New Delhi, Feb. 12 -- There is a disjuncture between the political South Asia and the socio-cultural South Asia that undermines the strictly territorial imagination of post-1947 nation-states. The region's amalgamous demographic profile is a mix of races, religions, ethnicities, languages, and traditions that had been historically characterized by coexistence. Never having undergone ghettoization into clean pockets, the post-1947 borders are arbitrary decisions of local elites and the fleeing British Raj, far from resembling the actual cross-cutting cultural continuity and historical unity of South Asia.

The violence 1947 partition of India resulted in forced migration of the Hindus from Pakistan to India and concurrently many Muslim com...