So is 'South Asia', a latitudinal conspiracy hatched by the Western academy to leach the Indian subcontinent of its Indian-ness. People can't feel nostalgic about 'South Asia' any more than filmi heroes can fall in love with generic females. I'm located in South Asia in the same way as citizens of the United States are North American and Brazil's people are South American, but notice how this air of spatial detachment is disrupted by a competing term, Latin America. Should they become pluralist republics, there could be no objection to South Asia. They need a name they can put a face to and South Asia feels like a well-intentioned void, an area of darkness east of Iran, south of China and west of all those countries that gave authoritarian capitalism a good name.

Source: The Telegraph May 16, 2016 00:24 UTC