Introduction

The proposal for the establishment of a regional organization for cooperation in South Asia, similar to that of South East Asia, was initiated by Bangladesh in the late 1970s. After several years of informal and semi-formal diplomacy led by Bangladesh, the ‘South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation’ (SAARC) was formally launched at the first ever summit of the seven South Asian states – Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka – in Dhaka in December 1985. Before the creation of SAARC, there were previous initiatives for regional cooperation, as briefly noted in the preceding chapter, which were pan-Asian in geographical scope and had different ideological orientations, aims and objectives. These initiatives went awry because Asian states could not agree on their structures, aims, modalities and ideological orientations. Subsequently, regionalism in Asia emerged along sub-regional lines; that is South East Asia, South Asia and so on, and with narrower focus and scope. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was the first such initiative, which was launched by signing the Bangkok Treaty in 1967. SAARC is also a product of this evolutionary process of Asian regionalism.

The establishment of a regional organization is essentially a political project. Generally, economic integration is presented as the key rationale for the creation of a regional body. It is posited here that notwithstanding its goals and rationale, it is politics that drives regionalism and the establishment of a regional organization. In the context of SAARC, it is, therefore, essential to explain the political subtext that drove its formation (and its evolution as will be illustrated in the following chapters). The analysis in this chapter is presented from such a standpoint.

Arguably, three sets of factors are significant to explain the rise of a regional organization. The first set relates to the role of international systemic forces, which function in accordance with the structure of the international system. Second, the regional attributes and the structure of a regional system are significant in the rise and the evolution of a regional grouping. Third, the socio-economic profile of a region and the regional states generally forms the basis of the formation of a regional organization.