Rethinking Schooling for the 21st Century

CHAPTER 5
South Asia
THE CONTEXT:
HISTORICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL
The present-day political map of South Asia 68 shows the deep and lasting
impact of British colonial rule in the region. Although other European imperial
powers also competed for power and influence in South Asia, it is the British
who succeeded in establishing their empire here. The long political struggle
that uprooted imperial dominance was shaped by multiple forces, including the
interaction between British political institutions and socio-economic changes
occurring in South Asia. However, the final phase of colonial rule was shaped as
much by global trends, particularly the two world wars, as by British or indigenous
initiative. In the regions bordering on Central Asia, a global geo-political contest
for resources had set in during the imperial era, and the contest continued after
empire‘s formal demise.
These wider trends are inseparable from the advent of modernity and its
expression in various sectors of social life, including religion, gender relations
and education. South Asia went through a vast and painful turmoil when colonial
rule ended soon after World War II. The partition of India into two nation-states
caused a holocaust which continues to overshadow economic, military and
political realities and relations in the region to the present. Barely 24 years after
the partition of India and Pakistan, the latter faced another traumatic division
in which its eastern wing became an independent nation-state by the name of
Bangladesh.
The region normally referred to as South Asia, including Iran, covers 5.12 per cent
of the world’s surface area (World Bank, 2017a) but is home to 24.8 per cent of
the world’s population (World Bank, 2017b); within the Asian continent, the South
Asian region covers 11.5 per cent of the land area while accounting for nearly 39.5
per cent of the population. South Asia is thus the world’s most densely populated
region. Within this region, the Gangetic valley has the highest population density
68 Traditionally not a part of South Asia, Iran has been included in this region as it was the only
country analysed from Western Asia.
136
Chapter 5: South Asia