New Delhi, Oct. 3 -- South Asia, according to World Bank data, is home to roughly 1.7 billion people which is about a quarter of humanity. Yet it remains one of the world's least integrated regions. Borders drawn in blood, nuclear rivals locked in permanent suspicion, and a regional bloc that has spent almost four decades achieving very little. This is the political inheritance of a landmass that was never given a name of its own choosing.

I have a proposition that argues that the region's failure to come together is not just about politics or economics. It is about identity, or the lack of one.

In a paper published in the Journal of Political Science (Prithvi Narayan Campus, Tribhuvan University, Nepal), researcher and Assistant Profes...