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Delimitation: various problems

tldr: A raft of sourcing problems.

Lede

The article begins like this:

South Asia is the southern subregion of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms. The region consists of the countries of Afghanistan, [note 1] Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. [2] Topographically, it is dominated by the Indian subcontinent and defined largely by the Indian Ocean on the south, and the Himalayas, Karakoram, and Pamir mountains on the north. The Amu Darya, which rises north of the Hindu Kush, forms part of the northwestern border.

References

  1. ^ Afghanistan is sometimes considered to be part of Central Asia. The Islamic Republic regarded Afghanistan as a link between Central Asia and South Asia. [1]

References

  1. ^ Saez 2012, p. 35.
  2. ^ "Afghanistan". Regional and Country Profiles South Asia. Institute of Development Studies. Archived from the original on 20 May 2017. Retrieved 28 February 2019.;
    "Composition of macro geographical (continental) regions, geographical sub-regions, and selected economic and other groupings: Southern Asia". United Nations Statistics Division. Archived from the original on 17 April 2010. Retrieved 31 January 2016.;
    Arnall, A (24 September 2010). "Adaptive Social Protection: Mapping the Evidence and Policy Context in the Agriculture Sector in South Asia". Institute of Development Studies (345). Archived from the original on 15 June 2016. Retrieved 31 January 2016.;
    "The World Bank". Archived from the original on 10 November 2015. Retrieved 5 November 2015.;
    "Institute of Development Studies: Afghanistan". Archived from the original on 1 June 2017. Retrieved 28 February 2019.;
    "Harvard South Asia Institute: "Afghanistan"". Archived from the original on 17 November 2015. Retrieved 5 November 2015.;
    "Afghanistan". BBC News. 31 January 2018. Archived from the original on 29 July 2018. Retrieved 21 July 2018.;
    "The Brookings Institution". 30 November 2001. Archived from the original on 5 September 2015. Retrieved 5 November 2015.;
    "South Asia". The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency. Archived from the original on 2 April 2015. Retrieved 4 March 2015.

There are several issues with this passage:

  1. The physical geographic boundaries are given without sources, and there's nothing in the Geography section that supports this information.
  2. This text is very confident in giving a definitive list of countries, when in fact there's considerable variation in the inclusion of some peripheral countries, as evident from the article's own "Definition" section as well as from the previous discussions (for the case of Afghanistan, they're listed above).
  3. The list of 8 countries has a ref at the end. You'd expect that to be some quality high-level source that discusses in depth the existing definitions of this region and comes up with some solid conclusions? You'll be disappointed. This ref is actually a bundle of 9 distinct links.
    The first one is to the search results for "Afghanistan" on the eldis.org website (in the archived version, there's a blurb about the country and it appears under the heading "South Asia). The second link is to the UNSD list of region codes, from which it's clear that it defines "Southern Asia" as including the countries listed her as well as, incidentally, one that isn't: Iran. #3 is a niche development studies paper that covers five South Asian countries, but it's unclear why it's listed here as it doesn't seem to have any sort of discussion of the region as such (maybe it was used because Afghanistan was one of those five countries?). The 4th ref points to the search results for South Asia at the World Bank data portal (?). Number 5 (which I've touched on above) finally has some discussion of the delimitation of South Asia, but that concludes with a set of 7 countries (Afghanistan and Myanmar being judged as peripheral to it). Ref #6 is for the events listing of one university's South Asia department (??). The seventh link is to the BBC country profile for Afghanistan (with no relevant content there either). Number 8 links to the Brookings Institution web portal page for South Asia; from the short blurb there it only becomes clear that India and Pakistan are included in the region. The last ref is to the CIA World Factbook page for South Asia ( current link), but that also has a different definition to the one given in the lede (it includes the British Indian Ocean Territory).
    All in all, we've got one source here that may be useful in a discussion of the varying geopolitical delimitations of the region, a few that may be useful as WP:PRIMARY data points (though secondary sources should obviously be preferred), while the rest are absolutely irrelevant. – Uanfala ( talk) 19:29, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Definition section

The article's first section, #Definition, has the beginning of what may one day become a good overview. But it's also infected by some of the same problems that plague the lede. Its first paragraph is:

Modern definitions of South Asia are consistent in including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka as the constituent countries. [1] [2] [3] Afghanistan is, however, considered by some to be a part of Central Asia, Western Asia, or the Middle East. [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] After the Second Anglo-Afghan War, it was a British protectorate until 1919. [10] [1] [3] On the other hand, Myanmar (Burma), administered as a part of the British Raj between 1886 and 1937 [11] and now largely considered a part of Southeast Asia as a member state of ASEAN, is also sometimes included. [5] [6] [12] [13] But the Aden Colony, British Somaliland and Singapore, though administered at various times under the British Raj, have never been proposed as any part of South Asia. [14] The region may also include the disputed territory of Aksai Chin, which was part of the British Indian princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, now administered as part of the Chinese autonomous region of Xinjiang but also claimed by India. [15]

