What makes South Asia a region
Who agreed this list? The governments that signed a charter in Dhaka on 8 December 1985 founded the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, and its founding membership is the 7 filed here, name for name. Afghanistan joined that body in 2007; the catalogue files it under Central Asia, and the two rosters have differed since.
Counted from the members
- Countries
- 7
- People
- 1.8 bn
- Economy
- $5.0 tnGDP
- Per person
- $2 811a head
- Land area
- 4 568 229km²
- In the United Nations
- 7/7
Three readings, disagreeing about two countries
Read as physical geography, the region is the subcontinent carried on the Indian plate and closed off by the mountain arc behind it, a reading that leaves the Maldives offshore of the line rather than inside it. Read as the United Nations Statistics Division reads it, the grouping is Southern Asia under the M49 standard, which brings in Afghanistan and Iran, and which states of its own regions that they carry no political meaning. Read as the region's own body reads it, the roster is the charter membership plus Afghanistan since 2007. The catalogue files the charter membership, Afghanistan under Central Asia and Iran under the Middle East, and says so on each page.
The wall, and what stands under it
Nepal and China announced a joint remeasurement of Mount Everest in December 2020 at 8,848.86 metres. K2 rises to 8,611 metres in Pakistan and Kanchenjunga to 8,586 metres on the boundary between Nepal and India, while Gangkhar Puensum, at 7,570 metres, is the high point of Bhutan and has never been climbed. The catalogue's record for the Maldives puts its high point at about 5 metres, on Villingili. Bhutan and Nepal are the landlocked members, and each of them borders China and India and nothing else.
The clocks run three quarters of an hour apart
Pakistan and the Maldives keep UTC+05:00. India and Sri Lanka keep +05:30, Bangladesh and Bhutan +06:00, and Nepal sits between them at +05:45, one of a small number of quarter-hour offsets in use. Every member drives on the left. Four of the currencies are called the rupee, and the Bhutanese ngultrum has been issued at par with the Indian rupee since 1974, with the Indian rupee circulating in Bhutan alongside it.
What the members join, and what they skip
BIMSTEC, founded by the Bangkok Declaration of 6 June 1997, takes in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka along with Myanmar and Thailand from outside the region; the Maldives and Pakistan are not members of it. The eighteenth SAARC summit met in Kathmandu in November 2014, and the nineteenth, set for Islamabad in November 2016, has not been held. Bhutan and Nepal stand outside the Commonwealth, neither of them having been governed from British India; the rest belong, Bangladesh from 18 April 1972 and the Maldives again from 1 February 2020 after leaving in 2016.
The states are dated later than the region
India was admitted to the United Nations on 30 October 1945, in the founding year and before independence, which came on 15 August 1947. Pakistan was admitted on 30 September 1947, Nepal and Sri Lanka both on 14 December 1955, the Maldives on 21 September 1965, Bhutan on 21 September 1971 and Bangladesh on 17 September 1974.
Two boundaries left open
The line dividing Indian and Pakistani administration in Jammu and Kashmir is a line of control rather than a delimited border, named as such in the Simla Agreement signed on 2 July 1972, and the boundary between India and China in the same quarter has never been delimited either.
Counted from the records
What South Asia runs on
- Landlocked members
- 2 of 7without a coast
- In the United Nations
- 7 of 7every member holds a seat
- Time zones
- +05:00, +05:30, +05:45, +06:004 offsets
- Currencies
- INR, BDT, BTN, MVR, NPR, PKR, LKRINR in 2 of them
- Official languages
- English, Bengali, Dzongkha, Hindi, Maldivian, Nepali, Sinhala, Tamil, UrduEnglish in 2 of them
- How they are filed
- 7 sovereign statesthe roster's own three statuses
- Driving side
- left, in every member
- Calling codes
- +880, +91, +92, +94, +960, +975, +977
Common questions
Questions about South Asia
Which countries are in South Asia?
Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, which is the membership that signed the SAARC charter in Dhaka on 8 December 1985 and the roster the catalogue files. Wider readings are in print. The M49 standard of the UN Statistics Division files Afghanistan and Iran under Southern Asia alongside these; SAARC itself has counted Afghanistan a member since 2007; and a strictly physical reading of the subcontinent leaves the Maldives outside the line, since the atolls sit on a submarine ridge rather than on the landmass.
Is Afghanistan part of South Asia?
It depends on the roster. Afghanistan was admitted to SAARC in 2007 and is filed under Southern Asia by the UN Statistics Division, so both of those readings include it. This catalogue files Afghanistan under Central Asia, with the five post-Soviet republics it borders, and records the SAARC membership on its page rather than arguing the point.
Why is Nepal fifteen minutes ahead of India?
Nepal keeps UTC+05:45 and India UTC+05:30, so a clock in Kathmandu reads a quarter of an hour later than one in New Delhi. Quarter-hour offsets are rare, and the offsets across this group run from +05:00 in Pakistan and the Maldives to +06:00 in Bangladesh and Bhutan, a spread of three quarters of an hour end to end.
Which South Asian countries are landlocked?
Bhutan and Nepal. Each borders China to the north and India on its other sides, and neither has a frontier with a third state. The rest hold coastline on the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea or the Indian Ocean.