The name ‘India’ comes from the same root as ‘Indus’, the great river that flows out of the Himalayas in Kashmir, through Pakistan to the Arabian Sea. It is the name which non-Indians have applied to the peoples (H-indus) living by and beyond the Indus, and by transference also to the land. The word India has therefore always had a larger connotation than just the current Republic of India, and embraces most of the territory of South Asia that used to be embraced by the British Empire (see Figure 2.1). This greater India is well defined in terms of topography; it is the Indian sub-continent, hemmed in by the Himalayas on the north, the Hindu Khush in the west and the Arakanese in the east. Modern information on plate tectonics and continental drift has shown how these mountains have all been formed by the dent which the northward-moving Deccan block has made in the southern rim of Asia. It is still pressing in at the rate of about 6 cm a year, and the Himalayas are still being uplifted at about 6 cms a year. Thus, despite variations in climate from arid desert to tropical humid forest, this is a well-defined region-and it has been easily and simply defined as a geopolitical region as well, like Europe or North America. This means it is a region in which there are coherent bonds of culture and a continuous arena for trade and economic integration (but this is a permissive rather than deterministic statement). It is a natural arena within which to exert military power: i.e. its logical defensive perimeter is well defined. Yet despite all this, ‘Greater India’ (South Asia) is divided by religion. Pakistan and Bangladesh are overwhelmingly Muslim, and have Muslim constitutions. India is 80 per cent

Hindu, but has still managed to cling to a secular constitution. The borders between these states are in a geographical sense arbitrary-the product of a hasty attempt at independence in 1947 to separate the hostile communities of Hindus and Muslims. The lines wandered across rivers, roads and railways, tearing off what had been integrated territory, rather like East Germany was once summarily sealed off from West Germany.