South Asia still suffers from the scars of colonialism: the boundaries, and the political faultlines of its states - both internal and external - are legacies of colonial rule. All too often, this colonial inheritance has meant that common challenges facing the region have not been vigorously tackled - "poverty and ignorance, and disease and inequality of opportunity" continue to bedevil its people. This group aims to think beyond the identity politics that the once-colonized have embraced so enthusiastically to their detriment, and imagines a South Asia to come, where borders - above all, borders between communities - will not be so deadly, or so thought-deadening: "...in the course of time, Hindus will cease to be Hindus and Muslims will cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the state."

MEMBERSHIP OF THE EGROUP IS OPEN ONLY TO GENUINE APPLICANTS .