‘South Asia’: Construction and Deconstruction of Spaces and Institutions. Part II

Abstract

The term ‘South Asia’ in its present meaning was coined in the late 1940s following a reinterpretation of previous approaches to the study of the (ancient) Orient, which had proved to be ill-suited under the conditions of the Second World War. The concept was created by an American Indologist W. Norman Brown (1892–1975) who defined almost the entire territory of British India as such and founded the Department of South Asia Regional Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. The consequence of this innovation was the institutionalization – along with traditional Sanskrit – of the modern socio-political spectrum of disciplines essential for the comprehensive understanding of the region where the languages studied are spoken. As the new idea spread beyond the borders of the United States, and changes continued in the geopolitical structure of the decolonized space, ‘South Asia’ as a concept in the educational strategy and post–war world order began to be replaced by ‘South Asia’ as a construct composed of new states and further reinforced by the formation of many new institutions, first of all SAARC. However, unlike Southeast Asia, the construction of which was also facilitated by external actors during the Second World War, ‘South Asia’ has failed to become a distinct region with its own identity, and its nomenclature is maintained for functional convenience while the search for its unifying factors in various spheres keeps going. The example of the latter is the idea of ‘Southasia’ (in one word), coined in Nepal and currently promoted from Sri Lanka.