ISSN 0974 – 2514 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES A Biannual Journal of South Asian Studies Vol. 5 January – June 2012 No. 1 Editor Prof. Mohanan B Pillai SOCIETY FOR SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES UNESCO MADANJEET SINGH INSTITUTE OF SOUTH ASIA REGIONAL CO-OPERATION (UMISARC) PONDICHERRY UNIVERSITY PUDUCHERRY, INDIA GUIDELINES FOR SUBMISSION OF MANUSCRIPTS Original papers that fall within the scope of the Journal shall be submitted by e- mail. An Abstract of the article in about 150 words must accompany the papers. The length of research papers shall be between 5000 and 7000 words. However, short notes, perspectives and lengthy papers will be published if the contents could justify. 1. The paper may be composed in MS-Words format, Times New Roman font with heading in Font Size 14 and the remaining text in the font size 12 with 1.5 spacing. 2. Notes should be numbered consecutively, superscripted in the text and attached to the end of the article. 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E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] CONTENTS Articles Regionalism in South Asia: A Conceptual Analysis Imtiaz Ahmed … 1 Inexorable Cross- border Illegal Migrations Entangled in Geopolitical Exigencies in SAARC Y Yagama Reddy … 10 Trends in Mobility of Refugees in South Asia: Tri-Dimensional Diagnostic Approach G Sathis Kumar & S Ramaswamy … 24 In Search of Medieval Asian Seafarers and Islamic World System Anas S … 42 Industrial Modernity, Poverty Alleviation and Sustainability: Some Facets of Gandhi’s Environmental Ethics Shri Krishan & Manjeet Rathee … 57 Fostering Social Inclusiveness through Readdressing Indian Land Administrative System N K Kumaresan Raja … 70 Environmental Security: Dealing with Deudney Anjan Kumar Sahu … 84 Broader Implications of Open Border: The Case of India and Nepal Rajeev Kumar … 98 An Analysis of India's Exports Competitiveness Kulwinder Singh and Surinder Kumar Singla … 112 Combating Terrorism: Analysis of India’s Counter-terrorism Strategy and its Inadequacies Nishu Sharma … 129 Significance of Indo-Pak Cordial Relations in South Asia Najmudheen T and Farhana Kausar … 145 Democracy and Foreign Policy: A Focus on Civil-Military Relationship in Pakistan Anil Kumar Mohapatra … 163 Book Reviews Challenge and Strategy: Rethinking India’s Foreign Policy & Armed Militias of South Asia: Fundamentalists, Maoists and Separatists Surinder Mohan … 171 The Harappa Files Swati Bhattacharya … 175 India and the United States in the 21st Century: Reinventing Partnership Juliet Susanna Lobo … 176 Articles Regionalism in South Asia: A Conceptual Analysis Imtiaz Ahmed Abstract The Nation and nationalism have infected South Asia so much that not only it ended up partitioning itself into predominantly majoritarian religio-centered communities but also had its members involuntarily uprooted and displaced in millions. Mistrust and enmity otherwise became integral to the idea of South Asia as millions suffering from the trauma crisscrossed each other. This is where South Asia differed from no less divisive and violent Europe of yesteryears. Yet, the West, particularly the erstwhile colonial power - Europe, continued to pied piper the post-colonial or ‘national statist’ South Asia. In fact, policymakers, academicians and politicians glued to the national state could not help reminding the stakeholders the parallel between the present status of the European Union and the future of SAARC. If this limits the idea of South Asia so does it distorts the idea of regionalism. Regionalism in South Asia is as much an effort as it is an idea. The idea of regionalism is otherwise entwined with the idea of South Asia, one is no less important than the other. Or, to put it slightly differently, one cannot be attained without the other. It is this entwining that I will try to conceptualize and reflect on both the probable and the achievable. The idea of South Asia is both old and new. If we limit ourselves to the word ‘South Asia’ then it is new. It will certainly not go beyond the Cold War and the policy of the United States to divide the world into regional groupings. But if we extend the term to include the people and the things making up the region, then it is a pretty old one. The former is more geographical and political while the latter more civilizational and historical. The entwining of the two allows