Brace Yourself, South Asia’s Geopolitics Is Becoming More Complex, Less Stable

March 15, 2023 5:35 pm

As in other parts of the world, the geopolitics of southern Asia is a result of its geography and history – and of its international context and domestic politics.

Interestingly, the southern Asian sub-region has a bounded geography only to the north, where the high Himalayas mark a clear geographic, cultural and political boundary between what lies north and south of the mountains — a barrier or boundary that has lasted over history and is only now being pierced as a result of modern technology. To the east, west and south, whether through Afghanistan and Iran, or Myanmar, or the Indian Ocean, the subcontinent has been open to influence, immigration and economic contact throughout its history. This is why the term southern Asia is better than the more limiting and artificial South Asia and when I use the term ‘South Asia’ I always do so in that larger sense.

Concentric, over-lapping circles

South Asia has been most open through the Indian Ocean. For the greater part of its history, the prosperity and security of the sub-continent has been as dependent, maybe more so, on its maritime dimensions as on the continental order. The Indian Ocean is not a closed ocean, not landlocked like the Mediterranean, the Aegean, the Black Sea, or the seas near China around which other civilisations grew. Thanks to the predictable monsoons, the Indian Ocean did not have to wait for the age of steam to be united, unlike other oceans. Deep water sailing probably developed here first. The maritime domain, by definition, is a positive-sum one, and water transport has historically been easier and cheaper than that by land. For a great part, therefore, southern Asia is maritime.

As a consequence of this geography, throughout history, southern Asia has been an autonomous strategic unit that was also part of a larger multiverse – connected but separate from the universes of the Levant and Persian Gulf, Central Asia and Persia, the Southeast Asian maritime kingdoms and East Asia. And throughout history, southern Asia was most prosperous and stable when its external connections to these regions flourished alongside its internal strength. This is very different from North-East Asia or northern Europe or North America, which were relatively isolated in history and unconnected to other regions for their security and prosperity for most of their past.

This geography means that the security of southern Asia is better thought of as a series of concentric but overlapping circles. What happens in Southeast Asia or East Asia or West Asia directly affects the security of southern Asia. And given the open geography of the Indian Ocean maritime domain, what happens in southern Asia affects the rest of Asia as well.

Nationalism is high, nationhood a work in progress

The other geopolitical consequence of our open geography is linked fates and open societies within the region. Every southern Asian country has cross-border ethnicities, and shares deep religious and strong cultural affinities across state boundaries. The state boundaries are new and recently defined; the ethnicities, languages, religions and cultures are ancient. There is a shared history of openness to each other within southern Asia that is stronger than in many other regions of the world. Our affinities far outweigh our differences. You find languages, foods, religions and ethnicities crossing all the state boundaries in southern Asia.

Paradoxically, this affinity across formal state boundaries is one reason why nationalism is high but nationhood everywhere in south Asia is still a work in progress. Bhutan and the Maldives are the exceptions in southern Asia in their relative homogeneity in ethnic, religious and linguistic terms. India and Afghanistan are the other extreme, where every group is a minority in terms of either language, region, ethnicity, or religion, if one considers schisms like sects and castes.