The shared heritage of an emerging South Asia

As leaders of eight South Asian nations ended their regional summit in the Indian capital, there was a greater sense of purpose and a sense of shared heritage in a region that is not only home to nearly a fourth of humanity but is a cradle of ancient civilisations and the birthplace of major religions.
Connectivity - physical, mental and economic - is the new buzzword of an emerging South Asia that has finally awakened to its economic potential and immense benefits of regional integration that can make it, as Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing put it, one of the world's leading economic hubs.
"A new dawn is breaking over South Asia," Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh declared at the end of the 14th South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit in New Delhi.
The summit brought to the fore the increasing global importance of the region for the world's major powers. The US, the EU, China, Japan and South Korea participated in the summit as observers for the first time and the inclusion of Afghanistan in the SAARC underscored the region's economic and cultural linkages to Central Asia.
At the heart of this renewed optimism about a new future for the multicultural and multilingual South Asia was the sense of connection people of the region, immersed in a shared culture and history, feel instinctively for each other.
Going beyond mere rhetoric, the two-day SAARC summit in New Delhi underscored this connect with its many concrete decisions. The setting up of a South Asian Economic Union, a Customs Union, a South Asian University, a Food Bank to supplement national efforts in times of crises, and agreeing to ensure effective market access through the smooth implementation of the South Asian Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA) were some of them.
Besides, the South Asian leaders vowed to make tangible progress in the next six months on four key issues -- water (including flood control), energy, food and the environment.
The event gave leaders of the eight South Asian countries - India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Maldives, Bhutan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Nepal - an opportunity to share concerns but also provided a platform to build on the region's strengths and the shared cultural identity of its people.
"Beyond the compulsions of politics and the imperatives of economics, there is a cultural dimension to unity within SAARC," said Karan Singh, president of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations.
Interestingly, South Asia is the cradle of four important religions of the world - Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism - and its multicultural mosaic includes nearly half a billion Muslims who live in the region.

"Hinduism is the predominant religion linking India and Nepal, Islam is the common thread running through India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Maldives. Buddhism bridges India, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Nepal," remarked Karan Singh.
Some of Sikhism's holiest shrines are in Pakistan. Except for Lumbini in Nepal, the birthplace of Lord Buddha, Buddhism's most important shrines are located in India.
Besides religion, there is a potent linguistic and literary alchemy shared by people of the region with English as the link language. Nobel-winning poet Rabindranath Tagore is equally popular in India and Bangladesh and can lay claim to the singular distinction of penning national anthems of two countries. Couplets penned by Urdu poets like Mirza Ghalib and Iqbal are recited with equal fervour in both India and Pakistan.
Then, Bengali is spoken in Bangladesh and eastern India, Tamil in Sri Lanka and southern India and Punjabi and Urdu in Pakistan and large parts of northern India. Add to this cinema, music and dance.
With such literary, cultural and religious affinities, there is now growing realisation that anything is possible if the political establishments pool in their economic and intellectual resources for the collective good of South Asia.
Some of that happened at the SAARC summit, which put the 1.7 billion people at the centre of its roadmap for the region.
Decisions taken inside conference halls have a direct bearing on the day-to-day lives of the people.
Asymmetries like a telephone call from New Delhi to Islamabad costing a few times more than what it takes to connect to the US, or a Bangladeshi having to shell out more for seeing the Taj Mahal than Indians might soon be a thing of the past if the leaders keep their promise made at the summit.
India's unilateral concessions to liberalise visa regime for students, teachers and journalists is yet another step towards making the region a homogenous whole - distinct in national identities but secure in a South Asian one as well.
Decisions to rationalise telecom tariff on a reciprocal basis and to charge nationals of SAARC member countries for entry into archaeological and heritage sites the same fees as applicable to their own nationals are just some of the pro-people measures that will help in crossing barriers and promoting integration in the region.
Within a year, SAARC also plans to implement a regional telemedicine network connecting two hospitals in each of the SAARC countries with super-speciality hospitals in India.
Each member state agreed to earmark one rural community as a SAARC village to showcase innovative models of development and poverty alleviation and home-grown best practices for transforming the lives of the people in South Asia.
Above all, SAARC leaders focused on "deepening of pro-poor orientation of growth processes" to carry the fight against poverty to its logical conclusion. South Asia is home to the world's highest concentration of the poor and the illiterate.
Nepal's Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala, whose country is one of the poorest in the region, has stressed on making the elimination of poverty of the region the central mission of SAARC.
"I can't agree more that the touchstone of our efforts to reinvigorate SAARC must be the difference we make in the lives of the poorest of the poor and the weakest of the weak. This is our highest mandate," said Prime Minister Singh.
Refreshingly, people are the focus of this new mood of renaissance in South Asia. "Popular participation in the larger process of South Asian integration is increasing," said S.D. Muni, a noted South Asia specialist.
"One sincerely hopes that in the coming century, South Asia will rediscover its basic heritage and reinforce its cooperative moorings," he said, echoing the new mood of energy and optimism in the region.
And when that happens, and the fruits of that cooperation percolate down to the people who need it the most, the region can truly embark on the road to a promising tomorrow.
Indo-Asian News Service