One month after Pakistan's independence, Lord Mountbatten, the subcontinent's final viceroy who stayed on as independent India's first governor-general, invited Mohammad Ali Jinnah to London to preside over an exhibition showcasing “the Art of India and Pakistan.” The Qaid-e-Azam asked to change it to “the Art of Hindustan and Pakistan.” No single country, he argued, held the rights to the name “India.” Jinnah was unsuccessful. Since 1947, “India” has exclusively been used to refer to Pakistan's neighbour – the neighbour that, by inheriting the Raj's treaty rights, obligations and diplomatic infrastructure, claimed the mantle of key successor to the Indian Empire. It was only decades later that an alternative name for the region as a whole, “South Asia,” started appearing. Even then, compared to geographic notions such as East Asia or the Middle East, or even the much more recent Indo-Pacific, the term met limited success. While South Asia was intended to replace “India” or “Indian subcontinent” in the post-colonial, post-partition era, the latter two terms nevertheless remain often more immediately recognizable. Not only that, but the very attempt to do away with them ends up, more often than not, underscoring India's long shadow over the region.

These naming issues betray the deep instability of the notion of South Asia, not just as a regional identity marker but as a category of analysis.