Talk:Subcontinent
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Pakistan is the 6th most populous country and among top three fastest economies just to clarify. Secondly the so called term "indian subcontinent" has no credible standing or even a reason. A continent is a continent, what is the logic of adding the "subs"?. It is a lame attempt to exemplify India in the region and in fact goes against Indian attractiveness as it is seen as misleading. The image (map) is a proof of that, it does not look like a map of a subcontinent, it looks like the map of India. I am sure that graphic designers in Pakistan would draw it differently (but why would they). The arrogant blunders & childish recognition attempts of the previous generations should be recognized and terminated. South Asia is a credible & logical term, let us just stick to that. The so called Indo-Pak or Indian subcontinent sounds more like a joke.
"Nobody calls the subcontinent "Indo-Pak"; it's been called the Indian subcontinent for centuries"?!
Not to scream at you--I think we have a nice conversation going here--but you say yourself (in another place) that Pakistanis, do. And the 7th largest nation in the world is "nobody"?
And I might be wrong, but the word "India" does not pre-date the arrival of European colonialists, does it? The words used for centuries were "Hind", "Hindustan", "Bharat" and so on. No?
Why the resistance to having a more non-nation-state-specific characterization? It's not like you to be chauvisitic, Lord Saahab, so you must have another reason...
I have become increasingly comfortable with terms like "South Asia". [Though even that phrase has the baggage of often being considered as a cover used by chauvinistic Indians to imply that India=South Asia.]--iFaqeer 23:16, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)
- I'm glad you've settled into the use of "South Asia". But this has nothing to do with that. "India" as you may or may not know was a term used well before European colonialism in describing the Indian subcontinent by speakers of languages outside of Arabic, proto-Hindi, Persian and other Indian languages. The West knew of "Bharat" or "Hindustan" as India. India, by the way, is a derivation of "Hind." Christopher Columbus was searching for India way back in 1492, if you didn't remember. Secondly, a localized community of Pakistanis, though 150 (or so) million, is nobody in the context of an international community of 6 billion people. "India" has historically referred to the entire subcontinent for many centuries. The term, and unfortunately, perhaps, the one which is sticking, is Indian subcontinent. I hereunder reproduce for your consumption some stats I placed on another Talk page.
The vast majority, indeed very close to all books printed outside of India, before and after Independence, refer to the subcontinent as the "Indian subcontinent." If you run a search on Google for "Indo-Pak subcontinent" you'll come up with only 639 hits, and practically 8 or 9 out of 10 of all the results are headed by Pakistani or Muslim websites. This is clearly a nationalist-cultural bias pushing this name. A search for "Indian subcontinent"? It yields about 155,000 results, the majority of which have nothing to do with Indian or Hindu websites. Last time I checked 639 was around only .4% of 155,000.
- By the way, as for this comment of yours: "Why the resistance to having a more non-nation-state-specific characterization?" Indo-Pak, if anything, further exacerbates the nationalistic tendency by excluding Bangladesh and Nepal. India as a general name has great history as refering to a land not governed by today's Indian republic. Pakistan's history, until 1947, is the history of a greater India. No one's trying to be chauvinistic, just real. I am the most liberal and tolerant guy you'll find. I'm someone who taught himself Urdu script and knows Islam like the back of my hand. But I'm not getting taken in by pseudo-objectivity which is really a veneer for petty nationalism and socio--cultural bias. This goes not only for countries not my own, but for the United States and India. --LordSuryaofShropshire 23:34, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)
[edit] "The Peninsula"
"Europe is just a peninsula since it is on the Eurasian Plate." I haven't removed this, but it's balderdash. More should be made in the article of the uselessness of "subcontinent" in contemporary geography. --Wetman 01:13, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
