Associate Professor, Department of English, English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, India.
[Article History: Published: 24 Mar 2024]
The socio-cultural, political, economic, and religious exchanges among various civilizations in South Asia have a long history staring from the ancient times onwards and the idea of global village took shape in this region as evident from the verse written in Chapter 6 of Maha Upanishad:
अयं बन्धुरयंनेति गणना लघुचेतसाम्
उदारचरितानां तु वसुधैव कुटुम्बकम् ॥
(The distinction “This person is mine, and this one is not” is made only by the narrow-minded (i.e. the ignorant who are in duality). For those of noble conduct (i.e. who know the Supreme Truth) the whole world is one family (one Unit).
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) includes many elements shared across various civilizations in this region and unite them at cultural, religious, and literary levels. Some of the elements from this list are Buddhist chanting, Vedic chanting, Ramayana, Mahabharata, and many other literary and cultural artifacts. However very ironically most of the initiatives for promoting South Asian studies in this region came from institutions located outside this region and whatever comes as South Asian Literary or Cultural organization comes not only from India but also focuses only on India and hence fails to map the contours of South Asian exchanges. The Journal of South Asian Exchanges aims to fill in this gap. Though this journal is located in India however, its scope is much wider than earlier efforts as it focuses on languages, cultures, histories, politics, economies, and many other issues belonging to all the civilizations in South Asian region. This journal on the one hand caters to the requirements of academics, however simultaneously it also addresses and engages with problems related to social, cultural, political, literary spheres. Therefore, this journal is interdisciplinary, well as transregional and focuses on the densities of flows, movements, and connections that link places, and people to one another in this region.
Various scholars look at the South Asian region differently such as Willem van Schendel considers it “imagined area communities”, and Robert Cribb looks at it as “circles of esteem” in which academics interact with each other, cite each other, gather in events, award prizes to each other, get elected to learned academies, write each other’s obituaries. Following this lead, this journal focuses on calls for cooperation rather than competition, and strives for evolving Southeast Asian studies in terms of networks, global in nature and scope. This journal is an effort towards empirically grounded and theoretically engaged sophisticated studies.
The significance of the journal lies in the fact that knowledge systems despite all overlapping and similarities remains fragmented in South Asian region and this journal aims at bridging the gap and presenting a kaleidoscopic view of this region through its upcoming issues.