the South Asia Free Trade Area (SAFTA), eventually to lead a Southasian community with a common currency. This vision has since been reiterated with new timelines. Progress has been slow on account of internal troubles in all of the countries concerned, as well as some unresolved conflicts between them. Yet various elements are gradually falling into place, and there is reason to hope that there can be accelerated movement towards the final goal.

Seizing the moment
The world is shrinking. But alongside globalisation, regional integration is gaining strength. Europe remains the outstanding example, but ASEAN and similar groupings are taking shape everywhere. Southasia, accounting for a fifth of humanity, cannot afford to be left out of this process. New corridors of global and inter-regional connectivity are coming into being: oil-and-gas pipelines, fibre-optic routes, great new highways and railroads, power-transmission lines. This new inter-connectivity is linking old and emerging markets, as well as creating new ones. In the process, Southasia could be a land bridge to an emerging Eurasian-Indian Ocean region of massive potential. With 450 million Muslim inhabitants, it also represents the largest and possibly most dynamic Islamic entity anywhere on earth, and offers a hope of rescue for this great world community from the coils of drift and despair in which it has been trapped.

The Kashmir roadmap projected by India and Pakistan in recent years hints at some kind of confederal solution, which could heal the wounds of Partition and restore a new unity without derogating from the three residual sovereignties that resulted. Nepal has just witnessed a historic revolution that, for the first time in world history, has bridged the gulf between a 'people's war' and parliamentary democracy in a relatively seamless process. Bhutan too is seeing a voluntary transition from a monarchy to a parliamentary democracy, based on the ideal of 'gross national happiness'.

Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Maldives and Afghanistan are all engaged in critical political and social reforms. The remarkable transition in each country has surprised its own people, just as Southasia could yet collectively surprise the world. But progress in this direction would be greatly strengthened through mutually reinforcing cooperation, which could be underpinned and institutionalised through regional mechanisms. India is poised to be a reckonable emerging market and regional power on its own, simply by virtue of its size. But a divided Southasia would be played off by others, one against the other. Thus, the region stands to be a truly world power for good in every sense only if it can draw closer and work together. This, then, is a moment of opportunity, onto which peoples and governments throughout the region need to seize.

~ B G Verghese is a columnist and author. He is former editor of the Hindustan Times and the Indian Express, Delhi.