Misplaced Pages

South Asia

Area	5,222,321 km (2,016,349 sq mi)
Population	2.04 billion (2024)
Population density	362.3/km (938/sq mi)
GDP (PPP)	$18.05 trillion (2024)
GDP (nominal)	$5.04 trillion (2024)
GDP per capita	$2,650 (nominal) (2024) $9,470 (PPP) (2024)
HDI	0.641 (2019) (medium)
Ethnic groups	Indo-Aryan, Iranian, Dravidian, Sino-Tibetan, Austroasiatic, Turkic etc.
Religions	Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, Irreligion
Demonym	South Asian
Countries	7 recognised  Bangladesh  Bhutan  India  Maldives    Nepal  Pakistan  Sri Lanka 1 often included  Afghanistan
Dependencies	External (1)  British Indian Ocean Territory (United Kingdom)
Languages	Official languages (national level) Bengali Dari (Persian) Urdu Hindi Pashto Nepali Dzongkha Dhivehi English Sinhala Tamil Other official languages (provincial/regional level) Austroasiatic: Khasi Santali Dravidian: Malayalam Kannada Telugu Indo-European: Assamese Bhojpuri Dogri Gujarati Kashmiri Konkani Maithili Marathi Odia Punjabi Sanskrit Sindhi Sino-Tibetan: Bodo Gurung Limbu Mizo Meitei Sikkimese Tamang Tibetan Newari Turkic: Turkmen Uzbek
Time zones	5 time zones UTC+04:30: Afghanistan UTC+05:00: Maldives Pakistan UTC+05:30: India Sri Lanka UTC+05:45: Nepal UTC+06:00: Bangladesh Bhutan
Internet TLD	.af, .bd, .bt, .in, .io, .lk, .mv, .np, .pk
Calling code	Zone 8 & 9
Largest cities	10 largest cities in South Asia Delhi Mumbai Dhaka Karachi Kolkata Lahore Kabul Bangalore Chennai Hyderabad Ahmedabad
UN M49 code	034 – Southern Asia 142 – Asia 001 – World

South Asia is the southern subregion of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethnic-cultural terms. With a population of 2.04 billion living in South Asia, it contains a quarter (25%) of the world's population. As commonly conceptualised, the modern states of South Asia include Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, with Afghanistan also often included, which may otherwise be classified as part of Central Asia. South Asia borders East Asia to the northeast, Central Asia to the northwest, West Asia to the west and Southeast Asia to the east. Apart from Southeast Asia, Maritime South Asia is the only subregion of Asia that lies partly within the Southern Hemisphere. The British Indian Ocean Territory and two out of 26 atolls of the Maldives in South Asia lie entirely within the Southern Hemisphere. Topographically, it is dominated by the Indian subcontinent and is bounded by the Indian Ocean in the south, and the Himalayas, Karakoram, and Pamir Mountains in the north.

Settled life emerged on the Indian subcontinent in the western margins of the Indus River Basin 9,000 years ago, evolving gradually into the Indus Valley Civilisation of the third millennium BCE. By 1200 BCE, an archaic form of Sanskrit, an Indo-European language, had diffused into India from the northwest, with the Dravidian languages being supplanted in the northern and western regions. By 400 BCE, stratification and exclusion by caste had emerged within Hinduism, and Buddhism and Jainism had arisen, proclaiming social orders unlinked to heredity.

In the early medieval era, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism became established on South Asia's southern and western coasts. Muslim armies from Central Asia intermittently overran the plains of northern India, eventually founding the Delhi Sultanate in the 13th century, and drawing the region into the cosmopolitan networks of medieval Islam. The Islamic Mughal Empire, in 1526, ushered in two centuries of relative peace, leaving a legacy of luminous architecture. Gradually expanding rule of the British East India Company followed, turning most of South Asia into a colonial economy, but also consolidating its sovereignty. British Crown rule began in 1858. The rights promised to Indians were granted slowly, but technological changes were introduced, and modern ideas of education and the public life took root. In 1947 the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two independent dominions, a Hindu-majority Dominion of India and a Muslim-majority Dominion of Pakistan, amid large-scale loss of life and an unprecedented migration. The 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, a Cold War episode resulting in East Pakistan's secession, was the most recent instance of a new nation being formed in the region.

South Asia has a total area of 5.2 million sq.km (2 million sq.mi), which is 10% of the Asian continent. The population of South Asia is estimated to be 2.04 billion or about one-fourth of the world's population, making it both the most populous and the most densely populated geographical region in the world.

In 2022, South Asia had the world's largest populations of Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Jains, and Zoroastrians. South Asia alone accounts for 90.47% of Hindus, 95.5% of Sikhs, and 31% of Muslims worldwide, as well as 35 million Christians and 25 million Buddhists.

The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) is an economic cooperation organisation in the region which was established in 1985 and includes all the nations comprising South Asia.

Definition

Ambiguity

The geographical extent is not clear cut as systemic and foreign policy orientations of its constituents are quite asymmetrical. Beyond the core territories of the Indian Empire (territories of the British Empire which were under the system of British Raj), there is a high degree of variation as to which other countries are included in South Asia. There is no clear boundary – geographical, geopolitical, socio-cultural, economical, or historical – between South Asia and other parts of Asia, especially Southeast Asia and West Asia.

The common definition of South Asia is largely inherited from the administrative boundaries of the Indian Empire, with several exceptions. The current territories of Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan which were the core territories of the British Empire from 1857 to 1947 also form the core territories of South Asia. The mountain countries of Nepal and Bhutan, two independent countries that were not under the British Raj but were protectorates of the Empire, and the island countries of Sri Lanka and the Maldives are generally included. By various definitions based on substantially different reasons, the British Indian Ocean Territory and the Tibet Autonomous Region may be included as well. Myanmar (Burma), a former British colony and now largely considered a part of Southeast Asia, is also sometimes included. Afghanistan is also included by some sources.

Organisational definitions

The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), a contiguous block of countries, started in 1985 with seven countries – Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka – and admitted Afghanistan as an eighth member in 2007. China and Myanmar have also applied for the status of full members of SAARC. The South Asia Free Trade Agreement admitted Afghanistan in 2011.

The World Bank and United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) recognises the eight SAARC countries as South Asia, The Hirschman–Herfindahl index of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific for the region excludes Afghanistan from South Asia. Population Information Network (POPIN) excludes Maldives which is included as a member Pacific POPIN subregional network. The United Nations Statistics Division's scheme of subregions, for statistical purpose, includes Iran along with all eight members of the SAARC as part of Southern Asia.

The boundaries of South Asia vary based on how the region is defined. South Asia's northern, eastern, and western boundaries vary based on definitions used, while the Indian Ocean is the southern periphery. Most of this region rests on the Indian Plate and is isolated from the rest of Asia by mountain barriers. Much of the region consists of a peninsula in south-central Asia, rather resembling a diamond which is delineated by the Himalayas on the north, the Hindu Kush in the west, and the Arakanese in the east, and which extends southward into the Indian Ocean with the Arabian Sea to the southwest and the Bay of Bengal to the southeast.

Indian subcontinent

The terms "Indian subcontinent" and "South Asia" are sometimes used interchangeably. The Indian subcontinent is largely a geological term referring to the land mass that drifted northeastwards from ancient Gondwana, colliding with the Eurasian plate nearly 55 million years ago, towards the end of Palaeocene. This geological region largely includes Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Historians Catherine Asher and Cynthia Talbot state that the term "Indian subcontinent" describes a natural physical landmass in South Asia that has been relatively isolated from the rest of Eurasia.

The use of the term Indian subcontinent began in the British Empire, and has been a term particularly common in its successors. South Asia as the preferred term is particularly common when scholars or officials seek to differentiate this region from East Asia. According to historians Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal, the Indian subcontinent has come to be known as South Asia "in more recent and neutral parlance." This "neutral" notion refers to the concerns of Pakistan and Bangladesh, particularly given the recurring conflicts between India and Pakistan, wherein the dominant placement of "India" as a prefix before the subcontinent might offend some political sentiments. However, in Pakistan, the term "South Asia" is considered too India-centric and was banned until 1989 after the death of Zia ul Haq. This region has also been labelled as "India" (in its classical and pre-modern sense) and "Greater India".

Asian context

According to Robert M. Cutler – a scholar of political science at Carleton University, the terms South Asia, Southwest Asia, and Central Asia are distinct, but the confusion and disagreements have arisen due to the geopolitical movement to enlarge these regions into Greater South Asia, Greater Southwest Asia, and Greater Central Asia. The frontier of Greater South Asia, states Cutler, between 2001 and 2006 has been geopolitically extended to eastern Iran and western Afghanistan in the west, and in the north to northeastern Iran, northern Afghanistan, and southern Uzbekistan.

Identification with a South Asian identity was found to be significantly low among respondents in an older two-year survey across Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

History

Pre-history

The history of core South Asia begins with evidence of human activity of Homo sapiens, as long as 75,000 years ago, or with earlier hominids including Homo erectus from about 500,000 years ago. The earliest prehistoric culture have roots in the mesolithic sites as evidenced by the rock paintings of Bhimbetka rock shelters dating to a period of 30,000 BCE or older, as well as neolithic times.

Ancient era

The Indus Valley civilisation, which spread and flourished in the northwestern part of South Asia from c. 3300 to 1300 BCE in present-day Pakistan, North India, and Afghanistan, was the first major civilisation in South Asia. A sophisticated and technologically advanced urban culture developed in the Mature Harappan period, from 2600 to 1900 BCE. According to anthropologist Possehl, the Indus Valley civilisation provides a logical, if somewhat arbitrary, starting point for South Asian religions, but these links from the Indus religion to later-day South Asian traditions are subject to scholarly dispute.

The Vedic period, named after the Vedic religion of the Indo-Aryans, lasted from c. 1900 to 500 BCE. The Indo-Aryans were Indo-European-speaking pastoralists who migrated into north-western India after the collapse of the Indus Valley Civilization. Linguistic and archaeological data show a cultural change after 1500 BCE, with the linguistic and religious data showing links with Indo-European languages and religion. By about 1200 BCE, the Vedic culture and agrarian lifestyle were established in the northwest and northern Gangetic plain of South Asia. Rudimentary state-forms appeared, of which the Kuru-Pañcāla union was the most influential. The first recorded state-level society in South Asia existed around 1000 BCE. In this period, states Samuel, emerged the Brahmana and Aranyaka layers of Vedic texts, which merged into the earliest Upanishads. These texts began to ask the meaning of a ritual, adding increasing levels of philosophical and metaphysical speculation, or "Hindu synthesis".

Increasing urbanisation of South Asia between 800 and 400 BCE, and possibly the spread of urban diseases, contributed to the rise of ascetic movements and of new ideas which challenged the orthodox Brahmanism. These ideas led to Sramana movements, of which Mahavira (c. 549–477 BCE), proponent of Jainism, and Buddha (c. 563 – c. 483), founder of Buddhism, was the most prominent icons.

The Greek army led by Alexander the Great stayed in the Hindu Kush region of South Asia for several years and then later moved into the Indus valley region. Later, the Maurya Empire extended over much of South Asia in the 3rd century BCE. Buddhism spread beyond south Asia, through northwest into Central Asia. The Bamiyan Buddhas of Afghanistan and the edicts of Aśoka suggest that the Buddhist monks spread Buddhism (Dharma) in eastern provinces of the Seleucid Empire, and possibly even farther into West Asia. The Theravada school spread south from India in the 3rd century BCE, to Sri Lanka, later to Southeast Asia. Buddhism, by the last centuries of the 1st millennium BCE, was prominent in the Himalayan region, Gandhara, Hindu Kush region, and Bactria.

From about 500 BCE through about 300 CE, the Vedic-Brahmanic synthesis or "Hindu synthesis" continued. Classical Hindu and Sramanic (particularly Buddhist) ideas spread within South Asia, as well as outside South Asia. The Gupta Empire ruled over a large part of the region between the 4th and 7th centuries, a period that saw the construction of major temples, monasteries and universities such as the Nalanda. During this era, and through the 10th century, numerous cave monasteries and temples such as the Ajanta Caves, Badami cave temples, and Ellora Caves were built in South Asia.

Medieval era

Islam came as a political power in the fringe of South Asia in 8th century CE when the Arab general Muhammad bin Qasim conquered Sindh, and Multan in southern Punjab, in modern-day Pakistan. By 962 CE, Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms in South Asia were under a wave of raids from Muslim armies from Central Asia. Among them was Mahmud of Ghazni, who raided and plundered kingdoms in north India from east of the Indus river to west of Yamuna river seventeen times between 997 and 1030. Mahmud of Ghazni raided the treasuries but retracted each time, only extending Islamic rule into western Punjab.

The wave of raids on north Indian and western Indian kingdoms by Muslim warlords continued after Mahmud of Ghazni, plundering and looting these kingdoms. The raids did not establish or extend permanent boundaries of their Islamic kingdoms. The Ghurid Sultan Mu'izz al-Din Muhammad began a systematic war of expansion into North India in 1173. He sought to carve out a principality for himself by expanding the Islamic world, and thus laid the foundation for the Muslim kingdom that became the Delhi Sultanate. Some historians chronicle the Delhi Sultanate from 1192 due to the presence and geographical claims of Mu'izz al-Din in South Asia by that time.

The Delhi Sultanate covered varying parts of South Asia and was ruled by a series of dynasties: Mamluk, Khalji, Tughlaq, Sayyid, and Lodi dynasties. Muhammad bin Tughlaq came to power in 1325, launched a war of expansion and the Delhi Sultanate reached it largest geographical reach over the South Asian region during his 26-year rule. A Sunni Sultan, Muhammad bin Tughlaq persecuted non-Muslims such as Hindus, as well as non-Sunni Muslims such as Shia and Mahdi sects.

Revolts against the Delhi Sultanate sprang up in many parts of South Asia during the 14th century. In the northeast, the Bengal Sultanate became independent in 1346 CE. It remained in power through the early 16th century. The state religion of the sultanate was Islam. In South India, the Hindu Vijayanagara Empire came to power in 1336 and persisted until the middle of the 16th century. It was ultimately defeated and destroyed by an alliance of the Muslim Deccan sultanates at the Battle of Talikota.

About 1526, the Punjab governor Dawlat Khan Lodī reached out to the Mughal Babur and invited him to attack the Delhi Sultanate. Babur defeated and killed Ibrahim Lodi in the Battle of Panipat in 1526. The death of Ibrahim Lodi ended the Delhi Sultanate, and the Mughal Empire replaced it.

Modern era

The modern history period of South Asia, that is the 16th century onwards, witnessed the establishment of the Mughal Empire, with Sunni Islam theology. The first ruler was Babur had Turco-Mongol roots and his realm included the northwestern and Indo-Gangetic Plain regions of South Asia. Several regions of South Asia were largely under Hindu kings such as those of the Vijayanagara Empire and the Kingdom of Mewar. Parts of modern Telangana and Andhra Pradesh were under local Muslim rulers, namely those of the Deccan sultanates.

The Mughal Empire continued its wars of expansion after Babur's death. With the fall of the Rajput kingdoms and Vijayanagara, its boundaries encompassed almost the entirety of the Indian subcontinent. The Mughal Empire was marked by a period of artistic exchanges and a Central Asian and South Asian architecture synthesis, with remarkable buildings such as the Taj Mahal.

However, this time also marked an extended period of religious persecution. Two of the religious leaders of Sikhism, Guru Arjan, and Guru Tegh Bahadur were arrested under orders of the Mughal emperors after their revolts and were executed when they refused to convert to Islam. Religious taxes on non-Muslims called jizya were imposed. Buddhist, Hindu, and Sikh temples were desecrated. However, not all Muslim rulers persecuted non-Muslims. Akbar, a Mughal ruler for example, sought religious tolerance and abolished jizya.

The death of Aurangzeb and the collapse of the Mughal Empire, which marks the beginning of modern India, in the early 18th century, provided opportunities for the Marathas, Sikhs, Mysoreans, and Nawabs of Bengal to exercise control over large regions of the Indian subcontinent. By the mid-18th century, India was a major proto-industrializing region.

Maritime trading between South Asia and European merchants began at the turn of the 16th century after the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama returned to Europe. British, French, and Portuguese colonial interests struck treaties with these rulers and established their trading ports. In northwestern South Asia, a large region was consolidated into the Sikh Empire by Ranjit Singh. After the defeat of the Nawab of Bengal and Tipu Sultan and his French allies, British traders went on to dominate much of South Asia through divide-and-rule tactics by the early 19th century. The region experienced significant de-industrialisation in its first few decades of British rule. Control over the subcontinent was then transferred to the British government after the Indian Rebellion of 1857, with the British cracking down to some extent afterwards.

