South Asia faces a diverse array of transnational challenges today. Their solutions require regional efforts. Transnational solidarity for solving the problems our South Asia faces at the regional level is a crying need today. Climate change, protection of rivers and other water bodies, efforts against environmental pollution, protection of vulnerable habitats promotion of peace, tolerance and pluralism all require struggles that transcend national boundaries.
The present day information age where communications across boundaries and cultural divides are easy makes it easy for activists to connect with people who share common goals and targets. A transnational solidarity for development, conservation, peace and protection of human rights can be built that pushes the frontiers of freedoms and possibilities across the whole of our South Asian region. We must remember that at the end of the day, we are all the scions of the great civilization of the Indus, the Brahmaputra and the Gangetic river valleys, the children of the Hindukush and the Himalayas, the guardians of the Rajputana, Thar and the Thal deserts, the denizens of the Eastern and the Western Ghats, the natives of the Baluchistan, Potohar and the Deccan Plateaus and the inhabitants of the Indus and Gangetic River Deltas.
Our Geography binds us in bonds where our fates are intertwined. Fogs and smog in Lahore are definitely going to affect Punjab, Haryana and Delhi. Vehicular and industrial emissions pollute the air across the national boundaries. Water pollution in the watersheds and catchment areas in the Karakorum, Hindukush and Himalayan mountains are going to have adverse health and ecological consequences across the length and the breadth of the upper and lower riparian river valleys in the Pakhtunkhwa, Panjab, Sind, UP, Bihar and Bengal in Pakistan and India. Drought in the Thar and the Rajputana deserts are going to be a common hazard for South Panjab and Sind in Pakistan and Rajasthan and parts of North Western Gujrat in India.
The rise of religious extremism in Afghanistan, Pakistan or India are going to cast social and Geopolitical stresses across the whole of the South Asian region and beyond. Terrorism and organized crime festers in in any part and country of the South Asian region is going to be a collective challenge for all of us.
If our problems are common and regional, it makes great sense to unite for their solutions in a transnational solidarity of likeminded progressives. Cultural, religious, caste, political, regional and ethnic fault lines are a harsh, unfortunate reality of life in South Asia. We have all inherited religious, cultural and historic baggage of differences, hate, rivalries and prejudices. Civilization, wisdom and good sense consists in realizing their futility fast in our modern age of science, reason and technology driven societies. If they are futile, they must be thrown overboard. They should never be allowed to become a reason for hating, discriminating against or fighting our fellow human beings living in our common neighborhood and the world at large.
Let us only own those parts of our cultural, religious and social inheritance that encourages, peace, cooperation, tolerance, love, welfare and development. Let us learn that the exigencies and demands of the modern day human existence require a new humanitarianism coexistence where we shall all have to tolerate, accommodate and cooperate with each other in good faith in order to improve our lives and bequeath a better world to our future generations. This requires a new imagination and struggle that shall drive a transnational solidarity for making our South Asia a beautiful and peaceful place of the world.
