SOUTH Asia is a cradle of ancient civilizations, a land where cultures, languages and histories have interwoven for millennia. Yet beneath this richness lies a quieter, more persistent reality: a lingering psychological unease that shapes how millions perceive the world and themselves. This unease is not merely the residue of contemporary political tensions or periodic outbreaks of conflict. It is also the inheritance of a longer historical experience, particularly the colonial encounter that reshaped the region’s geography, institutions and even its mental frameworks.

The British colonial order did not merely govern South Asia; it reorganized it through measurement, classification and control. Land was surveyed with unprecedented precision, rivers and mountains mapped and vast territories reduced to administrative units defined by lines on paper. Census operations and administrative categories further deepened this........

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