An increase of famines and extreme poverty characterised the colonial period, though railways built with British technology eventually provided crucial famine relief by increasing food distribution throughout India. Millions of South Asians began to migrate throughout the world, impelled by the economic/labour needs and opportunities presented by the British Empire. The introduction of Western political thought inspired a growing Indian intellectual movement, and so by the 20th century, British rule began to be challenged by the Indian National Congress, which sought full independence under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi.

Britain, under pressure from Indian freedom fighters, increasingly gave self-rule to British India. By the 1940s, two rival camps had emerged among independence activists: those who favored a separate nation for Indian Muslims, and those who wanted a united India. As World War II raged, over 2 million Indians fought for Britain; by the end of the war, Britain was greatly weakened, and thus decided to grant independence to the vast majority of South Asians in 1947, though this coincided with the Partition of India into a Hindu-majority India and a Muslim-majority Pakistan, which resulted in significant displacement and violence and harder religious divides in the region.

Contemporary era

In 1947, the newly independent India and Pakistan had to decide how to deal with the hundreds of princely states that controlled much of the subcontinent, as well as what to do with the remaining European (non-British) colonies. A combination of referendums, military action, and negotiated accessions took place in rapid succession, leading to the political integration of the vast majority of India and Pakistan within a few years.

India and Pakistan clashed several times in the decades after Independence, with disputes over Kashmir playing a significant role. In 1971, the eastern half of Pakistan seceded with help from India and became the People's Republic of Bangladesh after the traumatic Bangladesh Liberation War. This, along with India and Pakistan gaining nuclear weapons soon afterwards, increased tensions between the two countries. The Cold War decades also contributed to the divide, as Pakistan aligned with the West and India with the Soviet Union; other factors include the time period after the 1962 Sino-Indian War, which saw India and China move apart while Pakistan and China built closer relations.

Pakistan has been beset with terrorism, economic issues, and military dominance of its government since Independence, with none of its Prime Ministers having completed a full 5-year term in office. India has grown significantly, having slashed its rate of extreme poverty to below 20% and surpassed Pakistan's GDP per capita in the 2010s due to economic liberalisation from the 1980s onward. Bangladesh, having struggled greatly for decades due to conflict with and economic exploitation by Pakistan, is now one of the fastest-growing countries in the region, beating India in terms of GDP per capita. Afghanistan has gone through several invasions and Islamist regimes, with many of its refugees having gone to Pakistan and other parts of South Asia and bringing back cultural influences such as cricket. Religious nationalism has grown across the region, with persecution causing millions of Hindus and Christians to flee Pakistan and Bangladesh, and Hindu nationalism having grown in India with the election of the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2014.

A recent phenomenon has been that of India and China fighting on their border, as well as vying for dominance of South Asia, with China partnering with Pakistan and using its superior economy to attract countries surrounding India, while America and other countries have strengthened ties with India to counter China in the broader Indo-Pacific.

Geography

According to Saul Cohen, early colonial era strategists treated South Asia with East Asia, but in reality, the South Asia region excluding Afghanistan is a distinct geopolitical region separated from other nearby geostrategic realms, one that is geographically diverse. The region is home to a variety of geographical features, such as glaciers, rainforests, valleys, deserts, and grasslands that are typical of much larger continents. It is surrounded by three water bodies – the Bay of Bengal, the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea – and has acutely varied climate zones. The tip of the Indian Peninsula had the highest quality pearls.

Indian Plate

Most of this region is resting on the Indian Plate, the northerly portion of the Indo-Australian Plate, separated from the rest of the Eurasian Plate. The Indian Plate includes most of South Asia, forming a land mass which extends from the Himalayas into a portion of the basin under the Indian Ocean, including parts of South China and Eastern Indonesia, as well as Kunlun and Karakoram ranges, and extending up to but not including Ladakh, Kohistan, the Hindu Kush range, and Balochistan. It may be noted that geophysically the Yarlung Tsangpo River in Tibet is situated at the outside the border of the regional structure, while the Pamir Mountains in Tajikistan are situated inside that border.

The Indian subcontinent formerly formed part of the supercontinent Gondwana, before rifting away during the Cretaceous period and colliding with the Eurasian Plate about 50–55 million years ago and giving birth to the Himalayan range and the Tibetan plateau. It is the peninsular region south of the Himalayas and Kuen Lun mountain ranges and east of the Indus River and the Iranian Plateau, extending southward into the Indian Ocean between the Arabian Sea (to the southwest) and the Bay of Bengal (to the southeast).

Climate

The climate of this vast region varies considerably from area to area from tropical monsoon in the south to temperate in the north. The variety is influenced by not only the altitude but also by factors such as proximity to the seacoast and the seasonal impact of the monsoons. Southern parts are mostly hot in summers and receive rain during monsoon periods. The northern belt of Indo-Gangetic plains also is hot in summer, but cooler in winter. The mountainous north is colder and receives snowfall at higher altitudes of Himalayan ranges.

As the Himalayas block the north-Asian bitter cold winds, the temperatures are considerably moderate in the plains down below. For the most part, the climate of the region is called the monsoon climate, which keeps the region humid during summer and dry during winter, and favours the cultivation of jute, tea, rice, and various vegetables in this region.

South Asia is largely divided into four broad climate zones:

• The northern Indian edge and northern Pakistani uplands have a dry subtropical continental climate
• The far south of India and southwest Sri Lanka have an equatorial climate
• Most of the peninsula has a tropical climate with variations:
  • Hot subtropical climate in northwest India
  • Cool winter hot tropical climate in Bangladesh
  • Tropical semi-arid climate in the center
• The Himalayas and most of the Hindu Kush have an Alpine climate

Maximum relative humidity of over 80% has been recorded in Khasi and Jaintia Hills and Sri Lanka, while the area adjustment to Pakistan and western India records lower than 20%–30%. Climate of South Asia is largely characterised by monsoons. South Asia depends critically on monsoon rainfall. Two monsoon systems exist in the region:

• The summer monsoon: Wind blows from the southwest to most parts of the region. It accounts for 70%–90% of the annual precipitation.
• The winter monsoon: Wind blows from the northeast. Dominant in Sri Lanka and Maldives.

The warmest period of the year precedes the monsoon season (March to mid June). In the summer the low pressures are centered over the Indus-Gangetic Plain and high wind from the Indian Ocean blows towards the center. The monsoons are the second coolest season of the year because of high humidity and cloud covering. But, at the beginning of June, the jetstreams vanish above the Tibetan Plateau, low pressure over the Indus Valley deepens and the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) moves in. The change is violent. Moderately vigorous monsoon depressions form in the Bay of Bengal and make landfall from June to September.

Climate change

South Asian countries are expected to experience more flooding in the future as the monsoon pattern intensifies. Across Asia as a whole, 100-year extremes in vapour transport (directly related to extreme precipitation) would become 2.6 times more frequent under 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) of global warming, yet 3.9 and 7.5 times more frequent under 2 °C (3.6 °F) and 3 °C (5.4 °F). In parts of South Asia, they could become up to 15 times more frequent. At the same time, up to two-thirds of glacier ice in the Hindu Kush region may melt by 2100 under high warming, and these glaciers feed the water basin of over 220 million people. As glacier meltwater flow diminishes after 2050, Hydropower generation would become less predictable and reliable, while agriculture would become more reliant on the intensified monsoon than ever before. Around 2050, people living in the Ganges and Indus river basins (where up to 60% of non-monsoon irrigation comes from the glaciers) may be faced with severe water scarcity due to both climate and socioeconomic reasons.

By 2030, major Indian cities such as Mumbai, Kolkata, Cuttack, and Kochi are expected to end up with much of their territory below the tide level. In Mumbai alone, failing to adapt to this would result in damages of US$112–162 billion by 2050, which would nearly triple by 2070. Sea level rise in Bangladesh will displace 0.9–2.1 million people by 2050 and may force the relocation of up to one third of power plants by 2030. Food security will become more uneven, and some South Asian countries could experience significant social impacts from global food price volatility. Infectious diarrhoea mortality and dengue fever incidence is also likely to increase across South Asia. Parts of South Asia would also reach "critical health thresholds" for heat stress under all but the lowest-emission climate change scenarios. Under the high-emission scenario, 40 million people (nearly 2% of the South Asian population) may be driven to internal migration by 2050 due to climate change.

India is estimated to have the world's highest social cost of carbon - meaning that it experiences the greatest impact from greenhouse gas emissions. Other estimates describe Bangladesh as the country most likely to be the worst-affected. In the 2017 edition of Germanwatch's Climate Risk Index, Bangladesh and Pakistan ranked sixth and seventh respectively as the countries most affected by climate change in the period from 1996 to 2015, while India ranked fourth among the list of countries most affected by climate change in 2015. Some research suggests that South Asia as a whole would lose 2% of its GDP to climate change by 2050, while these losses would approach 9% by the end of the century under the most intense climate change scenario.

Regions

Northern South Asia

Ethnolinguistically, Northern South Asia is predominantly Indo-Aryan, along with Iranic populations in Afghanistan and Balochistan, and diverse linguistic communities near the Himalayas. Its borders have been heavily contested (primarily between India and its neighbours Pakistan and China, as well as separatist movements in Northeast India.) This tension in the region has contributed to difficulties in sharing river waters among Northern South Asian countries; climate change is projected to exacerbate the issue. Dominated by the Indo-Gangetic Plain, the region is home to about half a billion people and is the poorest South Asian subregion.

Northwestern South Asia

Northwestern South Asia is the site of many of the first civilisations of the world, such as the Indus Valley Civilisation. It was historically the most-conquered region of South Asia because it is the first region that invading armies coming from the west had to cross to enter the Indian subcontinent; because of these many invasions, Northwestern South Asia has significant influences from various sources outside of South Asia, mainly from the Muslim world.

Eastern South Asia

Eastern South Asia includes Bangladesh (East Bengal), Bhutan, eastern and northeastern parts of India, and Nepal. Major Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms and empires of the region include Kikata, Videha, Vṛji, Magadha, Nanda, Gangaridai, Mauryan, Anga, Kalinga, Kamarupa, Samatata, Kanva, Gupta, Pala, Gauda, Sena, Khadga, Candra, and Deva. Geographically, it lies between the Eastern Himalayas and the Bay of Bengal. Two of the world's largest rivers, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, flow into the sea through the Bengal region. The region includes the world's largest delta, the Ganges Delta, and has a climate ranging from alpine and subalpine to subtropical and tropical. Since Nepal, Bhutan, Northeast India and parts of East India are landlocked, the coastlines of Bangladesh and East India (in West Bengal and Odisha) serve as the principal gateways to the region. With more than 441 million inhabitants, Eastern South Asia is home to 6% of the world's population and 25% of South Asia's population.

Central-West Coastal South Asia

Central South Asia

The Holkars of Indore, Scindias of Gwalior, Puars of Dewas Junior, Dewas Senior and Dhar State were powerful families of the Maratha Empire which were based in Central India. The territories that now comprises Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh were ruled by numerous princes who entered into subsidiary alliance with the British.

Southern South Asia

Southern South Asia includes South India, the Maldives, and Sri Lanka, and is predominantly Dravidian. Southern South Asia was a hub of global trade in ancient times because of its position in the important Indian Ocean corridor.

Historically, governments throughout Southern South Asia adopted Sanskrit for public political expression beginning around 300 CE and ending around 1300, resulting in greater integration into the broader South Asian cultural sphere. This significantly influenced the languages of the region, making all of the major Dravidian languages except for Tamil highly Sanskritised. Tamil influence in the region is quite significant, with prominent empires such as the Chola dynasty taking Tamil culture to Sri Lanka and beyond South Asia, and Sri Lanka having an ancient Tamil minority and a Dravidian-influenced majority language of Sinhala.

Land and water area

This list includes dependent territories within their sovereign states (including uninhabited territories), but does not include claims on Antarctica. EEZ+TIA is exclusive economic zone (EEZ) plus total internal area (TIA) which includes land and internal waters.

Country	Area in km	EEZ	Shelf	EEZ+TIA
Afghanistan	652,864	0	0	652,864
Bangladesh	148,460	86,392	66,438	230,390
Bhutan	38,394	0	0	38,394
India	3,287,263	2,305,143	402,996	5,592,406
Nepal	147,181	0	0	147,181
Maldives	298	923,322	34,538	923,622
Pakistan	881,913	290,000	51,383	1,117,911
Sri Lanka	65,610	532,619	32,453	598,229
Total	5,221,093	4,137,476	587,808	9,300,997

Society

Population

The population of South Asia is about 1.938 billion which makes it the most populated region in the world. It is socially very mixed, consisting of many language groups and religions, and social practices in one region that are vastly different from those in another.

Country	Population in thousands (2023)	% of South Asia	% of world	Density (per km)	Population growth rate			Population projection (in thousands)
					2005–10	2010–15	2015–20	1950	1975	2000	2025	2050	2075	2100
Afghanistan	42,240	2.17%	0.525%	61.8	2.78	3.16	2.41	7,752	12,689	20,779	44,516	74,075	98,732	110,855
Bangladesh	172,954	8.92%	2.15%	1301	1.18	1.16	1.04	37,895	70,066	127,658	170,937	203,905	201,891	176,366
Bhutan	787	0.04%	0.00978%	20.3	2.05	1.58	1.18	177	348	591	797	874	803	654
India	1,428,628	73.7%	17.5%	473.4	1.46	1.23	1.10	376,325	623,103	1,056,576	1,454,607	1,670,491	1,676,035	1,529,850
Maldives	521	0.03%	0.00647%	1738.2	2.68	2.76	1.85	74	136	279	515	570	543	469
Nepal	30,897	1.59%	0.384%	204.1	1.05	1.17	1.09	8,483	13,420	23,941	31,577	37,401	38,189	33,770
Pakistan	240,486	12.4%	2.98%	300.2	2.05	2.09	1.91	37,542	66,817	142,344	249,949	367,808	453,262	487,017
Sri Lanka	21,894	1.13%	0.272%	347.2	0.68	0.50	0.35	7,971	13,755	18,778	22,000	21,815	19,000	14,695
South Asia	1,938,407	100%	24.094%	377.5	-	-	-	476,220	800,335	1,390,946	1,974,898	2,376,939	2,488,455	2,353,676
Population of South Asian countries in 1950, 1975, 2000, 2025, 2050, 2075 and 2100 projection from the United Nations has been displayed in table. The given population projections are based on medium fertility index. With India and Bangladesh approaching replacement rates fast, population growth in South Asia is facing steep decline and may turn negative in mid 21st century.

Languages

There are numerous languages in South Asia. The spoken languages of the region are largely based on geography and shared across religious boundaries, but the written script is sharply divided by religious boundaries. In particular, Muslims of South Asia such as in Afghanistan and Pakistan use the Arabic alphabet and Persian Nastaliq. Till 1952, Muslim-majority Bangladesh (then known as East Pakistan) also mandated only the Nastaliq script, but after that adopted regional scripts and particularly Bengali, after the Language Movement for the adoption of Bengali as the official language of the then East Pakistan. Non-Muslims of South Asia, and some Muslims in India, on the other hand, use scripts such as those derived from Brahmi script for Indo-European languages and non-Brahmi scripts for Dravidian languages and others.

The Nagari script has been the primus inter pares of the traditional South Asian scripts. The Devanagari script is used for over 120 South Asian languages, including Hindi, Marathi, Nepali, Pali, Konkani, Bodo, Sindhi, and Maithili among other languages and dialects, making it one of the most used and adopted writing systems in the world. The Devanagari script is also used for classical Sanskrit texts.

The largest spoken language in this region is Hindustani language, followed by Bengali, Telugu, Tamil, Marathi, Gujarati, Kannada, and Punjabi. In the modern era, new syncretic languages developed in the region such as Urdu that are used by the Muslim community of northern South Asia (particularly Pakistan and northern states of India). The Punjabi language spans three religions: Islam, Hinduism, and Sikhism. The spoken language is similar, but it is written in three scripts. The Sikh use Gurmukhi alphabet, Muslim Punjabis in Pakistan use the Nastaliq script, while Hindu Punjabis in India use the Gurmukhi or Nāgarī script. The Gurmukhi and Nagari scripts are distinct but close in their structure, but the Persian Nastaliq script is very different.

Sino-Tibetan languages are spoken across northern belts of the region in the Himalayan areas, often using the Tibetan script. These languages are predominantly spoken in Bhutan and Nepal as well as parts of Burma and northern India in the state of Sikkim and the Ladakh region. The national language of Bhutan is Dzongkha, while Lepcha, Limbu, Gurung, Magar, Rai, Newari, Tamang, Tshangla, Thakali, and Sikkimese are also spoken in Bhutan, Nepal and Sikkim, and Ladakhi is spoken in Ladakh. Both Buddhism and Bon are often predominant in areas where these languages are present. Some areas in Gilgit-Baltistan also speak Balti language, however speakers write with the Urdu script. The Tibetan script fell out of use in Pakistani Baltistan hundreds of years ago upon the region's adoption of Islam

English, with British spelling, is commonly used in urban areas and is a major economic lingua franca of South Asia (see also South Asian English).