References

  1. ^ a b "Afghanistan Country Profile". BBC News. Archived from the original on 29 July 2018. Retrieved 21 July 2018.
  2. ^ "The Brookings Institution". 30 November 2001. Archived from the original on 5 September 2015. Retrieved 5 November 2015.
  3. ^ a b "CIA "The World Factbook"". Archived from the original on 2 April 2015. Retrieved 4 March 2015.
  4. ^ " Indian Subcontinent Archived 21 January 2012 at the Wayback Machine". Encyclopedia of Modern Asia. Macmillan Reference USA (Gale Group), 2006: "The area is divided between five major nation-states, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, and includes as well the two small nations of Bhutan and the Maldives Republic... The total area can be estimated at 4.4 million square kilometres or exactly 10 percent of the land surface of Asia."
  5. ^ a b Ghosh, Partha Sarathy (1989). Cooperation and Conflict in South Asia. Technical Publications. pp. 4–5. ISBN  978-81-85054-68-1. Archived from the original on 16 May 2016. Retrieved 12 August 2015.
  6. ^ a b Razzaque, Jona (2004). Public Interest Environmental Litigation in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Kluwer Law International. pp. 3 with footnotes 1 and 2. ISBN  978-90-411-2214-8. Archived from the original on 7 October 2017. Retrieved 11 December 2016.
  7. ^ Robbins, Keith (2012). Transforming the World: Global Political History since World War II. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 386. ISBN  978-1-137-29656-6., Quote: "Some thought that Afghanistan was part of the Middle East and not South Asian at all".
  8. ^ Saez 2012, p. 58: "Afghanistan is considered to be part of Central Asia. It regards itself as a link between Central Asia and South Asia."
  9. ^ Margulies, Phillip (2008). Nuclear Nonproliferation. Infobase Publishing. p. 63. ISBN  978-1-4381-0902-2., Quote: "Afghanistan, which lies to the northwest, is not technically a part of South Asia but is an important neighbor with close links and historical ties to Pakistan."
  10. ^ "Harvard South Asia Institute: "Afghanistan"". Archived from the original on 17 November 2015. Retrieved 5 November 2015.
  11. ^ Baten, Jörg (2016). A History of the Global Economy. From 1500 to the Present. Cambridge University Press. p. 287. ISBN  978-1-107-50718-0.
  12. ^ Sushil Mittal and Gene Thursby, Religions of South Asia: An Introduction, page 3, Routledge, 2006, ISBN  978-1-134-59322-4
  13. ^ Kathleen M. Baker and Graham P. Chapman, The Changing Geography of Asia, page 10, Routledge, 2002, ISBN  978-1-134-93384-6
  14. ^ United Nations, Yearbook of the United Nations, pages 297, Office of Public Information, 1947, United Nations
  15. ^ Dale Hoiberg and Indu Ramchandani, Students' Britannica India (vol. 1), page 45, Popular Prakashan, 2000, ISBN  978-0-85229-760-5

The first sentence reiterates the list of countries from the lede, and its refs (#1, #2 and #3) are also copies of ones in the lede, they're among the least relevant of the mostly non-relevant refs there. The second sentence (about "some" excluding Afghanistan) is also badly ref-bombed (ref #4 has nothing on the subject, and #9 has only a passing mention). But at least – and at last! – we are now presented with sources that have some actual discussion of the definition of South Asia. There are brief paragraphs on the topic in refs #6, #7 and #8, while #5 dedicates three pages. (Btw, it's strange to see the only decent sources so far supporting a view that the Wikivoice declares as marginal). The third and fourth sentences talk about British rule in Afghanistan and Burma, a tangent that's likely to confuse any user who's not reading the article backwards. The oddness doesn't abate in the next sentence: surreally, it declares that Singapore and Somaliland are not, in actual fact, parts of South Asia. The sixth and last sentence (sourced to a kid's book!) talks about Aksai Chin, a patch of desert that almost nobody will otherwise have anything to say about.

The second and third paragraphs finally bring some clarity (I'm omitting the refs to save space):

The geographical extent is not clear cut as systemic and foreign policy orientations of its constituents are quite asymmetrical. Beyond the core territories of the British Raj or the British Indian Empire, there is a high degree of variation as to which other countries are included in South Asia. There is no clear boundary – geographical, geopolitical, socio-cultural, economical or historical – between South Asia and other parts of Asia, especially the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

The common definition of South Asia is largely inherited from the administrative boundaries of the British Raj, with several exceptions. The current territories of Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan which were the core territories of the British Empire from 1857 to 1947 also form the core territories of South Asia. and the island countries of Sri Lanka and Maldives are generally included. By various definitions based on substantially different reasons, the British Indian Ocean Territory and the Tibet Autonomous Region are included as well. The 562 princely states that were protected by but not directly ruled by the British Raj became administrative parts of South Asia upon joining India or Pakistan.

These two paragraphs would seem to do a much better job of introducing a "Definition" section, and I think they should be the ones doing it. That leaves the first paragraph without much to do. I think it's mostly unsalvageable, except for the bits about Afghanistan and Myanmar, which I reckon can be retained and worked into the rest of the text. – Uanfala ( talk) 19:29, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Going forward

Ideally, the article should recount the various perspectives from which the region has been understood and then detail for each perspective how the region has been delimited. I can see the seeds of that in the article, but expanding them would be quite a task. I'm afraid I won't be of much immediate help here: I've already spent so much time on this (and much more than I'd wanted)! I'll be leaving the more constructive part of the work for others and all I can do at this stage is cut out the dross (as outlined above). As far as I can see, what the remaining sources would allow us to say, and in the absence of anything of quality brought up in the interim, is the following: South Asia can be defined, at least at the general level of the lede, as containing the five core countries of the subcontinent, with then Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Afghanistan typically/commonly/often/sometimes which? included. We'd still need sources about that last qualification (are the other countries included often or just sometimes?). So far, the only thing that we can say without going into WP:OR is that some sources include them and some don't. – Uanfala ( talk) 19:29, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Always included in South Asia:
Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.
Sometimes included in South Asia:
Afghanistan and the British Indian Ocean Territory.
Occasionally included in South Asia:
Iran and Myanmar. 120.18.220.112 ( talk) 08:29, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Sports

Cricket is the most played sport in South Asia. Countries like India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Afghanistan are dominant powers in this sport Mehfuz arshad ( talk) 08:39, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Bangladesh and Afghanistan are hardly "dominant" powers in cricket though. 120.18.220.112 ( talk) 08:34, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
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