- No Such thing as South Asian !
Just a ploy to seperate Pakistan from Iran /Turkey
Yeah I really get irked when I hear people call Pakistan part of South Asia.
South Asia in my opinion should be everything between the Indian border and Southeast Asia.
Calling Pakistan South Asia is really stretching it because religion and writing style and tons of other major cultural influences as well as political and economic relations have much more in common with West Asia than South Asia. Literally half of Pakistan west of the Indus River has nothing to do with South Asia at all. South Asia as a geographic term is pretty misleading because it gives the impression that Pakistan is under the Indian sphere of influence politically and economically like Bangladesh or Sri Lanka which is not really the case.
Is Pakistan part of West Asia? Lot of people will disagree with me, but in my opinion yes it should be.
Pakistan's religion has a lot more common with West Asia than India
Pakistan's politics has a lot more common with West Asia than India
Pakistan's customs have a lot more common with West Asia than India
Pakistan's writing has a lot more common with West Asia than India
Pakistan's trade has a lot more common with West Asia than India
At some point, you have to wonder how many things you can have in common and not be a part of it.
As a Pakistani, visiting West Asian countries like Iran and Afghanistan feels more similar to Pakistan than India. People will disagree with me but that is how I have always felt. I could talk to people in India but it feels like an alien place. In Iran or Afghanistan, I am already fluent in both Urdu and Farsi so I basically do not feel any cultural difference between continuity across Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, or West Asia or general. I do not deny there are differences between Pakistan and West Asia, but they are no bigger than differences between other West Asian countries. Pakistan is as different from Iran as Iran is from Turkey or Turkey is from Saudi Arabia. But all of them are in West Asia. I think Pakistanis have the false belief they have more in common with Indians because Urdu and Hindi are similar. Maybe because I can speak Farsi on top of Urdu, the differences between Pakistan and West Asia seem much smaller to me than to other Pakistanis since majority of things besides language are common. India looks like a completely alien place to me where very few things are common with Pakistan besides language which is cosmetic. Despite Farsi/Urdu/Hindi language differences, I feel more comfortable and relaxed in countries to the West of Pakistan than to the East. I have never understood why Pakistan is considered part of South Asia and not West Asia which has more in common.
What people do not understand is that Islam is not just a religion, it is a way of living that shapes every tiny aspect of your life. The Quran and Sunnah is an guide for how every Muslim should conduct themselves in daily life, and you can see these cultural similarities across Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi, Turkey, Egypt, but not India. Islam profoundly shapes culture of a country unlike any other cultural influence. This is why a Pakistani can go as far as Lebanon or Egypt and already be familiar with a lot of the customs. When people say the only thing Pakistan has in common with West Asia is religion, it is Islam that forms a continuous link between people in Pakistan all the way to the Mediterranean and unites a diverse group of people with more similarities than differences. Pakistan may be next to India but religion was a big enough difference for us to demand a separate country. Pakistan's similarities with India are cosmetic, Pakistan's similarities with West Asia are reflected in strikingly similar culture, deep links, and Islamic tradition. Pakistan doesn't just have a lot in common with West Asia, for all intents and purposes, it has become a part of West Asia and Islam played a huge role in making that happen. The days of Pakistan being a part of South Asia really left with the British in 1947 and were gone for good after 1971.