Religions

Religion in British India 1871–1872 Census (includes modern-day India, Bangladesh, most of Pakistan and coastal Myanmar)

In 2010, South Asia had the world's largest population of Hindus, about 510 million Muslims, over 27 million Sikhs, 35 million Christians and over 25 million Buddhists. Hindus make up about 68 per cent or about 900 million and Muslims at 31 per cent or 510 million of the overall South Asia population, while Buddhists, Jains, Christians, and Sikhs constitute most of the rest. The Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, and Christians are concentrated in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bhutan, while the Muslims are concentrated in Afghanistan (99%), Bangladesh (90%), Pakistan (96%), and Maldives (100%). With all major religions practised in the subcontinent, South Asia is known for its religious diversity and one of the most religiously diverse regions on earth.

Indian religions are the religions that originated in the Indian subcontinent; namely Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism. The Indian religions are distinct yet share terminology, concepts, goals and ideas, and from South Asia spread into East Asia and southeast Asia. Early Christianity and Islam were introduced into coastal regions of South Asia by merchants who settled among the local populations. Later Sindh, Balochistan, and parts of the Punjab region saw conquest by the Arab caliphates along with an influx of Muslims from Persia and Central Asia, which resulted in spread of both Shia and Sunni Islam in parts of northwestern region of South Asia. Subsequently, under the influence of Muslim rulers of the Islamic sultanates and the Mughal Empire, Islam spread in South Asia. About one-third of the world's Muslims are from South Asia.

Country	State religion	Religious population as a percentage of total population
		Buddhism	Christianity	Hinduism	Islam	Kiratism	Sikhism	Others	Year reported
Afghanistan	Islam	–	–	–	99.7%	–	–	0.3%	2019
Bangladesh	Islam	0.6%	0.4%	9.5%	90.4%	–	–	–	2011
Bhutan	Vajrayana Buddhism	74.8%	0.5%	22.6%	0.1%	–	–	2%	2010
India	Secular	0.7%	2.3%	79.8%	14.2%	–	1.7%	1.3%	2011
Maldives	Islam	–	–	–	100%	–	–	–
Nepal	Secular	9%	1.3%	81.3%	4.4%	3%	–	0.8%	2013
Pakistan	Islam	–	1.59%	1.85%	96.28%	–	–	0.07%	2010
Sri Lanka	Theravada Buddhism	70.2%	6.2%	12.6%	9.7%	–	–	1.4%	2011

Largest urban areas

South Asia is home to some of the most populated urban areas in the world. According to the 2023 edition of Demographia World Urban Areas, the region contains 8 of the world's 35 megacities (urban areas over 10 million population):

Rank	Urban Area	State/Province	Country	Skyline	Population	Area (km)	Density (/km)
1	Delhi	National Capital Region	India		31,190,000	2,344	13,307
2	Mumbai	Maharashtra	India		25,189,000	1,046	24,073
3	Kolkata	West Bengal	India		21,747,000	1,352	16,085
4	Karachi	Sindh	Pakistan		20,249,000	1,124	18,014
5	Dhaka	Dhaka Division	Bangladesh		19,134,000	619	30,911
6	Bangalore	Karnataka	India		15,257,000	1,743	8,753
7	Lahore	Punjab	Pakistan		13,504,000	945	14,285
8	Chennai	Tamil Nadu	India		11,570,000	1,225	9,444
9	Hyderabad	Telangana	India		9,797,000	1,689	5,802
10	Ahmedabad	Gujarat	India		8,006,000	505	15,852

Migration

Ancient migrations into South Asia shaped the region's unique demographics, and later migrations often corresponded with conquest, as with the British diaspora in India.

Contemporary immigration to South Asian countries often takes a uniquely regional form; for example, most migrants in India are from other South Asian countries, and 97% of Bangladeshi migrants in India live in the Bangladesh-bordering regions of India (East India and Northeast India).

Diaspora

Culture

Sports

Cricket is the most popular sport in South Asia, with 90% of the sport's worldwide fans being in the Indian subcontinent. There are also some traditional games, such as kabaddi and kho-kho, which are played across the region and officially at the South Asian Games and Asian Games; the leagues created for these traditional sports (such as Pro Kabaddi League and Ultimate Kho Kho) are some of the most-watched sports competitions in the region.

Cinema

Music

Cuisine

Economy

India is the largest economy in the region (US$4.11 trillion) and makes up almost 80% of the South Asian economy; it is the world's 5th largest in nominal terms and 3rd largest by purchasing power adjusted exchange rates (US$14.26 trillion). India is the member of G-20 major economies and BRICS from the region. It is the fastest-growing major economy in the world and one of the world's fastest registering a growth of 7.2% in FY 2022–23.

India is followed by Bangladesh, which has a GDP of ($446 billion). It has the fastest GDP growth rate in Asia. It is one of the emerging and growth-leading economies of the world, and is also listed among the Next Eleven countries. It is also one of the fastest-growing middle-income countries. It has the world's 33rd largest GDP in nominal terms and is the 25th largest by purchasing power adjusted exchange rates ($1.476 trillion). Bangladesh's economic growth was 6.4% in 2022. The next one is Pakistan, which has an economy of ($340 billion). Next is Sri Lanka, which has the 2nd highest GDP per capita and the 4th largest economy in the region. According to a World Bank report in 2015, driven by a strong expansion in India, coupled with favourable oil prices, from the last quarter of 2014 South Asia became the fastest-growing region in the world.

Certain parts of South Asia are significantly wealthier than others; the four Indian states of Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, and Karnataka are projected to account for almost 50% of India's GDP by 2030, while the five South Indian states comprising 20% of India's population are expected to contribute 35% of India's GDP by 2030.

Country	GDP					Inflation (2022)	HDI
	Nominal GDP (in millions) (2022) (%Share)	GDP per capita (2022)	GDP (PPP) (in millions) (2022) (%Share)	GDP (PPP) per capita (2022)	GDP growth (2022)		HDI (Rank) (2022)	Inequality-adjusted HDI (Rank) (2022)
Afghanistan	$20,136 (2020)	$611 (2020)	$80,912 (2020)	$2,456 (2020)	-2.4% (2020)	5.6% (2020)	0.462(182nd) (low)	0.300(154th)(low)
Bangladesh	$460,751 (10.41%)	$2,734	$1,345,646 (8.97%)	$7,985	7.2%	6.1%	0.670(129th) (medium)	0.470(112th) (low)
Bhutan	$2,707 (0.06%)	$3,562	$9,937 (0.07%)	$13,077	4.0%	7.7%	0.681(125th) (medium)	0.465(114th) (low)
India	$3,468,566 (78.35%)	$2,466	$11,665,490 (77.74%)	$8,293	6.8%	6.9%	0.644(134th) (medium)	0.444(118th) (low)
Maldives	$5,900 (0.13%)	$15,097	$12,071 (0.08%)	$30,888	8.7%	4.3%	0.762(87th) (high)	0.597(86th) (medium)
Nepal	$39,028 (0.88%)	$1,293	$141,161 (0.94%)	$4,677	4.2%	6.3%	0.601(146th) (medium)	0.424(121st) (low)
Pakistan	$376,493 (8.50%)	$1,658	$1,512,476 (10.08%)	$6,662	6.0%	12.10%	0.540(164th) (low)	0.360(134th) (low)
Sri Lanka	$73,739 (1.67%)	$3,293	$318,690 (2.12%)	$14,230	-8.7%	48.2%	0.780(78th) (high)	0.630(75th) (medium)
South Asia	$4,427,184 (100%)	$2,385	$15,005,471 (100%)	$8,085	6.4%	8.1%	0.641 (medium)	-

Poverty

According to the World Bank's 2011 report, based on 2005 ICP PPP, about 24.6% of the South Asian population was below the international poverty line of $1.25/day. Bhutan, Maldives and Sri Lanka had the lowest number of people below the poverty line, with 2.4%, 1.5% and 4.1% respectively.

According to the 2023 MPI (multidimensional poverty index) report by the UN, around 20% of South Asians are poor.

51.7% of Afghanistan's population was under the MPI poverty threshold in 2019, while 24.1% of Bangladesh's population was under the threshold in 2021. India lifted 415 million people from MPI-poverty from 2005/06 to 2019/21; 16.4% of India's population was MPI-poor in 2019/2021, compared to 55.1% in 2005/2006. 10% of India's population was under the international poverty line of $2.15/day in 2021.

Country	Population below poverty line (at $1.9/day)				Global Hunger Index (2021)	Population under-nourished (2015)	Life expectancy (2019) (global rank)	Global wealth report (2019)
	World Bank (year)	2022 Multidimensional Poverty Index Report (MPI source year)	Population in Extreme poverty (2022)	CIA Factbook (2015)				Total national wealth in billion USD (global rank)	Wealth per adult in USD	Median wealth per adult in USD (global rank)
Afghanistan	54.5% (2016)	55.91% (2015–16)	18%	36%	28.3 (103rd)	26.8%	63.2 (160th)	25 (116th)	1,463	640 (156th)
Bangladesh	24.3% (2016)	24.64% (2019)	4%	31.5%	19.1 (76th)	16.4%	74.3 (82nd)	697 (44th)	6,643	2,787 (117th)
Bhutan	8.2% (2017)	37.34% (2010)	4%	12%	No data	No data	73.1 (99th)	No Data	No Data	No Data
India	21.9% (2011)	16.4% (2019–21)	3%	29.8%	27.5 (101st)	15.2%	70.8 (117th)	12,614 (7th)	14,569	3,042 (115th)
Maldives	8.2% (2016)	0.77% (2016–17)	4%	16%	No data	5.2%	79.6 (33rd)	7 (142nd)	23,297	8,555 (74th)
Nepal	25.2% (2010)	17.50% (2019)	8%	25.2%	19.1 (76th)	7.8%	70.9 (116th)	68 (94th)	3,870	1,510 (136th)
Pakistan	24.3% (2015)	38.33% (2017–18)	5%	12.4%	24.7 (94th)	22%	69.3 (144th)	465 (49th)	4,096	1,766 (128th)
Sri Lanka	4.1% (2016)	2.92% (2016)	5%	8.9%	16 (65th)	22%	76.9 (54th)	297 (60th)	20,628	8,283 (77th)

Stock exchanges

The major stock exchanges in the region are Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) with market Capitalization of $3.5 trillion (10th largest in the world), National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) with market capitalisation of $3.55 trillion (9th largest in the world), Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE), Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE), and Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) with market capitalisation of $72 billion. Economic data is sourced from the International Monetary Fund, current as of April 2017, and is given in US dollars.

Education

One of the key challenges in assessing the quality of education in South Asia is the vast range of contextual difference across the region, complicating any attempt to compare between countries. In 2018, 11.3 million children at the primary level and 20.6 million children at the lower secondary level were out-of-school in South Asia, while millions of children completed primary education without mastering the foundational skills of basic numeracy and literacy.

According to UNESCO, 241 million children between six and fourteen years or 81 per cent of the total were not learning in Southern and Central Asia in 2017. Only sub-Saharan Africa had a higher rate of children not learning. Two-thirds of these children were in school, sitting in classrooms. Only 19% of children attending primary and lower secondary schools attain a minimum proficiency level in reading and mathematics. According to a citizen-led assessment, only 48% in Indian public schools and 46% of children in Pakistan public schools could read a class two level text by the time they reached class five. This poor quality of education in turn has contributed to some of the highest drop-out rates in the world, while over half of the students complete secondary school with acquiring requisite skills.

In South Asia, classrooms are teacher-centred and rote-based, while children are often subjected to corporal punishment and discrimination. Different South Asian countries have different education structures. While by 2018 India and Pakistan has two of the most developed and increasingly decentralised education systems, Bangladesh still had a highly centralised system, and Nepal is in a state of transition from a centralised to a decentralised system. In most South Asian countries children's education is theoretically free; the exceptions are the Maldives, where there is no constitutionally guaranteed free education, as well as Bhutan and Nepal, where fees are charged by primary schools. But parents are still faced with unmanageable secondary financial demands, including private tuition to make up for the inadequacies of the education system.

The larger and poorer countries in the region, like India and Bangladesh, struggle financially to get sufficient resources to sustain an education system required for their vast populations, with an added challenge of getting large numbers of out-of-school children enrolled into schools. Their capacity to deliver inclusive and equitable quality education is limited by low levels of public finance for education, while the smaller emerging middle-income countries like Sri Lanka, Maldives, and Bhutan have been able to achieve universal primary school completion, and are in a better position to focus on quality of education.

Children's education in the region is also adversely affected by natural and human-made crises including natural hazards, political instability, rising extremism and civil strife that makes it difficult to deliver educational services. Afghanistan and India are among the top ten countries with the highest number of reported disasters due to natural hazards and conflict. The precarious security situation in Afghanistan is a big barrier in rolling out education programmes on a national scale.

According to UNICEF, girls face incredible hurdles to pursue their education in the region, while UNESCO estimated in 2005 that 24 million girls of primary-school age in the region were not receiving any formal education. Between 1900 and 2005, most of the countries in the region had shown progress in girls' education with Sri Lanka and the Maldives significantly ahead of the others, while the gender gap in education has widened in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Bangladesh made the greatest progress in the region in the period increasing girls' secondary school enrolment from 13 per cent to 56 per cent in ten years.

With about 21 million students in 700 universities and 40 thousand colleges India had one of the largest higher education systems in the world in 2011, accounting for 86 per cent of all higher-level students in South Asia. Bangladesh (two million) and Pakistan (1.8 million) stood at distant second and third positions in the region. In Nepal (390 thousand) and Sri Lanka (230 thousand) the numbers were much smaller. Bhutan with only one university and Maldives with none hardly had between them about 7000 students in higher education in 2011. The gross enrolment ratio in 2011 ranged from about 10 per cent in Pakistan and Afghanistan to above 20 per cent in India, much below the global average of 31 per cent.

Health and nutrition

According to World Health Organization (WHO), South Asia is home to two out of the three countries in the world still affected by polio, Pakistan and Afghanistan, with 306 & 28 polio cases registered in 2014 respectively. Attempts to eradicate polio have been badly hit by opposition from militants in both countries, who say the program is cover to spy on their operations. Their attacks on immunisation teams have claimed 78 lives since December 2012.

The World Bank estimates that India is one of the highest ranking countries in the world for the number of children suffering from malnutrition. The prevalence of underweight children in India is among the highest in the world and is nearly double that of sub-Saharan Africa with dire consequences for mobility, mortality, productivity, and economic growth.

According to the World Bank, 64% of South Asians lived in rural areas in 2022. In 2008, about 75% of South Asia's poor lived in rural areas and most relied on agriculture for their livelihood according to the UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation.

In 2021, approximately 330 million people in the region were malnourished. A 2015 report says that Nepal reached both the WFS target as well as MDG and is moving towards bringing down the number of undernourished people to less than 5% of the population. Bangladesh reached the MDG target with the National Food Policy framework – with only 16.5% of the population undernourished. In India, the malnourished comprise just over 15 per cent of the population. While the number of malnourished people in the neighbourhood has shown a decline over the last 25 years, the number of under-nourished in Pakistan displays an upward trend. There were 28.7 million hungry in Pakistan in the 1990s – a number that has steadily increased to 41.3 million in 2015 with 22% of the population malnourished. Approximately 194.6 million people are undernourished in India, which accounts for the highest number of people suffering from hunger in any single country.

The 2006 report stated, "the low status of women in South Asian countries and their lack of nutritional knowledge are important determinants of high prevalence of underweight children in the region." Corruption and the lack of initiative on the part of the government has been one of the major problems associated with nutrition in India. Illiteracy in villages has been found to be one of the major issues that need more government attention. The report mentioned that although there has been a reduction in malnutrition due to the Green Revolution in South Asia, there is concern that South Asia has "inadequate feeding and caring practices for young children."

