The six blind men of the proverbial story touching an elephant and describing it partially fail in the task assigned to them, but they succeed in conveying its complexity. In contrast, the 25 scholars belonging to different disciplines, carefully chosen by the two editors, Adluri Subramanyam Raju and R. Srinivasan, of The Routledge Handbook of South Asia Region, Security and Connectivity, have succeeded on both fronts. They convincingly analyse the bewildering diversity, size and scale of the challenges of South Asia, helping us to grasp its essential reality, even though it is one of the…
