Pulind Samant

Under China’s expanding shadow, the once-dominant Indosphere faces slow erosion born as much of external pressure as of India’s own long neglect. The term Indosphere, post its coinage around eight decades ago, was broadly understood to include the whole of Southeast Asia, except the northern or one third of Vietnam. It, by definition as well as by factual development, excludes the later born (2002) and newly admitted (2026) ASEAN member state of Timor Leste. A lot can be said or commented...

It was seen in the last article as to how the Southeast Asian region or its parts were perceived as ‘further’ or ‘farther’ or ‘greater’ India by various European scholars and travelers, based on their observations of those territories’ cultural congruence with India. The most significant coinage in that journey of insights and nomenclatures was ‘Indosphere’, which not only did away with the possibility of allegations of Indians harbouring expansionist or revisionist ideas of ‘Greater India’...

Long before modern geopolitics, scholars and travellers recognised a vast cultural world stretching from India to Southeast Asia. Prambanan Temple, Java The impact of Indic civilisation, radiating far beyond the frontiers of modern India or even the vast contours of pre-independence British India, is widely acknowledged. Yet the force of that influence has been most pronounced in the eastern direction. There, its imprint became so deep and pervasive that landscapes, customs and cultural...