Governance and politics

Systems of government

Country	Capital	Form of government	Head of state	Head of government	Legislature	Official language	Currency	Coat of arms / National Emblems
Afghanistan	Kabul	Unitary totalitarian provisional theocratic Islamic emirate	Supreme Leader	Prime Minister	Leadership Council	Pashto Dari	؋ Afghani
Bangladesh	Dhaka	Unitary parliamentary constitutional republic	President	Prime Minister	Jatiya Sangsad	Bengali English	৳ Taka
Bhutan	Thimphu	Unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy	King	Prime Minister	National Council National Assembly	Dzongkha	Nu. Ngultrum
India	New Delhi	Federal parliamentary constitutional republic	President	Prime Minister	Rajya Sabha Lok Sabha	Hindi English	₹ Indian rupee
Maldives	Malé	Unitary presidential constitutional republic	President		People's Majlis	Maldivian	ރ Rufiyaa
Nepal	Kathmandu	Federal parliamentary constitutional republic	President	Prime Minister	National Assembly House of Representatives	Nepali	रु Nepalese rupee
Pakistan	Islamabad	Federal parliamentary Islamic republic	President	Prime Minister	Senate National Assembly	Urdu English	₨ Pakistani rupee
Sri Lanka	Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte	Unitary semi-presidential constitutional republic	President	Prime Minister	Parliament	Sinhala Tamil English	රු/₨ Sri Lankan rupee

India is a secular federative parliamentary republic with the prime minister as head of government. With the most populous functional democracy in world and the world's longest written constitution, India has been stably sustaining the political system it adopted in 1950 with no regime change except that by a democratic election. India's sustained democratic freedoms are unique among the world's newer establishments. Since the formation of its republic abolishing British law, it has remained a democracy with civil liberties, an active Supreme Court, and a largely independent press. India leads region in Democracy Index. It has a multi-party system in its internal regional politics whereas alternative transfer of powers to alliances of Indian left-wing and right-wing political parties in national government provide it with characteristics of a two-party state. India has been facing notable internal religious conflicts and separatism however consistently becoming more and more stable with time.

The foundation of Pakistan lies in the Pakistan movement which began in colonial India based on Islamic nationalism. Pakistan is a federal parliamentary Islamic republic and was the world's first country to adopt Islamic republic system to modify its republican status under its otherwise secular constitution in 1956. Pakistan's governance is one of the most conflicted in the world. The military rule and the unstable governments in Pakistan have become a concern for the South Asian region. Out of 22 appointed Pakistani Prime ministers, none of them have ever been able to complete a full term in office. The nature of Pakistani politics can be characterised as a multi-party system.

The unitary semi-presidential constitutional republic of Sri Lanka is the oldest sustained democracy in Asia. Tensions between the Sinhalese and the Tamils led to the emergence of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a separatist Sri Lankan Tamil militant group and the outbreak of the Sri Lankan Civil War. The war, which ended in 2009, would undermine the country's stability for more than two and a half decades. Sri Lanka, however, has been leading the region in HDI with per capita GDP well ahead of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Sri Lanka has a multi-party system, and the political situation in Sri Lanka has been dominated by an increasingly assertive ideology of Sinhalese nationalism.

Bangladesh is a unitary parliamentary republic. The law of Bangladesh defines it as Islamic as well as secular. The nature of Bangladeshi politics can be characterised as a multi-party system. Bangladesh is a unitary state and parliamentary democracy. Bangladesh also stands out as one of the few Muslim-majority democracies. "It is a moderate and generally secular and tolerant — though sometimes this is getting stretched at the moment — alternative to violent extremism in a very troubled part of the world", said Dan Mozena, the US ambassador to Bangladesh. Although Bangladesh's legal code is secular, more citizens are embracing a conservative version of Islam, with some pushing for sharia law, analysts say. Experts say that the rise in conservatism reflects the influence of foreign-financed Islamic charities and the more austere version of Islam brought home by migrant workers in Persian Gulf countries.

By the 18th century, the Hindu Gorkha Kingdom achieved the unification of Nepal. Hinduism became the state religion and Hindu laws were formulated as national policies. A small oligarchic group of Gorkha region based Hindu Thakuri and Chhetri political families dominated the national politics, military and civic affairs until the abdication of the Rana dynasty regime and establishment of Parliamentary democratic system in 1951, which was twice suspended by Nepalese monarchs, in 1960 and 2005. It was the last Hindu state in world before becoming a secular democratic republic in 2008. The country's modern development suffered due to the various significant events like the 1990 Nepalese revolution, 1996–2006 Nepalese Civil War, April 2015 Nepal earthquake, and the 2015 Nepal blockade by India leading to the grave 2015–2017 Nepal humanitarian crisis. There is also a huge turnover in the office of the Prime Minister of Nepal leading to serious concerns of political instability. The country has been ranked one of the poor countries in terms of GDP per capita but it has one of the lowest levels of hunger problem in South Asia. When the stability of the country ensured as late as recent, it has also made considerable progress in development indicators outpacing many other South Asian states.

Afghanistan has been a unitary theocratic Islamic emirate since 2021. Afghanistan has been suffering from one of the most unstable regimes on earth as a result of multiple foreign invasions, civil wars, revolutions and terrorist groups. Persisting instability for decades have left the country's economy stagnated and torn and it remains one of the most poor and least developed countries on the planet, leading to the influx of Afghan refugees to neighbouring countries like Iran.

Bhutan is a Buddhist state with a constitutional monarchy. The country has been ranked as the least corrupt and most peaceful country in the region, with the most economic freedom, in 2016.

Maldives is a unitary presidential republic with Sunni Islam strictly as the state religion.

Regional politics

India has been the dominant geopolitical power in the region and alone accounts for most part of the landmass, population, economy and military expenditure in the region. India is a major economy, member of G4, has world's third highest military budget and exerts strong cultural and political influence over the region. Sometimes referred as a great power or emerging superpower primarily attributed to its large and expanding economic and military abilities, India acts as fulcrum of South Asia.

Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka are middle powers with sizeable populations and economies with significant impact on regional politics.

During the Partition of India in 1947, subsequent violence and territorial disputes left relations between India and Pakistan sour and very hostile and various confrontations and wars which largely shaped the politics of the region and contributed to the emergence of Bangladesh as an independent country. With Yugoslavia, India founded the Non-Aligned Movement but later entered an agreement with the former Soviet Union following Western support for Pakistan. Amid the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, US sent its USS Enterprise to the Indian Ocean in what was perceived as a nuclear threat by India. India's nuclear test in 1974 pushed Pakistan's nuclear program who conducted nuclear tests in Chagai-I in 1998, just 18 days after India's series of nuclear tests for thermonuclear weapons.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 accelerated efforts to form a union to restrengthen deteriorating regional security. After agreements, the union, known as the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), was finally established in Dhaka in December 1985. However, deterioration of India-Pakistan ties have led India to emphasise more on sub-regional groups SASEC, BIMSTEC, and BBIN.

While in East Asia, regional trade accounts for 50% of total trade, it accounts for only a little more than 5% in South Asia.

Populism is a general characteristic of internal politics of India.

Regional groups of countries

This section needs to be updated. The reason given is: Statistics need to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (October 2024)

See also

• Genetics and archaeogenetics of South Asia
• List of tallest buildings and structures in the Indian subcontinent
• List of territorial disputes
• A Region in Turmoil: South Asian Conflicts since 1947 by Rob Johnson
• South Asia Olympic Council
• South Asian cuisine
• South Asian Football Federation
• South Asian Games

Broader regions

• Greater India
• Indo-Mediterranean
  • India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor
• Indo-Pacific

Notes

1. Administered by the United Kingdom, claimed by Mauritius as the Chagos Archipelago.
2. According to the UN cartographic section website disclaimers, "DESIGNATIONS USED: The depiction and use of boundaries, geographic names and related data shown on maps and included in lists, tables, documents, and databases on this website are not warranted to be error free nor do they necessarily imply official endorsement or acceptance by the United Nations."
3. Doniger 2010, p. 66: "Much of what we now call Hinduism may have had roots in cultures that thrived in South Asia long before the creation of textual evidence that we can decipher with any confidence. Remarkable cave paintings have been preserved from Mesolithic sites dating from c. 30,000 BCE in Bhimbetka, near present-day Bhopal, in the Vindhya Mountains in the province of Madhya Pradesh."
4. Jones & Ryan 2006, p. xvii: "Some practices of Hinduism must have originated in Neolithic times (c. 4000 BCE). The worship of certain plants and animals as sacred, for instance, could very likely have very great antiquity. The worship of goddesses, too, a part of Hinduism today, maybe a feature that originated in the Neolithic."
5. Michaels: "They called themselves arya ("Aryans," literally "the hospitable," from the Vedic arya, "homey, the hospitable") but even in the Rgveda, arya denotes a cultural and linguistic boundary and not only a racial one."

1. "Shah Jahan eventually sent her body 800 km (500 mi) to Agra for burial in the Rauza-i Munauwara ("Illuminated Tomb") – a personal tribute and a stone manifestation of his imperial power. This tomb has been celebrated globally as the Taj Mahal."
2. China claims Indian-administered Arunachal Pradesh

