9781422283950

I NTRODUCTION S OCIAL P ROGRESS IN S OUTH AND C ENTRAL A SIA C entral Asia includes the countries of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. These are the nations of the Silk Road, the historic trade route between the East and the West. These nations are culturally diverse. Themajority ethnic groups in the “-stans” are Turkic, and Islam is the dominant religion. They all have one other important thing in common: they were all formerly part of the Soviet Union. This has greatly helped their development. Even though they often discriminated against the native peoples of Central Asia in favor of ethnic Russian transplants, the Soviets built schools, roads, modern buildings, and hospitals. While Soviet power has been gone for decades, the education and infrastructure brought by the regime remain. The nations of South Asia include Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. These areas have been culturally connected since Alexander the Great (356–323 BC) conquered a great empire from the Mediterranean to the Indus River. Later, the Indo-Persian cultures of the Delhi Sultanate (13th to16thcenturies) and theMughal Empire (1526–1857) transcended language and religious barriers from Iran through the Indian subcontinent. In more recent history, all of these nations have been marked by Western imperialism. South Asia was the board for the “great game” of power and empire played in the 19th century between imperial Russia and Great Britain. All of these countries, except Nepal and Bhutan, were at one time part of the British Empire. Even those two countries were influenced by conflicts with the

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S OCIAL P ROGRESS IN S OUTH AND C ENTRAL A SIA