ABSTRACT
More than thirty years after independence, we in South Asia have only just begun to go down the road of self-discovery. This search is no longer propelled by the sort of rigidly fixed categories and externally imposed world views that have directed our social reality. Instead, our understanding of ethnicity in South Asia will require analyses as far as possible free from pre-conceived ideas or dogmatic value positions. This represents a difficult agenda given the intensity of conflict in our societies, There is no alternative but to take another look into the mirror at our social reality. It is to be hoped that the shock to the social science community, when faced with a catalogue of its current inadequacies, will generate critical insights and encourage individuals to take on many areas of research which, because of their “sensitivity”, have hitherto remained untouched.
