September 17, 2025
ISLAMABAD – THE world is in ferment but is South Asia feeling the rumble? Europe is on edge. It’s losing the Ukraine war, and the leaders of France, Germany and the UK, to name a few, are facing the economic and political heat. The US is becoming ever more unpopular abroad and fractured at home, the slide underscored by the killing of a white supremacist by a white youth belonging to a family of Donald Trump’s supporters. The Republican governor of Utah, where the killing happened, bemoaned the fact that the killer was white and not someone from a minority community or immigrant, robbing the right-wing of a handy ruse to target what the Americans call the left.
Trump seems also to be reheating the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine that imperiously forbade foreign intrusion in the American hemisphere. Venezuela, for one, has been targeted for its ties with Iran and China. In Brazil, President Lula jailed right-wing opponent Jair Bolsonaro for attempting a coup against his elected government. Argentina’s pro-US president is reportedly losing the plot and possibly confidence too in the advice he would get from his pet dog whose bark or woof decided political and economic matters. In Eurasia, by contrast, the Shanghai club has got a new spring in its march since China hosted a landmark summit followed by an earthshaking display of preparedness for war should one ever be imposed.
In West Asia, the Arab and Muslim world is grappling with Israel’s genocidal impunity in Gaza and its murderous assault on Doha, not without the knowledge of the US defence forces stationed in the country. Trump, though denies knowing the attack was coming.
In South Asia, Nepal saw violent protests against the ruling elite, evicting the government of a three-term prime minister. Indian media was hoping the violence would restore the evicted monarchy with its Hindu motifs, which is not happening. Since the monarch was regarded as an avatar of Lord Vishnu, it would require tearing up the secular constitution, unlikely to ever happen. Indians seem unaware that whoever rules Kathmandu, king or parliament, China has kept excellent ties with them. There’s the story, for example, of the king asking China to repatriate Maoist guerrillas hiding there. And China handed them over post-haste.
The interim rulers in Bangladesh have set elections in March. If the victory of the Jamaat-i-Islami-backed students in the Dhaka University polls is any indication the country’s and possibly the region’s future looks set for interesting times but little more. Meanwhile, the leftist president of Sri Lanka has jailed pro-US former prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe for alleged graft. The president of the Maldives, for his part, was heading to Doha to participate in the Arab Muslim nations’ response to Israel’s widening aggression against whoever it chooses to target with the blessings of the Trump administration.
Meanwhile, though it could have been more cheerful, India and Pakistan played a cricket match in Dubai. The good news was marred by a curious censure of the fixture by India’s opposition parties. Relief from the pervasive stuffiness came with the Pakistani envoy at the UN delivering a heartwarming speech slamming Israel’s occupation of Palestine even as he lambasted the genocide in Gaza. While India, true to form, signed a slew of defence deals with visiting far-right Israeli finance minister, scandalising much of the Global South and possibly even Europe, which has blacklisted the hateful Bezalel Smotrich.
An apocryphal story ascribed to Pakistan’s fabled poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz describes the South Asian tremors nicely. His comrades were reportedly discussing threats to Pakistan in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. India was eyeing Sindh. Iran was drooling over Balochistan, and the USSR was pondering the warm water ports of Pakistan. Did Faiz agree? The poet, the story goes, took a long puff of his cigarette, flicked the ash, pondered thoughtfully and concluded: “The biggest threat to Pakistan is that nothing will change.”
As ferment goes, the short-lived street violence in Nepal doesn’t quite seem to fit the description of any upheaval.
Nepal is a country after all that not long ago overthrew its centuries-old religiously ordained monarchy, declared itself a secular republic and turned armed Maoist guerrillas into parliamentary democrats. The issues of corruption and nepotism are being highlighted as the main elements in Kathmandu’s recent protests. Both issues are genuine, of course, and played a key role in fomenting anger against the elected but allegedly corrupt government. Such issues, however, have the propensity to surrender their political capital to the most unworthy alternative.
Pakistan and India have seen surges of anti-corruption movements without the core shifting from its rut. The India Against Corruption campaign, for example, promised to rid the country of invidious crony capitalism and deep-set corruption. It targeted Manmohan Singh’s second term and delivered Narendra Modi instead. Likewise, practically every ruler in Pakistan, civilian or in uniform, has come with the promise of cleaning up the system but ended up tilting at windmills at best.
While a leftist government was in bad odour in Nepal, it was the opposite in Sri Lanka where the economy improved under an erstwhile leftist guerrilla president. The Maldives too is doing fine with its own leftist president. And so, life continues along its undulating pattern of ups and downs.
Yet, across South Asia, much has changed in the last four decades, mostly for the better. Remember Dhaka’s first Saarc summit in 1985. Rajiv Gandhi represented the only functioning democracy there. Nepal’s absolute monarch was feted with Gen Ziaul Haq, autocratic Maumoon Abdul Gayoom and Junius Jayewardene. Bhutan was an absolute monarchy too, and the host was military dictator Gen. Husain Muhammad Ershad. Much has changed albeit not as much as Faiz would have wanted. South Asian democracies should count their blessings — and hope for the best for India. That’s how the roles have changed.