for a multiversity of regionalism in South Asia. I will, however, limit myself to only five. Firstly, Ashokan. The idea of South Asia that ignites our imagination when reference is made to Ashokavardhana, ‘Ashoka the Great’, is an interesting one, and there are two sides to it. The first one relates to the darsana [vision or philosophy] put into practice by Ashoka in the third century B.C. We are best informed about him through the rock edicts that were spread all over India during his lifetime. Dr Imtiaz Ahmed is a Professor at the Department of International Relations, University of Dhaka, Dhaka - 1000, Bangladesh. Email: [email protected]. IJSAS 5(1) 2012, pp.1-9. ISSN 0974-2514 Copyright © by Society for South Asian Studies, Pondicherry University Imtiaz Ahmed 2 After the horrors of the Kalinga War, Ashoka renounced war as a method of conquest and adopted the creed of non-violence or peaceful co-existence, both as the national and international policy of the Mauryan Empire. In fact, in Ashoka’s time we have a complete renunciation of the age-old policy of digvijaya [conquest by war] and enunciation of a new policy, that of conquest by the Law of Piety. Interestingly, Nehru, while speaking before Bulganin and Khrushchev in Calcutta on 30 November 1955, made a reference to this: Peaceful co-existence is not a new idea for us in India. It has been our way of life and is as old as our thought and culture. About 2,200 years ago, a great son of India, Ashoka, proclaimed it and inscribed it on rock and stone, which exist today and give us his message. Ashoka told us that we should respect the faith of others, and that a person who extols his own faith and decries another’s faith injures his own faith. This is the lesson of tolerance and peaceful co-existence and cooperation which India has believed in through the ages. In the old days, we talked of religion and philosophy; now we talk more of the economic and social system. But the approach is the same as before (Ahmed 1993:225-26). This is a legacy that continues to impact upon the idea of South Asia. However, the second one relating to Ashoka is even more interesting, almost the opposite of the first. And this refers to the silence or rather silencing of the person who had ruled for thirty-six or thirty- seven years for centuries, as Charles Allen contends, As far as Brahmanical history was concerned, this Ashoka was unimportant. The compilers of the Puranas offered no explanation as to why he should have been named ‘great’, nor had they anything to say about any Mauryan ruler listed after Ashoka. Indeed, the compilers of the Puranas seemed unable to agree as to who exactly had followed Ashoka to the throne of Magadha…. (Allen 2012:35). It is not difficult to see that Brahmanical history was not interested to promote Ashoka or the wisdom that he publicly preached, namely Buddhism. That history is not just ‘past’ but rather an enquiry into the past, and that the ‘enquiry,’ if officiated or dictated, could end up silencing the embarrassing side of the past is something that scholars and laypeople often forget! This act of silencing has not only haunted our past but has come to be an integral part of our political history. The region has too many of them, the genocidal partition of 1947, the genocide of 1971, the brutal killing of people in almost all the South Asian states, including Afghanistan under the occupation forces, Sri Lanka’s annihilation of the Tamil Tigers, Pakistan’s onslaught in Baluchistan and FATA, India’s battling in Kashmir and the Maoist International Journal of South Asian Studies IJSAS January – June 2012 3 Regionalism in South Asia: A Conceptual Analysis insurgency all get silenced in their respective official histories. Silencing too then is integral to the idea of South Asia. Secondly, Kautilyan. This refers to the wisdom of Chanakya Kautilya outlined in his book, Arthasastra [The Science of Material Gain]. Kautilya earned his name from kutila [crooked], which incidentally is related to the somewhat wrongly translated Sanskrit word for diplomacy or external relations – kutaniti [the law of crookedness] or as the Bengalis would tell you, kutanami, that is, in the name of crookedness or Kautilya! It is alleged that Kautilya, with the application of ‘crooked’ or amoral means, helped to transform a small Mauryan kingdom of north-eastern India into one of the greatest empires of ancient India.