Pulind Samant

Beneath the world’s largest Muslim democracy lies an older Indic inheritance now under strain from deepening Arabisation. In last two articles we discussed the idea of Indosphere and the challenges faced by it. We now move to the core, by picking up a suitable example, whereby a more granular understanding of both these aspects can be developed. The examples of identifiably strongest representative Indic character are two in the whole Southeast Asia region, one each from its mainland and...

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’...