 Recently, and especially since 9/11, South Asia has been in the international spotlight. One of the world’s most populous regions (with around one and a quarter billion people, only China compares in scale), its social complexities are unparalleled. South Asia’s diverse religions and many cultures are distributed across states whose territories are arbitrary legacies of colonialism and remain in many cases unsettled. Some of the resulting disputes, which at once feed off and beget religious militancy and strident nationalisms, have today acquired a global significance. Wracked by violence and insurgencies, the politics of South Asia’s states are no longer containable within the region: now an epicenter of international terrorism, South Asia threatens also to teeter into nuclear disaster.
But, if endemic conflict as well as chronic poverty are among the region’s distinguishing traits, South Asia also contains immense potentialities. India’s enduring democracy is one of the more remarkable political achievements of the last half century, while its economic capacities are being focused by the liberalization begun in the early 1990s: success stories like that of the Indian software industry underline the remarkable human resources of the region. From the U.S. point of view, South Asia represents urgent challenges as well as rich opportunities. Since the end of the Cold War and post- 9/11, the U.S. has been working to devise appropriate policies towards the region. Managing terrorism, containing the danger of nuclear war, shoring up fragile states like Pakistan, engaging India as an emerging world power and potential foil to the rise of China, and helping to foster economic development: these are just some of the areas requiring coherent US vision. For their part, the states of South Asia are struggling to govern profound social changes, while being drawn ever more vigorously into the global economic and political field. Indeed, one of the major challenges facing both the region and the global system over the next few decades will be the extent to which each is able peaceably to accommodate the other. South Asia Studies, SAIS’s newest program, has been established to educate future experts on the region and its place in international affairs, who will then be able to participate in the formulation and conduct of policies within and towards the region. Students at SAIS who concentrate on South Asia can expect to acquire knowledge of the region’s history and political development, its social and economic conditions, its strategic environment and challenges, the interplay between regional and global circumstances, and the shifting tenor of U.S. policy towards the region. Sunil Khilnani
Director, South Asia Studies
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