References

Citations

1. ^ "Overall total population" (xlsx). United Nations. Retrieved 16 July 2019.
2. "GDP, current prices". International Monetary Fund.
3. "GDP, Current Prices, Purchasing Power Parity; Billions of International Bollars, Billions of U.S. Dollars". International Monetary Fund.
4. "GDP per capita, current prices". International Monetary Fund.
5. "Human Development Report 2020 – 'Human Development Indices and Indicators'" (PDF). HDRO (Human Development Report Office) United Nations Development Programme. p. 346. Retrieved 16 December 2021.
6. ^ Saez 2012, p. 58: "Afghanistan is considered to be part of Central Asia. It regards itself as a link between Central Asia and South Asia."
7. "South Asia". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 1 April 2023.
8. ^ Baker, Kathleen M.; Chapman, Graham P. (11 March 2002). The Changing Geography of Asia. Routledge. pp. 10–. ISBN 978-1-134-93384-6. This greater India is well defined in terms of topography; it is the Indian sub-continent, hemmed in by the Himalayas on the north, the Hindu Khush in the west and the Arakanese in the east.
9. (a) Dyson 2018, pp. 4–5; (b) Fisher 2018, p. 33
10. Lowe, John J. (2015). Participles in Rigvedic Sanskrit: The syntax and semantics of adjectival verb forms. Oxford University Press. pp. 1–2. ISBN 978-0-19-100505-3. (The Rigveda) consists of 1,028 hymns (suktas), highly crafted poetic compositions originally intended for recital during rituals and for the invocation of and communication with the Indo-Aryan gods. Modern scholarly opinion largely agrees that these hymns were composed between around 1500 BCE and 1200 BCE, during the eastward migration of the Indo-Aryan tribes from the mountains of what is today northern Afghanistan across the Punjab into north India.
11. (a) Witzel, Michael (2008). "Vedas and Upanisads". In Gavin Flood (ed.). The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 68–70. ISBN 978-0-470-99868-7. It is known from internal evidence that the Vedic texts were orally composed in northern India, at first in the Greater Punjab and later on also in more eastern areas, including northern Bihar, between ca. 1500 BCE and ca. 500–400 BCE. The oldest text, the Rgveda, must have been more or less contemporary with the Mitanni texts of northern Syria/Iraq (1450–1350 BCE); ... The Vedic texts were orally composed and transmitted, without the use of script, in an unbroken line of transmission from teacher to student that was formalised early on. This ensured an impeccable textual transmission superior to the classical texts of other cultures; it is in fact something of a tape-recording of ca. 1500–500 BCE. Not just the actual words, but even the long-lost musical (tonal) accent (as in old Greek or in Japanese) has been preserved up to the present. (pp. 68–69) ... The RV text was composed before the introduction and massive use of iron, that is before ca. 1200–1000 BCE. (p. 70) (b) Doniger, Wendy (2014). On Hinduism. Oxford University Press. pp. xviii, 10. ISBN 978-0-19-936009-3. A Chronology of Hinduism: ca. 1500–1000 BCE Rig Veda; ca. 1200–900 BCE Yajur Veda, Sama Veda and Atharva Veda (p. xviii); Hindu texts began with the Rig Veda ('Knowledge of Verses'), composed in northwest India around 1500 BCE (p. 10) (c) Ludden 2014, p. 19, "In Punjab, a dry region with grasslands watered by five rivers (hence 'panch' and 'ab') draining the western Himalayas, one prehistoric culture left no material remains, but some of its ritual texts were preserved orally over the millennia. The culture is called Aryan, and evidence in its texts indicates that it spread slowly south-east, following the course of the Yamuna and Ganga Rivers. Its elite called itself Arya (pure) and distinguished themselves sharply from others. Aryans led kin groups organized as nomadic horse-herding tribes. Their ritual texts are called Vedas, composed in Sanskrit. Vedic Sanskrit is recorded only in hymns that were part of Vedic rituals to Aryan gods. To be Aryan apparently meant to belong to the elite among pastoral tribes. Texts that record Aryan culture are not precisely datable, but they seem to begin around 1200 BCE with four collections of Vedic hymns (Rg, Sama, Yajur, and Artharva)." (d) Dyson 2018, pp. 14–15, "Although the collapse of the Indus valley civilization is no longer believed to have been due to an 'Aryan invasion' it is widely thought that, at roughly the same time, or perhaps a few centuries later, new Indo-Aryan-speaking people and influences began to enter the subcontinent from the north-west. Detailed evidence is lacking. Nevertheless, a predecessor of the language that would eventually be called Sanskrit was probably introduced into the north-west sometime between 3,900 and 3,000 years ago. This language was related to one then spoken in eastern Iran; and both of these languages belonged to the Indo-European language family. ... It seems likely that various small-scale migrations were involved in the gradual introduction of the predecessor language and associated cultural characteristics. However, there may not have been a tight relationship between movements of people on the one hand, and changes in language and culture on the other. Moreover, the process whereby a dynamic new force gradually arose—a people with a distinct ideology who eventually seem to have referred to themselves as 'Arya'—was certainly two-way. That is, it involved a blending of new features which came from outside with other features—probably including some surviving Harappan influences—that were already present. Anyhow, it would be quite a few centuries before Sanskrit was written down. And the hymns and stories of the Arya people—especially the Vedas and the later Mahabharata and Ramayana epics—are poor guides as to historical events. Of course, the emerging Arya were to have a huge impact on the history of the subcontinent. Nevertheless, little is known about their early presence."; (e) Robb 2011, pp. 46–, "The expansion of Aryan culture is supposed to have begun around 1500 BCE. It should not be thought that this Aryan emergence (though it implies some migration) necessarily meant either a sudden invasion of new peoples, or a complete break with earlier traditions. It comprises a set of cultural ideas and practices, upheld by a Sanskrit-speaking elite, or Aryans. The features of this society are recorded in the Vedas."
12. Dyson 2018, pp. 16, 25
13. Dyson 2018, p. 16
14. Fisher 2018, p. 59
15. (a) Ludden 2014, p. 54; (b) Asher & Talbot 2006, pp. 78–79; (c) Fisher 2018, p. 76
16. (a) Ludden 2014, pp. 68–70; (b) Asher & Talbot 2006, pp. 19, 24
17. (a) Dyson 2018, p. 48; (b) Asher & Talbot 2006, p. 52
18. Asher & Talbot 2006, p. 152
19. ^ Fisher 2018, p. 106
20. (a) Asher & Talbot 2006, p. 289 (b) Fisher 2018, p. 120
21. Taylor, Miles (2016), "The British royal family and the colonial empire from the Georgians to Prince George", in Aldrish, Robert; McCreery, Cindy (eds.), Crowns and Colonies: European Monarchies and Overseas Empires, Manchester University Press, pp. 38–39, ISBN 978-1-5261-0088-7
22. Peers 2013, p. 76.
23. Embree, Ainslie Thomas; Hay, Stephen N.; Bary, William Theodore De (1988), "Nationalism Takes Root: The Moderates", Sources of Indian Tradition: Modern India and Pakistan, Columbia University Press, p. 85, ISBN 978-0-231-06414-9
24. Fisher 2018, pp. 173–174: "The partition of South Asia that produced India and West and East Pakistan resulted from years of bitter negotiations and recriminations ... The departing British also decreed that the hundreds of princes, who ruled one-third of the subcontinent and a quarter of its population, became legally independent, their status to be settled later. Geographical location, personal and popular sentiment, and substantial pressure and incentives from the new governments led almost all princes eventually to merge their domains into either Pakistan or India. ... Each new government asserted its exclusive sovereignty within its borders, realigning all territories, animals, plants, minerals, and all other natural and human-made resources as either Pakistani or Indian property, to be used for its national development... Simultaneously, the central civil and military services and judiciary split roughly along religious 'communal' lines, even as they divided movable government assets according to a negotiated formula: 22.7 percent for Pakistan and 77.3 percent for India."
25. Chatterji, Joya; Washbrook, David (2013), "Introduction: Concepts and Questions", in Chatterji, Joya; Washbrook, David (eds.), Routledge Handbook of the South Asian Diaspora, London and New York: Routledge, ISBN 978-0-415-48010-9, Joya Chatterji describes how the partition of the British Indian empire into the new nation states of India and Pakistan produced new diaspora on a vast, and hitherto unprecedented, scale, but hints that the sheer magnitude of refugee movements in South Asia after 1947 must be understood in the context of pre-existing migratory flows within the partitioned regions (see also Chatterji 2013). She also demonstrates that the new national states of India and Pakistan were quickly drawn into trying to stem this migration. As they put into place laws designed to restrict the return of partition emigrants, this produced new dilemmas for both new nations in their treatment of 'overseas Indians'; and many of them lost their right to return to their places of origin in the subcontinent, and also their claims to full citizenship in host countries.
26. Talbot, Ian; Singh, Gurharpal (2009), The Partition of India, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-85661-4, archived from the original on 13 December 2016, retrieved 15 November 2015, When the British divided and quit India in August 1947, they not only partitioned the subcontinent with the emergence of the two nations of India and Pakistan but also the provinces of Punjab and Bengal. ... Indeed for many the Indian subcontinent's division in August 1947 is seen as a unique event which defies comparative historical and conceptual analysis
27. Khan, Yasmin (2017) , The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan (2nd ed.), New Haven and London: Yale University Press, p. 1, ISBN 978-0-300-23032-1, South Asians learned that the British Indian empire would be partitioned on 3 June 1947. They heard about it on the radio, from relations and friends, by reading newspapers and, later, through government pamphlets. Among a population of almost four hundred million, where the vast majority live in the countryside, ploughing the land as landless peasants or sharecroppers, it is hardly surprising that many thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, did not hear the news for many weeks afterwards. For some, the butchery and forced relocation of the summer months of 1947 may have been the first that they knew about the creation of the two new states rising from the fragmentary and terminally weakened British empire in India
28. (a) Copland 2001, pp. 71–78; (b) Metcalf & Metcalf 2006, p. 222.
29. "How the Cold War Shaped Bangladesh's Liberation War". thediplomat.com. Retrieved 20 September 2024.
30. "Indian Subcontinent Archived 21 January 2012 at the Wayback Machine" Encyclopedia of Modern Asia Macmillan Reference USA (Gale Group), 2006: "The area is divided between five major nation-states, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, and includes as well the two small nations of Bhutan and the Maldives Republic... The total area can be estimated at 4.4 million square kilometres or exactly 10 percent of the land surface of Asia."
31. "South Asia Regional Overview". South Asian Regional Development Gateway. Archived from the original on 21 November 2008.
32. ^ Pillalamarri, Akhilesh (8 January 2016). "How South Asia Will Save Global Islam". The Diplomat. Archived from the original on 8 February 2017. Retrieved 7 February 2017.
33. ^ "Religion population totals in 2010 by Country". Pew Research Center. 2012. Archived from the original on 9 December 2016.
34. ^ Ruffle 2013, p. 193.
35. ^ "Region: Asia-Pacific". Pew Research Center. 27 January 2011. Archived from the original on 10 October 2017. Retrieved 13 March 2016.
36. ^ "10 Countries With the Largest Muslim Populations, 2010 and 2050". Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project. 2 April 2015. Archived from the original on 7 February 2017. Retrieved 7 February 2017.
37. ^ "South Asian Organisation for Regional Cooperation (official website)". SAARC Secretariat, Kathmandu, Nepal. Archived from the original on 16 December 2013. Retrieved 6 April 2011.
38. ^ "Standard Country or Area Codes for Statistical Use". United Nations. Archived from the original on 11 July 2017. Retrieved 25 August 2012. Quote: "The assignment of countries or areas to specific groupings is for statistical convenience and does not imply any assumption regarding political or other affiliation of countries or territories by the United Nations."
39. ^ Ghosh, Partha Sarathy (1989). Cooperation and Conflict in South Asia. Technical Publications. pp. 4–5. ISBN 978-81-85054-68-1. Archived from the original on 16 May 2016. Retrieved 12 August 2015.
40. Bertram Hughes Farmer, An Introduction to South Asia, pages 1, Routledge, 1993, ISBN 0-415-05695-0
41. ^ Razzaque, Jona (2004). Public Interest Environmental Litigation in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Kluwer Law International. pp. 3 with footnotes 1 and 2. ISBN 978-90-411-2214-8. Archived from the original on 7 October 2017. Retrieved 11 December 2016.
42. Mann, Michael (2014). South Asia's Modern History: Thematic Perspectives. Taylor & Francis. pp. 13–15. ISBN 978-1-317-62445-5.
43. Anderson, Ewan W.; Anderson, Liam D. (2013). An Atlas of Middle Eastern Affairs. Routledge. p. 5. ISBN 978-1-136-64862-5., Quote: "To the east, Iran, as a Gulf state, offers a generally accepted limit to the Middle East. However, Afghanistan, also a Muslim state, is then left in isolation. It is not accepted as a part of Central Asia and it is clearly not part of the Indian subcontinent".
44. Dallen J. Timothy and Gyan P. Nyaupane, Cultural Heritage and Tourism in the Developing World: A Regional Perspective, page 127, Routledge, 2009, ISBN 978-1-134-00228-3
45. Navnita Chadha Behera, International Relations in South Asia: Search for an Alternative Paradigm, page 129, SAGE Publications India, 2008, ISBN 978-81-7829-870-2
46. "The World Bank". Archived from the original on 10 November 2015. Retrieved 5 November 2015.
47. "Institute of Development Studies: Afghanistan". Archived from the original on 1 June 2017. Retrieved 28 February 2019.
48. Saul Bernard Cohen (2008). Geopolitics: The Geography of International Relations (2 ed.). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 329. ISBN 978-0-7425-8154-8.
49. ^ McLeod, John (2002). The History of India. Greenwood Press. p. 1. ISBN 978-0-313-31459-9.
50. Keith, Arthur Berriedale (1936). A Constitutional History of India: 1600–1935. Methuen & Co. pp. 440–444. OCLC 18526.
51. N. D. Arora, Political Science for Civil Services Main Examination, page 42:1, Tata McGraw-Hill Education, 2010, 9780070090941
52. Stephen Adolphe Wurm, Peter Mühlhäusler & Darrell T. Tryon, Atlas of languages of intercultural communication in the Pacific, Asia, and the Americas, pages 787, International Council for Philosophy and Humanistic Studies, Published by Walter de Gruyter, 1996, ISBN 3-11-013417-9
53. "Indian subcontinent" > Geology and Geography Archived 20 February 2012 at the Wayback Machine.
54. Haggett, Peter (2001). Encyclopedia of World Geography (Vol. 1). Marshall Cavendish. p. 2710. ISBN 978-0-7614-7289-6.
55. Territories (British Indian Ocean Territory), Jane's Information Group
56. ^ Sushil Mittal and Gene Thursby, Religions of South Asia: An Introduction, page 3, Routledge, 2006, ISBN 978-1-134-59322-4
57. Robbins, Keith (2012). Transforming the World: Global Political History since World War II. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 386. ISBN 978-1-137-29656-6., Quote: "Some thought that Afghanistan was part of the Middle East and not South Asian at all".
58. ^ United Nations Cartographic Centre Archived 30 June 2017 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved 18 June 2015
59. Sarkar, Sudeshna (16 May 2007). "SAARC: Afghanistan comes in from the cold". Current Affairs – Security Watch. Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zürich. Archived from the original on 14 June 2011. Retrieved 6 April 2011.
60. Chatterjee Aneek, International Relations Today: Concepts and Applications, page 166, Pearson Education India, ISBN 978-81-317-3375-2
61. "SAARC Membership: India blocks China's entry for the time being". The Economic Times. 2 December 2014. Archived from the original on 18 December 2018. Retrieved 17 March 2015.
62. Global Summitry Project Archived 12 July 2020 at the Wayback Machine, SAARC
63. South Asia: Data, Projects and Research Archived 14 April 2008 at the Wayback Machine, The World Bank
64. "SAFTA Protocol". Archived from the original on 15 March 2015. Retrieved 20 March 2015.
65. "South Asia". Unicef.org. Archived from the original on 20 December 2016. Retrieved 16 December 2016.
66. "UNICEF ROSA". Unicef.org. Archived from the original on 20 December 2016. Retrieved 16 December 2016.
67. Mapping and Analysis of Agricultural Trade Liberalization in South Asia Archived 19 March 2009 at the Wayback Machine, Trade and Investment Division (TID), United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific
68. Asia-Pacific POPIN Consultative Workshop Report Archived 25 October 2012 at the Wayback Machine, Asia-Pacific POPIN Bulletin, Vol. 7, No. 2 (1995), pages 7–11
69. Geographical region and composition Archived 13 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine, Composition of macro geographical (continental) regions, geographical sub-regions, and selected economic and other groupings, United Nations
70. "Asia" > Geology and Geography Archived 23 February 2012 at the Wayback Machine. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Columbia University Press, 2003: "Asia can be divided into six regions, each possessing distinctive physical, cultural, economic, and political characteristics... South Asia (Afghanistan and the nations of the Indian Peninsula) is isolated from the rest of Asia by great mountain barriers."
71. "Asia" > Geologic history – Tectonic framework Archived 1 May 2011 at the Wayback Machine. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online, 2009: "The paleotectonic evolution of Asia terminated some 50 million years ago as a result of the collision of the Indian Plate with Eurasia. Asia's subsequent neotectonic development has largely disrupted the continent's preexisting fabric. The first-order neotectonic units of Asia are Stable Asia, the Arabian and Indian cratons, the Alpide plate boundary zone (along which the Arabian and Indian platforms have collided with the Eurasian continental plate), and the island arcs and marginal basins."
72. ^ Baker, Kathleen M.; Chapman, Graham P. (2002) . The Changing Geography of Asia. Taylor & Francis. p. 10. ISBN 978-1-134-93384-6.: "This greater India is well defined in terms of topography; it is the Indian peninsula, hemmed in by the Himalayas on the north, the Hindu Khush in the west and the Arakanese in the east."
73. ^ "Indian subcontinent". New Oxford Dictionary of English (ISBN 0-19-860441-6) New York: Oxford University Press, 2001; p. 929: "the part of Asia south of the Himalayas which forms a peninsula extending into the Indian Ocean, between the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal. Historically forming the whole territory of greater India, the region is now divided between India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh."
74. McLeod, John (2002). The History of India. Greenwood Press. p. 2. ISBN 978-0-313-31459-9.
75. ^ Milton Walter Meyer, South Asia: A Short History of the Subcontinent, pages 1, Adams Littlefield, 1976, ISBN 0-8226-0034-X
    Jim Norwine & Alfonso González, The Third World: states of mind and being, pages 209, Taylor & Francis, 1988, ISBN 0-04-910121-8
    Boniface, Brian G.; Cooper, Christopher P. (2005). Worldwide Destinations: The Geography of Travel and Tourism. Butterworth-Heinemann. ISBN 978-0-7506-5997-0. Archived from the original on 19 September 2015. Retrieved 19 July 2015.
    Judith Schott & Alix Henley, Culture, Religion, and Childbearing in a Multiracial Society, pages 274, Elsevier Health Sciences, 1996, ISBN 0-7506-2050-1
    Raj S. Bhopal, Ethnicity, race, and health in multicultural societies, pages 33, Oxford University Press, 2007, ISBN 0-19-856817-7
    Lucian W. Pye & Mary W. Pye, Asian Power and Politics, pages 133, Harvard University Press, 1985, ISBN 0-674-04979-9
    Mark Juergensmeyer, The Oxford handbook of global religions, pages 465, Oxford University Press US, 2006, ISBN 0-19-513798-1
76. ^ Bose, Sugata; Jalal, Ayesha (2004) . Modern South Asia (2nd ed.). Routledge. p. 3. ISBN 0-415-30787-2. Indian subcontinent – or South Asia – as it has come to be known in more recent and neutral parlance
77. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Columbia University Press, 2003: "region, S central Asia, comprising the countries of Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh and the Himalayan states of Nepal, and Bhutan. Sri Lanka, an island off the southeastern tip of the Indian peninsula, is often considered a part of the subcontinent."
78. Robert Wynn Jones (2011). Applications of Palaeontology: Techniques and Case Studies. Cambridge University Press. pp. 267–271. ISBN 978-1-139-49920-0.
79. Asher, Catherine B.; Talbot, Cynthia (16 March 2006), India Before Europe, Cambridge University Press, pp. 5–8, 12–14, 51, 78–80, ISBN 978-0-521-80904-7, archived from the original on 24 April 2016, retrieved 9 December 2016
80. Ronald B. Inden, Imagining India, page 51, C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 2000, ISBN 1-85065-520-0, Quote:"It is very common today in academic and official circles to speak of the Indian subcontinent as 'South Asia', thereby distinguishing it from an 'East Asia'."
81. International Relations Theory and South Asia (OIP): Volume II: Security, Political Economy, Domestic Politics, Identities, and Images. Oxford University Press. 13 November 2014. ISBN 978-0-19-908940-6.
82. ^ Cutler, Robert M. (2007). Amineh, Mehdi (ed.). The Greater Middle East in Global Politics: Social Science Perspectives on the Changing Geography of the World Politics. BRILL. pp. xv, 112. ISBN 978-90-474-2209-9.
83. Kishore C. Dash, Regionalism in South Asia, pages 172–175, Routledge, 2008, ISBN 0-415-43117-4
