“You begin to liquidate a people by taking away its memory. You destroy its books, its culture, its history. And then others write other books for it, give another culture to it, invent another history for it. Then the people slowly begin to forget what it is and what it was. The world at large forgets it still faster.”
—Milan Kundera, in ‘The Book of Laughter and Forgetting’
In 2016, there was an uproar in the United States. The California Department of Education was involved in a debate regarding the representation of India (that is, Bharat) in its curriculum, with a powerful section seeking to replace the term “India” with “South Asia”, especially while referring to historical periods. South Asia broadly corresponded to present-day India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The suggestion was met with strong opposition from Hindu-American groups who argued that it was an attempt to erase India’s cultural and historical identity.
What began as a Leftist-wokeist drizzle in 2016 has now become a full-fledged pouring, with a dominant section of the Western media and academia blatantly using the term “South Asia” (or just “Asia”) for “India”. What began as a case for historical periods, especially those pertaining to the ancient era, where South Asia manifested a common heritage, culture and also history, has now been superimposed onto the contemporary era.
Today the usage of the term “South Asia” in place of “India” has become so common and widespread that people even use it in their social media writings. A June 15, 2015, post on ‘X’ by a former US Acting Solicitor General is a case in study: “On this Father’s Day, interesting to read Meena Ahamed’s new book Indian Genius, about the success of the South Asian diaspora. South Asian mothers and fathers are no doubt part of the story. Really interesting look into this world. Links with more info below.”
On this Father’s Day, interesting to read Meena Ahamed’s new book Indian Genius, about the success of the South Asian diaspora. South Asian mothers and fathers are no doubt part of the story. Really interesting look into this world. Links with more info below. pic.twitter.com/FgbsvaxLoi
— Neal Katyal (@neal_katyal) June 16, 2025
Meenakshi Ahamed’s book, Indian Genius, as the name clearly indicates, recounts the “meteoric rise of Indians in America”. Of the 20 stories told in the book, it doesn’t even have a single person from Pakistan, or Bangladesh, or even Afghanistan. Yet, a former senior official in the American administration thinks Indian Genius is about “the success of the South Asian diaspora”!
One has seen the most repugnant display of the phenomenon during the Western reporting of the grooming gang menace in the United Kingdom, where the Pakistani identity of these gangs has been concealed under the South Asian (or Asian) veil. Even when several governmental and non-governmental reports have repeatedly highlighted the involvement of Pakistani men, the term “(South) Asian grooming gangs” continues to be used.
There are several woolly-headed liberals who would call it a pointless debate. They would remind us of a common South Asian cultural and historical heritage. The truth is that it’s an egregious exercise on more counts than one. One, there is nothing called an Asian or a South Asian culture. It is Indian culture (i.e., Bharatiya culture) if one is dealing with ancient South Asia. After all, there’s nothing Asian or South Asian in the Indus Valley Civilisation, which has in recent years been called the Indus-Saraswati Civilisation, given a large number of Harappan sites being found along the course of the now-dried Saraswati river.
By using the term South Asia, the attempt has been to take away the history—or to use Kundera’s term, “memory”—of Indians (Bharatiyas), thus paving the way for their “liquidation”. This will sound a death knell for a country that is intrinsically rich, both historically as well as civilisationally.
There is another reason why this larger South Asia/Asia umbrella should be avoided. South Asia manifested Indian history, culture and heritage till the Medina mindset took an institutionalised form in the land East and West Pakistan were carved out of India in 1947. It became a fantasy land which viciously turned against its own past. This made Pakistan invent a new, Arabic identity for itself. And in this identity, Mohammed bin Qasim, an invader who had originally killed, maimed and enslaved the very ancestors of today’s Pakistanis, was made the first official citizen of Pakistan! In the process, Pakistan became the antithesis of India. The heroes of one invariably became the enemies of the other, and vice versa. The very destruction of India and its civilisational identity became the reason for Pakistan’s existence.
This aspect of the Pakistani-Bangladeshi side exposes a more dangerous side of the South Asia lobby: It’s a sinister attempt to conceal the dirty, dubious identity of Pakistan and Bangladesh. So, the terrorists of Pakistan become the terrorists of South Asia. While this South Asian identity is a blessing in disguise for a rootless, ahistorical nation like Pakistan, it’s the double whammy for a civilisational state like India: On the one hand, the civilisational achievements of India have been denied; on the other, it is made to share the crimes/blemishes with which it has nothing to do.
This, however, isn’t the end of the Western double-speak: While one encounters instances of the Asian/South Asian umbrella being used to cover Pakistani transgressions, the moment it has a few palatable stuffs to showcase, one finds the usage of the term Pakistan back in currency: Thus, the BBC introduces Abdus Salam, a well-known nuclear physicist, as a Pakistani, even when Islamabad officially and unofficially disassociates itself with him due to his Ahmediyya connections. But the same BBC hides Pakistan’s grooming gang links.
The time has come for India to reclaim its culture and history. It just cannot let its adversaries take away its historical/cultural/civilisational identity in the name of South Asia. For, once all this is done, India won’t be India but a sad replica of Pakistan and Bangladesh. And that would take away, once and for all, a civilisational alternative that the idea of India provides.
The votaries of South Asia are the closet supporters of Pakistan. They want India forgotten—and dead.
Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.