84. Bongard-Levin, G. M. (1979). 'A History of India. Moscow: Progress Publishers. p. 11. ISBN 0-7147-1336-8.
85. Thapar 1966, p. 23.
86. Thapar 1966, p. 24.
87. Possehl 2002, p. 141–156.
88. ^ Michaels 2004, p. 33.
89. Michaels 2004, p. 32.
90. Witzel 1995, p. 3-4.
91. ^ Witzel 1995.
92. Flood 1996, p. 30-35.
93. Flood 1996, p. 33.
94. Samuel 2010, p. 41-48.
95. Stein 2010, p. 48-49.
96. Witzel 1995, p. 6.
97. Samuel 2010, p. 51-53.
98. ^ Samuel 2010, p. 25.
99. ^ Hiltebeitel 2007, p. 12.
100. Flood 1996, pp. 81–82.
101. Neusner, Jacob (2009). World Religions in America: An Introduction. Westminster John Knox Press. ISBN 978-0-664-23320-4. Archived from the original on 18 April 2017. Retrieved 26 December 2016.
102. Gombrich 2006, p. 135.
103. Trainor 2004, pp. 103, 119.
104. Neelis 2011, pp. 102–106.
105. Guy 2014, pp. 9–11, 14–15, 19–20.
106. Neelis 2011, pp. 114–115, 144, 160–163, 170–176, 249–250.
107. Klimburg-Salter, Deborah (1989). The Kingdom of Bamiyan: Buddhist art and culture of the Hindu Kush. Istituto Universitario Orientale & Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente. ISBN 978-0-87773-765-0. OCLC 25902336. (Reprinted by Shambala)
108. Crossette, Barbara (1996). So Close to Heaven: The Vanishing Buddhist Kingdoms of the Himalayas. Vintage. pp. 84–85. ISBN 978-0-679-74363-7.
109. Klimkeit, H.-J. (2000). "Manichaeism and Nestorian Christianity". In Boxworth, C. E.; Asimov, M. S. (eds.). History of Civilizations of Central Asia. Vol. IV.2. UNESCO. pp. 79–80. ISBN 978-92-3-103654-5.
110. Samuel 2010, pp. 193–228, 339–353, specifically pp. 76–79 and 194–199.
111. Guy 2014, pp. 10–11.
112. Michell 1977, p. 18, 40.
113. Scharfe, Hartmut (2002). Handbook of Oriental Studies. BRILL Academic. pp. 144–153. ISBN 978-90-04-12556-8. Archived from the original on 26 November 2016. Retrieved 26 December 2016.
114. Lockard, Craig (2007). Societies, Networks, and Transitions: Volume I: A Global History. Houghton Mifflin. p. 188. ISBN 978-0-618-38612-3. Archived from the original on 26 November 2016. Retrieved 26 December 2016.
115. Spink, Walter M. (2005). Ajanta: History and Development, Volume 5: Cave by Cave. BRILL Academic. pp. 1–9, 15–16. ISBN 978-90-04-15644-9. Archived from the original on 29 June 2016. Retrieved 26 December 2016.
116. "Ellora Caves – UNESCO World Heritage Centre". UNESCO. Archived from the original on 9 December 2016. Retrieved 26 December 2016., Quote:"Ellora, with its uninterrupted sequence of monuments dating from A.D. 600 to 1000, brings the civilization of ancient India to life. Not only is the Ellora complex a unique artistic creation and a technological exploit but, with its sanctuaries devoted to Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism, it illustrates the spirit of tolerance that was characteristic of ancient India."
117. Owen, Lisa (2012). Carving Devotion in the Jain Caves at Ellora. BRILL Academic. pp. 1–10. ISBN 978-90-04-20629-8. Archived from the original on 5 February 2017. Retrieved 26 December 2016.
118. "History in Chronological Order". Government of Pakistan. Archived from the original on 23 July 2010. Retrieved 9 January 2008.
119. See:
     • Pirbhai, M. Reza (2009). Reconsidering Islam in a South Asian Context. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-17758-1.
     • Richards, J. F. (October 1974). "The Islamic frontier in the east: Expansion into South Asia". South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies. 4 (1): 91–109. doi:10.1080/00856407408730690. ISSN 0085-6401.
     • Shokoohy, Mehrdad (1988). Bhadreśvar: The Oldest Islamic Monuments in India. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-08341-7.; see discussion of earliest raids in Gujarat
120. ^ Jackson, Peter (2003). The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History. Cambridge University Press. pp. 3–30. ISBN 978-0-521-54329-3.
121. Heathcote, T. A. (1995). The Military in British India: The Development of British Forces in South Asia:1600–1947. Manchester University Press. pp. 5–7. ISBN 978-1-78383-064-0.
122. Barnett, Lionel D. (1999) . Antiquities of India: An Account of the History and Culture of Ancient Hindustan. Atlantic Publishers and Distributors. pp. 73–79. ISBN 9788171564422.
123. Richard Davis (1994), Three styles in looting India, History and Anthropology, 6(4), pp 293–317, doi:10.1080/02757206.1994.9960832
124. Muhammad B. Sam Mu'izz Al-Din, T. W. Haig, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Vol. VII, ed. C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W. P. Heinrichs and C. Pellat, (Brill, 1993)
125. Bosworth, C. E. (1968). "The Political and Dynastic History of the Iranian World (A.D. 1000–1217)". In Boyle, J. A. (ed.). The Cambridge History of Iran. Vol. 5. Cambridge University Press. pp. 161–170. ISBN 978-0-521-06936-6.
126. History of South Asia: A Chronological Outline Archived 11 December 2013 at the Wayback Machine Columbia University (2010)
127. Muḥammad ibn Tughluq Archived 27 April 2015 at the Wayback Machine Encyclopædia Britannica
128. Firoz Shah Tughlak, Futuhat-i Firoz Shahi – Autobiographical memoirs Archived 19 October 2016 at the Wayback Machine, Translated in 1871 by Elliot and Dawson, Volume 3 – The History of India, Cornell University Archives, pp 377–381
129. Smith, Vincent A. (1919). The Oxford History of India. Oxford University Press. pp. 249–251. OCLC 839048936.
130. Schimmel, Annemarie (1980). Islam in the Indian Subcontinent. Leiden: E.J. Brill. pp. 20–23. ISBN 978-90-04-06117-0.
131. Lewis, David (2011). Bangladesh: Politics, Economy and Civil Society. Cambridge University Press. p. 44. ISBN 978-1-139-50257-3. In 1346 ... what became known as the Bengal Sultanate began and continued for almost two centuries.
132. Hussain, Syed Ejaz (2003). The Bengal Sultanate: Politics, Economy and Coins (A.D. 1205–1576). Manohar. p. 325. ISBN 978-81-7304-482-3. The rulers of the Sultanate Bengal are often blamed for promoting Islam as state sponsored religion.
133. Kulke, Hermann; Rothermund, Dietmar (2004) . A History of India (4th ed.). Routledge. pp. 187, 191–192. ISBN 978-0-415-32919-4.
134. Nilakanta Sastri, K. A. (1955) . A history of South India from prehistoric times to the fall of Vijayanagar. New Delhi: Indian Branch, Oxford University Press. pp. 216, 239–250. ISBN 978-0-19-560686-7.
135. Lodi Dynasty Archived 27 April 2015 at the Wayback Machine Encyclopædia Britannica (2009)
136. Pathak, Guptajit (2008). Assam's history and its graphics. Mittal. p. 124. ISBN 978-81-8324-251-6.
137. Bosworth, Clifford Edmund (2014) . The New Islamic Dynasties. Edinburgh University Press. pp. 179–180. ISBN 978-0-7486-9648-2.
138. ^ Maddison 2003, pp. 259–261.
139. Böröcz, József (10 September 2009). The European Union and Global Social Change. Routledge. p. 21. ISBN 978-1-135-25580-0. Retrieved 26 June 2017.
140. Catherine Blanshard Asher (1992). Architecture of Mughal India. Cambridge University Press. pp. 1–2. ISBN 978-0-521-26728-1. Archived from the original on 18 May 2016. Retrieved 27 December 2016.
141. Lawrence E. Harrison, Peter L. Berger (2006). Developing cultures: case studies. Routledge. p. 158. ISBN 978-0-415-95279-8. Archived from the original on 28 March 2019. Retrieved 28 March 2019.
142. Richards, John F. (1995). The Mughal Empire. Cambridge University Press. pp. 97–101. ISBN 978-0-521-56603-2. Archived from the original on 29 May 2016. Retrieved 27 December 2016.
143. Pashaura Singh (2005), Understanding the Martyrdom of Guru Arjan Archived 3 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine, Journal of Punjab Studies, 12(1), pages 29–62; Quote (p. 29): "most of the Sikh scholars have vehemently presented this event as the first of the long series of religious persecutions that Sikhs suffered at the hands of Mughal authorities.";
     Singh, Pashaura (2006). Life and Work of Guru Arjan: History, Memory, and Biography in the Sikh Tradition. Oxford University Press. pp. 23, 217–218. ISBN 978-0-19-567921-2. Archived from the original on 30 March 2017. Retrieved 27 December 2016.
144. Seiple, Chris (2013). The Routledge handbook of religion and security. New York: Routledge. p. 96. ISBN 978-0-415-66744-9.
145. Singh, Pashaura; Fenech, Louis (2014). The Oxford handbook of Sikh studies. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. pp. 236–238, 442–445. ISBN 978-0-19-969930-8.
146. Schimmel, Annemarie; Waghmar, Burzine K. (2004). The Empire of the Great Mughals: History, Art and Culture. Reaktion. pp. 35, 115–121. ISBN 978-1-86189-185-3. Retrieved 27 December 2016.
147. White, Matthew (2011). The Great Big Book of Horrible Things. W. W. Norton. p. 234. ISBN 978-0-393-08192-3. The Mughals traditionally had been tolerant of Hinduism ... Aurangzeb, however ... prohibited Hindus from riding horses or litters. He reintroduced the head tax non-Muslims had to pay. Aurangzeb relentlessly destroyed Hindu temples all across India.
148. The Oxford History of India Archived 26 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine, Oxford University Press, page 437
149. Bowman, John (2005). Columbia Chronologies of Asian History and Culture. Columbia University Press. pp. 282–284. ISBN 978-0-231-50004-3.
150. Copland, Ian; Mabbett, Ian; Roy, Asim; et al. (2012). A History of State and Religion in India. Routledge. p. 161.
151. History of Mysore Under Hyder Ali and Tippoo Sultan by Joseph Michaud p. 143
152. Roy, Tirthankar (2010). "The Long Globalization and Textile Producers in India". In Lex Heerma van Voss; Els Hiemstra-Kuperus; Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk (eds.). The Ashgate Companion to the History of Textile Workers, 1650–2000. Ashgate Publishing. p. 255. ISBN 978-0-7546-6428-4.
153. J. S. Grewal (1990). The Sikhs of the Punjab. The New Cambridge History of India. Vol. II.3. Cambridge University Press. pp. 99, 103. ISBN 978-0-521-26884-4. In 1799, a process of unification was started by Ranjit Singh virtually to establish an empire ... Before his death in 1839 Rajit Singh's authority over all the conquered and subordinated territories between the river Satlej and the mountain ranges of Ladakh, Karakoram, Hindukush and Sulaiman was recognized.
154. Singh, Patwant (2008). Empire of the Sikhs: The Life and Times of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. Peter Owen. pp. 113–124. ISBN 978-0-7206-1323-0.
155. ^ Sullivan, Dylan; Hickel, Jason. "How British colonialism killed 100 million Indians in 40 years" (Opinion). Al Jazeera. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
156. "The Indian Uprising of 1857 and its aftermath". www.lhistoire.fr (in French). Retrieved 1 September 2023.
157. Metcalf & Metcalf 2006, p. 97.
158. Persaud, Alexander (27 August 2020), "Indian Merchant Migration within the British Empire", Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History, doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190277727.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277727-e-602 (inactive 1 November 2024), ISBN 978-0-19-027772-7, retrieved 9 May 2024{{citation}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of November 2024 (link)
159. "Indian migration and empire : a colonial genealogy of the modern state | Western Libraries | Western Washington University". library.wwu.edu. Retrieved 9 May 2024.
160. Ness, Immanuel, ed. (4 February 2013). The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration (1 ed.). Wiley. doi:10.1002/9781444351071.wbeghm501. ISBN 978-1-4443-3489-0.
161. D, J.M.S.P.; Demy, T.J. (2017). War and Religion: An Encyclopedia of Faith and Conflict [3 volumes]. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 644. ISBN 979-8-216-16317-6.
162. McLane, John R. (1977). Indian Nationalism and the Early Congress. Princeton University Press. JSTOR j.ctt13x1cv8.
163. ^ Darwin, John (3 March 2011). "BBC – History – British History in depth: Britain, the Commonwealth and the End of Empire". BBC. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
164. Tharoor, Shashi. "The Partition: The British game of 'divide and rule'". Al Jazeera. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
165. Dalrymple, William (22 June 2015). "The Mutual Genocide of Indian Partition". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
166. "Goa Remained a Portuguese Colony when India Became Independent". The Wire. Retrieved 9 May 2024.
167. Asrar, Shakeeb. "How British India was divided". Al Jazeera. Retrieved 9 May 2024.
168. "Why Pakistan ended up with so few princely states". The Indian Express. 14 August 2021. Retrieved 9 May 2024.
169. "India and Pakistan came close to nuclear war: Pompeo". BBC News. 25 January 2023. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
170. "What has been the Impact of the Creation of Bangladesh? | History Today". www.historytoday.com. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
171. "The nuclear arsenals of China, India and Pakistan are growing". The Economist. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
172. Sen, Somdeep. "Why is India standing with Putin's Russia?". Al Jazeera. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
173. Russia and India: A New Chapter https://carnegieendowment.org/ Rajan Menon, Eugene Rumer
174. "How India Sees China's Ties with Pakistan and Bhutan". Brookings. Retrieved 9 May 2024.
175. Mir, Asfandyar (28 February 2023). "Pakistan's Twin Crises". Foreign Affairs. ISSN 0015-7120. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
176. "No Pakistani prime minister has completed a full term in office". Al Jazeera. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
177. "India's rise is beyond doubt". Nikkei Asia. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
178. ^ "UN praises 'remarkable' India as 415 million exit poverty levels in 15 years". Hindustan Times. 11 July 2023. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
179. ^ "India and Pakistan: A tale of two economies". Livemint.
180. "There are lessons for Pakistan in the 1971 secession of Bangladesh". Arab News PK. 10 November 2022. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
181. Bangal. "Bangladesh Liberation War: Economic Exploitation". Virtual Bangladesh. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
182. "Bangladesh's economic miracle is in jeopardy". The Economist. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
183. Sinha, Shishir (7 May 2023). "Per capita GDP for Bangladesh higher than India till 2022". BusinessLine. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
184. "A historical timeline of Afghanistan". PBS NewsHour. 4 May 2011. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
185. ^ "From refugee camps to Kabul: The story of Afghan cricket". BBC News. 1 February 2014. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
186. Malji, Andrea (2022). "Religious Nationalism in Contemporary South Asia". Elements in Religion and Violence. doi:10.1017/9781108919050. ISBN 978-1-108-91905-0.
187. ^ Ramachandran, Sudha (21 August 2023). "Muqtedar Khan on Why Religious Nationalism Is Poisoning South Asia". The Diplomat. Retrieved 11 May 2024.
188. Kumar, Navtan (30 November 2019). "Hindus under attack in Bangladesh, Pakistan, face annihilation". The Sunday Guardian Live. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
189. Kundu, Kimtee (1 February 2023). "The Past has yet to Leave the Present: Genocide in Bangladesh". Harvard International Review. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
190. Tanveer Ahmad Khan (24 April 2023). "Limited Hard Balancing: Explaining India's Counter Response to Chinese Encirclement". Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs. Air University. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
191. Schuman, Michael (1 March 2023). "What Limits Any U.S. Alliance With India Over China". The Atlantic. Retrieved 9 May 2024.
192. Saul Bernard Cohen, Geopolitics of the world system, pages 304–305, Rowman & Littlefield, 2003, ISBN 0-8476-9907-2
193. Xinru, Liu (2010). The Silk Road in World History. Oxford University Press. p. 40.
194. Sinvhal, Understanding Earthquake Disasters, page 52, Tata McGraw-Hill Education, 2010, ISBN 978-0-07-014456-9
195. Kumar, M. Ravi; Bhatia, S. C. (1999). "A new seismic hazard map for the Indian plate region under the global seismic hazard assessment programme". Current Science. 77 (3): 447. JSTOR 24102967.
196. M. Asif Khan, Tectonics of the Nanga Parbat syntaxis and the Western Himalaya, page 375, Geological Society of London, 2000, ISBN 978-1-86239-061-4
197. Srikrishna Prapnnachari, Concepts in Frame Design, page 152, Srikrishna Prapnnachari, ISBN 978-99929-52-21-4
198. A. M. Celâl Şengör, Tectonic evolution of the Tethyan Region, Springer, 1989, ISBN 978-0-7923-0067-0
199. Valentin Semenovich Burtman & Peter Hale Molnar, Geological and Geophysical Evidence for Deep Subduction of Continental Crust Beneath the Pamir, page 10, Geological Society of America, 1993, ISBN 0-8137-2281-0
200. Peel, M. C.; Finlayson, B. L.; McMahon, T. A. (2007). "Updated world map of the Köppen–Geiger climate classification". Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. 11 (5): 1633–1644. Bibcode:2007HESS...11.1633P. doi:10.5194/hess-11-1633-2007. ISSN 1027-5606. Archived from the original on 10 February 2017. Retrieved 18 November 2015. (direct: Final Revised Paper Archived 3 February 2012 at the Wayback Machine)
201. ^ John E. Olive, The Encyclopedia of World Climatology, page 115-117, Springer, 2005, ISBN 978-1-4020-3264-6
202. Mitra et al. 2002, p. 83.
203. Mitra et al. 2002, p. 76.
204. ^ Guo, Lianyi; Shi, Yi; Zhao, Yang (1 August 2023). "Future Projections of Extreme Integrated Water Vapor Transport and Population Exposure Over the Asian Monsoon Region". Earth's Future. 11 (8): e2023EF003583. Bibcode:2023EaFut..1103583G. doi:10.1029/2023EF003583.
205. ^ Shaw, R., Y. Luo, T. S. Cheong, S. Abdul Halim, S. Chaturvedi, M. Hashizume, G. E. Insarov, Y. Ishikawa, M. Jafari, A. Kitoh, J. Pulhin, C. Singh, K. Vasant, and Z. Zhang, 2022: Chapter 10: Asia. In Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, New York, US, pp. 1457–1579 |doi=10.1017/9781009325844.012.
206. Krishnan, Raghavan; Shrestha, Arun Bhakta; Ren, Guoyu; Rajbhandari, Rupak; Saeed, Sajjad; Sanjay, Jayanarayanan; Syed, Md. Abu.; Vellore, Ramesh; Xu, Ying; You, Qinglong; Ren, Yuyu (5 January 2019). "Unravelling Climate Change in the Hindu Kush Himalaya: Rapid Warming in the Mountains and Increasing Extremes". The Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment. pp. 57–97. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-92288-1_3. ISBN 978-3-319-92287-4. S2CID 134572569.
207. ^ Bolch, Tobias; Shea, Joseph M.; Liu, Shiyin; Azam, Farooq M.; Gao, Yang; Gruber, Stephan; Immerzeel, Walter W.; Kulkarni, Anil; Li, Huilin; Tahir, Adnan A.; Zhang, Guoqing; Zhang, Yinsheng (5 January 2019). "Status and Change of the Cryosphere in the Extended Hindu Kush Himalaya Region". The Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment. pp. 209–255. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-92288-1_7. ISBN 978-3-319-92287-4. S2CID 134814572.
208. Scott, Christopher A.; Zhang, Fan; Mukherji, Aditi; Immerzeel, Walter; Mustafa, Daanish; Bharati, Luna (5 January 2019). "Water in the Hindu Kush Himalaya". The Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment. pp. 257–299. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-92288-1_8. ISBN 978-3-319-92287-4. S2CID 133800578.
209. Biemans H, Siderius C, Lutz AF, Nepal S, Ahmad B, Hassan T, et al. (July 2019). "Importance of snow and glacier meltwater for agriculture on the Indo-Gangetic Plain". Nature Sustainability. 2 (7): 594–601. Bibcode:2019NatSu...2..594B. doi:10.1038/s41893-019-0305-3. ISSN 2398-9629. S2CID 199110415.
210. "These Indian Cities Could Be Underwater in Less Than 9 Years Due to Climate Change". News18. 5 November 2021. Archived from the original on 12 November 2021. Retrieved 12 November 2021.
211. "New study finds incredibly high carbon pollution costs – especially for the US and India". The Guardian. 1 October 2018. Archived from the original on 5 May 2021. Retrieved 12 October 2018.
212. Ayers, Jessica; Huq, Saleemul; Wright, Helena; Faisal, Arif M.; Hussain, Syed Tanveer (2 October 2014). "Mainstreaming climate change adaptation into development in Bangladesh". Climate and Development. 6 (4): 293–305. Bibcode:2014CliDe...6..293A. doi:10.1080/17565529.2014.977761. ISSN 1756-5529. S2CID 54721256.
213. Thomas TS, Mainuddin K, Chiang C, Rahman A, Haque A, Islam N, Quasem S, Sun Y (2013). Agriculture and Adaptation in Bangladesh: Current and Projected Impacts of Climate Change (PDF) (Report). IFPRI. Retrieved 26 November 2020.
214. Islam, Md. Nazrul; van Amstel, André, eds. (2018). Bangladesh I: Climate Change Impacts, Mitigation and Adaptation in Developing Countries. Springer Climate. Bibcode:2018bicc.book.....I. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-26357-1. ISBN 978-3-319-26355-7. ISSN 2352-0698. S2CID 199493022. Archived from the original on 2 January 2022. Retrieved 30 November 2020.
215. Kreft, Sönke; David Eckstein, David; Melchior, Inga (November 2016). Global Climate Risk Index 2017 (PDF). Bonn: Germanwatch e.V. ISBN 978-3-943704-49-5. Archived from the original (PDF) on 25 September 2017. Retrieved 10 July 2017.
216. Ivani, Jessica K.; Paudyal, Netra; Peterson, John (30 August 2021). "Indo-Aryan – a house divided? Evidence for the east–west Indo-Aryan divide and its significance for the study of northern South Asia". Journal of South Asian Languages and Linguistics. 7 (2): 287–326. doi:10.1515/jsall-2021-2029. ISSN 2196-078X. S2CID 237343508.
217. Ishii, Hiroshi; Gellner, David N.; Nawa, Katsuo (2007). Social Dynamics in Northern South Asia. Manohar.
218. Daurio, Maya; Turin, Mark (2020). ""Langscapes" and language borders: Linguistic boundary-making in northern South Asia". Eurasia Border Review. 10 (1): 21. doi:10.14943/ebr.10.1.21.
219. Mohanty, David Bradley, Panchanan (2023), "Sociolinguistics of South Asia: Tibeto-Burman, Austroasiatic and other languages", The Routledge Handbook of Sociolinguistics Around the World (2 ed.), Routledge, pp. 184–196, doi:10.4324/9781003198345-17, ISBN 978-1-003-19834-5, retrieved 4 October 2023{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
220. Gellner, David, ed. (3 March 2014). Borderland Lives in Northern South Asia. Duke University Press. doi:10.26530/oapen_625238. hdl:20.500.12657/31797. ISBN 9780822355427.
221. ^ "In the North of South Asia, an arc of peace". Hindustan Times (Opinion). 25 October 2022. Retrieved 4 October 2023.
222. Chowdhory, Nasreen; Mohanty, Biswajit (4 July 2023). "Dispossession, Border and Exception in South Asia: An Introduction". Journal of Borderlands Studies. 38 (4): 537–547. doi:10.1080/08865655.2023.2226404. ISSN 0886-5655. S2CID 259697352.
223. Hill, Doug. "Alternative Institutional Arrangements: Managing Transboundary Water Resources in South Asia". Academia.
224. Crow, B.; Singh, Nirvikar (2008). "The management of inter-state rivers as demands grow and supplies tighten: India, China, Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh" (PDF). Munich Personal RePEc Archive. S2CID 129209899.
225. "Putting policy into practice to clean up South Asia's dirty air (commentary)". Mongabay Environmental News. 26 March 2019. Retrieved 4 October 2023.
226. "Decline of the Indus River Valley Civilization (c. 3300-1300 BCE)". Climate in Arts and History. Retrieved 5 October 2023.
227. Thornton, Christopher P.; Cable, Charlotte (2016), Introduction: Between Two Civilizations, University of Pennsylvania, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, ISBN 978-1-934536-06-3, retrieved 5 October 2023
228. South Asia’s Geography of Conflict https://www.files.ethz.ch/ Robert D. Kaplan
229. Neelis, Jason (2010). Early Buddhist Transmission and Trade Networks: Mobility and Exchange within and beyond the Northwestern Borderlands of South Asia. Brill. hdl:20.500.12657/38155. ISBN 978-90-04-19458-8.
230. "States Reorganization Act". Retrieved 12 March 2008.
231. Cardoso, Hugo. "The synchrony and diachrony of an Asian-Portuguese causal morpheme". Academia.
232. Balances and benefits in Southern South Asia: The Maldives and Sri Lanka in 2021 https://www.orfonline.org/ Aditya Gowdara Shivamurthy
233. Future potential and the invisible diaspora: New Zealand and South Asia diasporas https://www.asianz.org.nz/ Robert Didham
234. Cohen, Walter (2017). "Eurasian Literature through the Eighteenth Century". academic.oup.com. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198732679.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-873267-9. Retrieved 5 October 2023.
235. "Patrick Roberts Made National Geographic 'Explorer'". www.shh.mpg.de. Retrieved 5 October 2023.
236. Comparing East Asian and Southeast Asian Buddhism: Looking at Traditional China from the Margins http://buddhism.lib.ntu.edu.tw/ John R. McRae
237. "Setting the record straight". The Economist. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved 5 October 2023.
238. "Sanskrit is the mother of all Indian languages: Bhyrappa". The Hindu. 7 January 2023. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 5 October 2023.
239. "The Sri Lankan Civil War and Its History, Revisited in 2020". Harvard International Review. 31 August 2020. Retrieved 5 October 2023.
240. Perera, Sasanka; Pathak, Dev Nath; Kumar, Ravi (30 December 2021). Against the Nation: Thinking Like South Asians. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-93-89812-33-6.
241. Kamalakaran, Ajay (23 March 2022). "How a unique Tamil dialect survived among a fishing community in Sri Lanka". Scroll.in. Retrieved 5 October 2023.
242. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2014). World Urbanization Prospects: The 2014 Revision, custom data acquired via website. http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Excel-Data/population.htm Archived 4 April 2013 at the Wayback Machine
243. Baten, Jörg (2016). A History of the Global Economy. From 1500 to the Present. Cambridge University Press. p. 249. ISBN 978-1-107-50718-0.
244. ^ "World Population prospects – Population division". United Nations. Archived from the original on 5 February 2019. Retrieved 9 May 2023.
245. "World Population Prospects 2017 Key Findings" (PDF). United Nations. Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 December 2017. Retrieved 29 October 2019.
246. "United Nations Population Div, World Population Prospects 2017, File: Population Growth Rate, retrieved 5/20/18". Archived from the original on 27 September 2016.
247. ^ Bhatia 2008, pp. 122–127.
248. ^ Pandharipande 2008, pp. 419–423.
249. Cardona, George; Jain, Dhanesh (2003). The Indo-Aryan Languages. Routledge. pp. 75–77. ISBN 978-0-415-77294-5.
250. ^ Devanagari (Nagari) Archived 2 July 2017 at the Wayback Machine, Script Features and Description, SIL International (2013), United States
251. Hindi Archived 28 May 2012 at the Wayback Machine, Omniglot Encyclopedia of Writing Systems and Languages
252. Templin, David. "Devanagari script". Omniglot. Archived from the original on 1 April 2015. Retrieved 5 April 2015.
253. Shamsur Rahman Faruqi (2008), Urdu Literary Culture: The Syncretic Tradition Archived 26 October 2012 at the Wayback Machine, Shibli Academy, Azamgarh
254. Daniels, Peter T.; Bright, William (1996). The World's Writing Systems. Oxford University Press. p. 395. ISBN 978-0-19-507993-7.
255. ^ Zielser, B; Turin, M (21 April 2011). Himalayan Languages and Linguistics: Studies in Phonology, Semantics, Morphology and Syntax. BRILL. ISBN 978-90-04-19448-9. Retrieved 19 February 2023.
256. ^ Saxena, A (2004). Himalayan Languages: Past and Present. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-017841-8. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
257. Bhatia & Baumgardner 2008, pp. 391–394.
258. "The Census of British India of 1871–72". Journal of the Statistical Society of London. 39 (2). Journal of the Statistical Society of London Vol. 39, No. 2: 413. June 1876. JSTOR 2339124.
259. "Region: South Asia". 27 January 2011. Archived from the original on 29 December 2016. Retrieved 1 January 2017.
260. ^ Adams, C. J., Classification of religions: Geographical Archived 14 December 2007 at the Wayback Machine, Encyclopædia Britannica, 2007. Retrieved 15 July 2010; Quote: "Indian religions, including early Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, and Sikhism, and sometimes also Theravāda Buddhism and the Hindu- and Buddhist-inspired religions of South and Southeast Asia".
261. Alberts, Tara; Irving, D. R. M., eds. (2013). Intercultural Exchange in Southeast Asia: History and Society in the Early Modern World. I.B. Tauris. ISBN 978-0-85772-283-6.
262. Balabanlilar, Lisa (2012). Imperial Identity in Mughal Empire: Memory and Dynastic Politics in Early Modern Central Asia. I.B. Tauris. pp. 1–2, 7–10. ISBN 978-1-84885-726-1. Archived from the original on 10 June 2016. Retrieved 27 December 2016.
263. ^ "CIA The World Factbook – Afghanistan". CIA. Retrieved 27 March 2012.
264. জানুন [Bangladesh] (PDF) (in Bengali). US department of States. Retrieved 16 October 2019.
265. "CIA The World Factbook". CIA. Retrieved 27 March 2012.
266. Pew Research Center – Global Religious Landscape 2010 – religious composition by country Archived 13 December 2016 at the Wayback Machine.
267. "C −1 Population by religious community – 2011". Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner. Archived from the original on 25 August 2015. Retrieved 25 August 2015.
268. Ahmadiyyas are considered a sect of Islam in India. Other minorities are 0.4 Jains and 0.23% irreligious population.
269. "religion". Maldives. Archived from the original on 28 September 2007. Retrieved 23 August 2010.
270. "Maldives". Law.emory.edu. 21 February 1920. Archived from the original on 11 February 2013. Retrieved 23 August 2010.
271. Maldives – Religion Archived 7 December 2010 at the Wayback Machine, countrystudies.us
272. Statistical Yearbook of Nepal – 2013. Kathmandu: Central Bureau of Statistics. 2013. p. 23. Archived from the original on 18 September 2016. Retrieved 16 October 2019.
273. "Population by Religion" (PDF). Pakistan Burau of Statistics, Government of Pakistan: 1. Archived from the original (PDF) on 29 March 2020. Retrieved 3 October 2022.
274. "Census of Population and Housing 2011". Department of Census and Statistic. Archived from the original on 6 January 2020. Retrieved 16 October 2019.
275. ^ Cox, Wendell (June 2020). "Demographia World Urban Areas" (PDF). Demographia. Retrieved 28 March 2021.
276. Origins of World's Largest Migrant Population, India Seeks to Leverage Immigration Migration Policy Institute
277. Nanda, Aswini Kumar (2005). "Immigration from Bangladesh to India Based on Census Data". Asian and Pacific Migration Journal. 14 (4): 487–499. doi:10.1177/011719680501400405. ISSN 0117-1968.
278. "The Desi Diaspora: Politics, Protest, and Nationalism". academic.oup.com. Retrieved 8 November 2023.
279. Rai, Rajesh; Reeves, Peter (25 July 2008). The South Asian Diaspora: Transnational Networks and Changing Identities. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-10595-3.
280. Shah, Muhammad Hamza; Roy, Sakshi; Ahluwalia, Arjun (2023). "Time to address the mental health challenges of the South Asian diaspora". The Lancet Psychiatry. 10 (6): 381–382. doi:10.1016/s2215-0366(23)00144-x. ISSN 2215-0366.
281. "South Asia's cricket obsession". BBC News. 21 December 2006. Retrieved 1 December 2020.
282. "India constitutes 90 percent of one billion cricket fans: ICC research". The Economic Times. Retrieved 1 December 2020.
283. "Indian Traditional Games for Children, Traditional Games of Tamilnadu for Kids, Old Ancient Tamil Games of Tamil Nadu". ParentCircle. 25 October 2016. Retrieved 4 November 2022.
284. "OCA » Ancient tag game of kho kho catching on fast". ocasia.org. Archived from the original on 4 November 2022. Retrieved 4 November 2022.
285. Kabaddi at Asian Games: Indian men and women rule the roost https://olympics.com/ Rahul Venkat
286. Khosla, Varuni (17 January 2023). "Ultimate Kho Kho S1 claims total reach of 41 million viewers from India". mint. Archived from the original on 19 January 2023. Retrieved 18 January 2023. He also said that UKK is now among the top-5 non-cricketing leagues in India, after Pro Kabaddi League (PKL) and Indian Super League being the first two...
287. Taneja, Nidhima (27 January 2023). "Pro kabaddi, kho-kho leagues chase IPL viewership. India rediscovering regional sports". ThePrint. Retrieved 8 August 2023.
288. "India needs its own $1 trillion states; Is Mumbai the answer?". Financial Express. Retrieved 24 January 2022.
289. "Report for Selected Countries and Subjects". International Monetary Fund. Outlook Database, October 2018
290. Dhoot, Vikas (31 May 2023). "India's GDP expanded 6.1% in 2022-23's last quarter". The Hindu. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
291. Ventura, Luca (18 July 2023). "Global Finance Magazine – Countries with Highest GDP Growth 2022". Global Finance Magazine. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
292. "South Asia, now the fastest-growing region in the world, could take greater advantage of cheap oil to reform energy pricing". Archived from the original on 17 April 2015. Retrieved 16 April 2015.
293. "Southern states to contribute 35% of India's $7 trillion economy by 2030". The Times of India. 9 June 2023. ISSN 0971-8257. Retrieved 6 September 2023.
294. ^ "Field Listing :: Names". CIA. Archived from the original on 1 July 2017. Retrieved 28 July 2011.
295. ^ "UNGEGN List of Country Names" (PDF). United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names. 2007. Archived (PDF) from the original on 28 July 2011. Retrieved 28 July 2011.
296. ^ "List of countries, territories and currencies". Europa. 9 August 2011. Archived from the original on 7 August 2011. Retrieved 10 August 2011.
297. "World Economic Outlook (October 2022) – Inflation rate, average consumer prices". International Monetary Fund. Retrieved 28 November 2022.
298. "World Economic Outlook – GDP current prices, in billions of dollars". International Monetary Fund. October 2022. Retrieved 28 November 2022.
299. "World Economic Outlook – GDP current prices, per capita". International Monetary Fund. October 2022. Retrieved 28 November 2022.
300. "World Economic Outlook (October 2022) – Real GDP growth". International Monetary Fund.
301. Human Development Report 2023-24: Breaking the gridlock: Reimagining cooperation in a polarized world. United Nations Development Programme. 13 March 2024. Retrieved 7 June 2024.
302. "Download IHDI dataset". hdr.undp.org. UNDP. Retrieved 7 June 2024.
303. Last update for Afghanistan from the World Economic Outlook is for 2020. Later years are unavailable.
304. Individual country percentages may not add up to 100% due to rounding. Afghanistan not included in 2022 totals due to year mismatch. World Economic Outlook also does not count Afghanistan in the South Asia subtotals.
305. "Poverty & Equity Data Portal". World Bank. Archived from the original on 15 February 2015. Retrieved 6 June 2015.
306. "25 Countries Halved Multidimensional Poverty Within 15 Years, but 1.1 Billion Remain Poor | United Nations Development Programme". UNDP. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
307. "Half of Afghans suffer from multidimensional poverty: gov't". Xinhua News Agency. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
308. "24.1% Bangladeshis multidimensionally poor: Report". The Business Standard. 8 December 2021. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
309. Kumar, Manoj (17 July 2023). "One-tenth of India's population escaped poverty in 5 years – government report". Reuters. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
310. ^ "Global Hunger Index Scores by 2021 GHI Rank". Global Hunger Index. Archived from the original on 25 February 2022. Retrieved 2 March 2022.
311. ^ "Regional Overview of Food Insecurity Asia and the Pacific - Towards a Food Secure Asia and the Pacific" (PDF). Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. 2015. Archived (PDF) from the original on 24 September 2015. Retrieved 3 June 2015.
312. "GHO | Life expectancy and Healthy life expectancy – Data by country". World Health Organization. Archived from the original on 5 January 2022. Retrieved 2 March 2022.
313. "Global wealth report". Credit Suisse. October 2019. Retrieved 25 October 2019.
314. "Global wealth report 2019" (PDF). Credit Suisse. Retrieved 25 October 2019.
315. "Global wealth databook 2019" (PDF). Credit Suisse. October 2019. Archived from the original (PDF) on 23 October 2019. Retrieved 25 October 2019.
316. "Poverty headcount ratio at national poverty lines (% of population) | Data". World Bank. Retrieved 26 August 2017.
317. Nations, United (17 October 2022). 2022 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) (Report). United Nations.
318. "World Poverty Clock". worldpoverty.io. Retrieved 27 February 2022.
319. "The World Factbook — Central Intelligence Agency". cia.gov. Archived from the original on 9 November 2015. Retrieved 23 August 2016.
320. "Company Profile". Pakistan Stock Exchange. Archived from the original on 30 June 2018. Retrieved 30 June 2018.
321. "Report for Selected Countries and Subjects". International Monetary Fund. Archived from the original on 10 October 2017. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
322. ^ Brinkmann, Suzana (2018). "Improving Education Quality in South Asia (I)" (PDF). Kathmandu: UNICEF Regional Office for South Asia. p. 13.
323. ^ Education: South Asia, UNICEF
324. More than One-Half of Children and Adolescents are not learning worldwide, Fact Sheet No.46, UNESCO Institute for Statistics September 2017
325. ^ Brinkmann, Suzana (2018). "Improving Education Quality in South Asia (I)" (PDF). Kathmandu: UNICEF Regional Office for South Asia. p. 3.
326. ASER Pakistan (2015). Annual Status of Education Report (Facilitated by SAFED). ASER Centre
     ASER India Archived 3 September 2020 at the Wayback Machine (2016). Annual Status of Education Report (Facilitated by Pratham). ASER Centre
327. Girls' Education in South Asia, page 4, Education and Gender Equality Series, Programme Insights, Oxfam GB. February 2006
328. Global Monitoring Report 2006: Literacy for Life, UNESCO, Paris
329. "Girls' Education in South Asia" (PDF). Education and Gender Equality Series, Programme Insights. Oxfam GB. February 2006. p. 1.
330. Unterhalter, Elaine; Rajagopalan, Rajee; Challender, Chloe (2005). A Scorecard on gender equality and girls' education in Asia 1990–2000. Bangkok: UNESCO. ISBN 92-9223-041-7.
331. "Girls' Education in South Asia" (PDF). Education and Gender Equality Series, Programme Insights. Oxfam GB. February 2006. p. 2.
332. Jandhyala B.G. Tilak, Higher Education in South Asia: Crisis and Challenges, page 5, Social Scientist, Vol. 43, No. 1/2 (January–February 2015)
333. "School enrollment, primary (% net) | Data". World Bank. Archived from the original on 1 July 2015. Retrieved 26 August 2017.
334. "Gross enrolment ratio, secondary, both sexes (%) – Data". World Bank. Archived from the original on 16 May 2015. Retrieved 3 June 2015.
335. "GPEI". Archived from the original on 6 July 2015.
336. Haider, Sajjad; Khan, Shameen (31 December 2014). "Lost — The battle against polio". Dawn. Archived from the original on 5 June 2015. Retrieved 4 June 2015.
337. "World Bank Report". The World Bank. 2009. Archived from the original on 18 December 2008. Retrieved 13 March 2009. World Bank Report on Malnutrition in India
338. "World Bank Open Data". World Bank Open Data. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
339. "Agriculture in South Asia". World Bank. Archived from the original on 6 July 2008. Retrieved 21 February 2009.
340. "Hunger in Asia". Compassion International. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
341. "India home to world's largest number of hungry people: report". Dawn. 29 May 2015. Archived from the original on 4 June 2015. Retrieved 4 June 2015.
342. Pandey, Geeta (13 October 2006). "'Hunger critical' in South Asia". BBC News. Archived from the original on 12 January 2009. Retrieved 4 January 2010.
343. Jones, Seth G. (December 2020). "Afghanistan's Future Emirate? The Taliban and the Struggle for Afghanistan". CTC Sentinel. 13 (11). Combating Terrorism Center. Archived from the original on 11 February 2022. Retrieved 2 November 2022.
344. "India: world's largest democracy". BBC Learning Zone Class Clips. Archived from the original on 14 January 2011.
345. Krithika, R. (21 January 2016). "Celebrate the supreme law". The Hindu. N. Ram. ISSN 0971-751X. OCLC 13119119. Retrieved 24 July 2018.
346. Pylee, Moolamattom Varkey (1994). India's Constitution (5th rev. and enl. ed.). New Delhi: R. Chand & Company. p. 3. ISBN 978-81-219-0403-2. OCLC 35022507.
347. Nix, Elizabeth (9 August 2016). "Which country has the world's shortest written constitution?". History. A&E Networks. Retrieved 24 July 2018.
348. Metcalf & Metcalf 2006, p. 304.
349. Burnell & Calvert 1999, p. 125.
350. "Political Parties in India". electionaffairs.com. Archived from the original on 7 July 2015. Retrieved 7 August 2012.
351. "No One Has Ever Completed a Term as Pakistan's PM". Foreign Policy. 25 July 2018. Retrieved 18 October 2019.
352. "LTTE defeated; Sri Lanka liberated from terror". Ministry of Defence. 18 May 2009. Archived from the original on 21 May 2009. Retrieved 19 October 2019.
353. "2A. The state religion". Retrieved 18 March 2015.
354. "12".
355. "The world factbook-Bangladesh". CIA. Retrieved 6 June 2014.
356. Gowen, Annie. "Bangladesh's political unrest threatens economic gains, democracy". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 2 July 2014. Retrieved 6 June 2014.
357. "Fragile States Index 2020". The Fund for Peace. 11 May 2020. Retrieved 25 September 2020.
358. "Corruption Perceptions Index 2019". Transparency International. 24 January 2020. Archived from the original on 12 May 2020. Retrieved 4 March 2020.
359. "Worldwide Governance Indicators". World Bank. 2015. Archived from the original on 5 July 2014. Retrieved 25 August 2017.
360. Lou, Chunhao (3 July 2022). "Geopolitical "Entanglements" and the China-India-Pakistan Nuclear Trilemma". Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament. 5 (2): 281–295. doi:10.1080/25751654.2022.2156252. ISSN 2575-1654.
361. Buzan 2004, p. 71.
362. Perkovich, George. "Is India a Major Power?" (PDF). The Washington Quarterly (27.1 Winter 2003–04). Archived from the original (PDF) on 27 February 2008. Retrieved 12 August 2020.
363. Buzan & Wæver 2003, p. 55
364. Ali & Aitchison 2005.
365. Shaurya Karanbir Gurung (27 April 2020). "India third largest military spender in world, after US and China". The Economic Times. Retrieved 12 August 2020.
366. Fussman, Gérard (2008–2009). "History of India and Greater India". La Lettre du Collège de France (4): 24–25. doi:10.4000/lettre-cdf.756. Retrieved 12 August 2020.
367. Deepa M. Ollapally (July–August 2020) . "India's Evolving National Identity Contestation: What Reactions to the "Pivot" Tell Us". The Asan Forum. 8 (4). ISSN 2288-5757. Retrieved 12 August 2020.
368. Wallerstein, Immanuel (1 June 2017). "India: The In-Between Great Power". Retrieved 12 August 2020.
369. Bhasin, Madhavi. "India's Role in South Asia Perceived Hegemony or Reluctant Leadership?" (PDF). Retrieved 12 August 2020.
370. Oosterveld, Willem; Torossian, Bianca. "A Balancing Act: The Role of Middle Powers in Contemporary Diplomacy". Strategic Monitor 2018–2019. Clingendael Institute. Retrieved 18 May 2019.
371. Buzan 2004, pp. 71, 99.
372. "13 South Asia". academic.oup.com. Retrieved 11 September 2024.
373. Cohen, Stephen P. (2004). The Idea of Pakistan. Brookings Institution Press. p. 59. ISBN 978-0-8157-9761-6. American scholar Allen Mcgrath
374. V.K. Nayar (2005). Crossing the Frontiers of Conflict in the North East and Jammu and Kashmir: From Real Politik to Ideal Politik. Shipra Publications. p. 198. ISBN 978-81-7541-218-7. Though Indian victory in the India- Pakistan War 1971 and the liberation of Bangladesh refurbished India's image
375. Hanhimaki 2004, p. 165
376. Burne, Lester H. (2003). Chronological History of U.S. Foreign Relations: 1932–1988. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-93916-X.
377. Bhutto, Zulfikar Ali (18 May 1974), Prime minister Secretariat Press Release, Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) and Pakistan Television (PTV), archived from the original on 18 September 2011, India's so-called Peaceful Nuclear Explosion (PNE) is tested and designed to intimidate and establish "Indian hegemony in the subcontinent", most particularly Pakistan...
378. "Official press release by India". meadev.gov.in/. Ministry of External Affairs, 1998. Retrieved 12 August 2020.
379. Muhammad, Jamshed Iqbal. "SAARC: Origin, Growth, Potential and Achievements" (PDF). National Institute of Historical and Cultural Research in Islamabad. Archived (PDF) from the original on 11 November 2013. Retrieved 11 November 2013.
380. "About SAARC". SAARC Secretariat. Archived from the original on 11 November 2013. Retrieved 11 November 2013.
381. "Realizing the Promise of Regional Trade in South Asia". World Bank. 9 October 2018. Retrieved 23 October 2019.
382. "The Global Populist Surge Is More than Just a Western Story—Just Look at Asia". The Diplomat. 10 December 2016. Retrieved 23 October 2019.

Sources

• Ali, J. R.; Aitchison, J. C. (2005), "Greater India", Earth-Science Reviews, 72 (3–4): 170–173, Bibcode:2005ESRv...72..169A, doi:10.1016/j.earscirev.2005.07.005
• Bhatia, Tej K. (2008). "Major regional languages". In Kachru, Braj B.; Kachru, Yamuna; Sridhar, S. N. (eds.). Language in South Asia. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-78141-1.
• Bhatia, Tej K.; Baumgardner, Robert J. (2008). "Language in the media and advertising". In Kachru, Braj B.; Kachru, Yamuna; Sridhar, S. N. (eds.). Language in South Asia. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-78141-1.
• Burnell, P. J.; Calvert, P. (1999), The Resilience of Democracy: Persistent Practice, Durable Idea (1st ed.), Taylor & Francis, ISBN 978-0-7146-8026-2, retrieved 2 November 2019
• Buzan, Barry (2004). The United States and the Great Powers: World Politics in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 978-0-7456-3375-6.
• Buzan, Barry; Wæver, Ole (2003), Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-89111-0
• Copland, Ian (2001). India 1885–1947: The Unmaking of an Empire. Longman. ISBN 978-0-582-38173-5.
• Doniger, Wendy (2010). The Hindus: An Alternative History. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-959334-7.
• Dyson, Tim (2018). A Population History of India: From the First Modern People to the Present Day. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-882905-8.
• Fisher, Michael H. (2018). An Environmental History of India: From Earliest Times to the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-11162-2.
• Flood, Gavin D. (1996). An Introduction to Hinduism. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-43304-4.
• Gombrich, Richard F. (2006), in Williams, Paul, ed., Buddhism: Critical Concepts in Religious Studies, 8 volumes, London: Routledge
• Guy, John (2014). Lost kingdoms: Hindu-Buddhist Sculpture of Early Southeast Asia. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN 978-0-300-20437-7.
• Hanhimaki, Jussi M. (2004), The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-517221-3
• Hiltebeitel, Alf (2007), "Hinduism" (Digital printing), in Kitagawa, Joseph (ed.), The Religious Traditions of Asia: Religion, History, and Culture, Routledge, ISBN 978-1-136-87590-8
• Jones, Constance; Ryan, James D. (2006), Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Infobase Publishing, ISBN 978-0-8160-7564-5
• Ludden, David (2014). India and South Asia: A Short History (2nd, revised ed.). Oneworld Publications. ISBN 978-1-85168-936-1.
• Maddison, Angus (2003). The World Economy: Historical Statistics. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. ISBN 978-92-64-10414-3.
• Metcalf, B.; Metcalf, T. R. (2006), A Concise History of Modern India (2nd ed.), Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-68225-1
• Michaels, Axel (2004), Hinduism. Past and present, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press
• Michell, George (1977). The Hindu Temple: An Introduction to Its Meaning and Forms. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-53230-1.
• Mitra, A. P.; Kumar, M. Dileep; Kumar, K. Rupa; Abrol, Y. P.; et al. (2002). "Global Change and Biogeochemical Cycles: the South Asia Region". In Tyson, P. D.; Fuchs, R.; Fu, C.; Lebel, L.; et al. (eds.). Global-Regional Linkages in the Earth System: With 43 Tables. Springer. ISBN 978-3-540-42403-1.
• Neelis, Jason (2011). Early Buddhist Transmission and Trade Networks: Mobility and Exchange Within and Beyond the Northwestern Borderlands of South Asia. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-18159-5.
• Pandharipande, Rajeshwari V. (2008). "Language of religion". In Kachru, Braj B.; Kachru, Yamuna; Sridhar, S. N. (eds.). Language in South Asia. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-78141-1.
• Peers, Douglas M. (2013). India Under Colonial Rule: 1700–1885. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-88286-2.
• Possehl, Gregory L. (2002), "Indus religion", The Indus Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective, Rowman Altamira, pp. 141–156, ISBN 978-0-7591-1642-9
• Robb, Peter (2011). A History of India. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-230-34549-2.
• Ruffle, Karen G. (2013). "Islam in South Asia: Practicing Tradition Today". In Pechilis, Karen; Raj, Selva J. (eds.). South Asian Religions: Tradition and Today. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-44851-2.
• Saez, Lawrence (2012), The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC): An emerging collaboration architecture, Routledge, ISBN 978-1-136-67108-1
• Samuel, Geoffrey (2010), The Origins of Yoga and Tantra. Indic Religions to the Thirteenth Century, Cambridge University Press
• Stein, Burton (2010), A History of India, Second Edition (PDF), Wiley-Blackwell, archived from the original (PDF) on 14 January 2014
• Thapar, Romila (1966). A History of India. Vol. 1. Penguin Books. OCLC 12263284.
• Trainor, Kevin (2004), Buddhism: The Illustrated Guide, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-517398-7
• Witzel, Michael (1995), "Early Sanskritization: Origin and Development of the Kuru state" (PDF), Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies, 1 (4): 1–26, archived from the original (PDF) on 11 June 2007

Further reading

• Anthony, David W. (2007), The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World, Princeton University Press
• Beckwith, Christopher I. (2009), Empires of the Silk Road, Princeton University Press

External links

• South Asia, The World Bank
• Digital South Asia Library, University of Chicago
• South Asian and Himalayan Arts Archived 6 October 2017 at the Wayback Machine, Freer and Sackler Galleries, Smithsonian
• South Asia, Brookings Institution
• South Asia Subregional Economic Cooperation, Asia Development Bank

v t e Places adjacent to South Asia
Central Asia West Asia Central Asia, East Asia East Asia West Asia South Asia Southeast Asia Arabian Sea Indian Ocean Bay of Bengal Indian Ocean

v t e South Asian topics
Countries and regions	Afghanistan Bangladesh Bhutan India North Northwest South Northeast Islands Maldives Nepal Pakistan Punjab Sri Lanka South Asian regions Northwestern Northern Eastern Southern General geography
Ethnic groups	Andamanese Austroasiatic Austronesian Dravidian Indo-Aryan Iranic Nuristani Tibeto-Burman Turkic Other groups Afro-Asians Chinese European and Eurasian Semitic Diaspora
Culture	Architecture‎ Art Cinema Cuisine Cultural sphere Fashion Languages Literature Music Mythology Philosophy Scripts Surnames
Environment	Monsoon Climate change
Economy and Politics	Human rights in South Asia Religious nationalism Hindu Muslim Sikh Stock exchanges Caste system
History	Archaeology Archaeological cultures Bronze Age Iron Age Middle kingdoms Medieval Early modern Colonial era Contemporary era Former countries
Religion	Dharmic Buddhism Hinduism Jainism Sikhism Islam Religious persecution Bangladesh India Pakistan
Sports	Cricket South Asian Football Federation South Asian Games Martial arts Physical culture Traditional games
Education	South Asian studies History
Military	Indo-Pakistani conflicts Sino-Indian border dispute Afghanistan–Pakistan skirmishes
Science and technology	Indian Institutes of Technology Inventions and discoveries History Swords Traditional medicine

• Asia-Pacific
• Regions of Asia
• South Asia