Wrap-up task

Hey, I was sidelined for a couple of days because I felt a tad unwell. Now, am back on the proverbial saddle to finish the ride :-)

"One swallow doesn't make a summer" is the old saying. But, in a course like this, we simply do not have the luxury of time to read and discuss a lot and, therefore, we look at a swallow or two and .... move on to the next. But, I suppose I would like to remind everybody that what we have done thus far is a remarkably quick survey of a few regions of the world--regions that we might not have known much about prior to this class.

Eastern Europe is one of those regions that is easily forgotten. When we think of Europe, it is France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Portugal, Austria ..... that come to mind. But, as we head east of Austria, there is a whole new "old" Europe.

These are typically less affluent than Western European countries. (While I like the relative simplicity of the map here, we typically do not include Turkey in Eastern Europe. Perhaps Turkey is also like Afghanistan--has been at the crossroads in so many ways, and can be grouped with different regions, and does not quite fully belong to any!)

All these countries were under the influence of the Soviet Union. The two essays you have for the final week are about Romania and Georgia, on either side of the Black Sea. Very interesting essays, and will give you a feel for those countries. You will also see from those two essays that these two countries have a great deal of economic and social issues that are in common.

So, at this point in my "lecture" you are thinking, "just tell me what I have to do for the wrap-up task!" Well, if so, just hold your horses :-)

Because, I want to spend a little bit of time about the way I have 'taught" this class this term. You may have noticed that I practically did not "lecture" at all, and was more a guide leading you up the path. Teaching has been with my "mouth shut". If you want more of an analogy, you can think of the role of a personal trainer in a gym--the user has access to all the equipment in the gym, and the trainer's role is to advise the user about what has to be done for the goal that the user has in mind. Ultimately, it is up to the gym user to do the reps. Well, a user like me have never had a trainer and dodges going to the gym; it shows :-)

One of the best things about the internet is that we now have access to all kinds of information--text, audio, video, historical and archival .... In the old, old days, students had to rely on the professor even for that information. Then textbooks made things different--students had access to knowledge in that book. In the contemporary context, and definitely for this course, my role is that of the guide rather than the "sage on the stage."

The reason I am taking up your time to discuss this wit you: once the term ends, I hope you will not stop understanding the world outside the US. Earlier generations at least had a valid reason--they did not have easy access to materials to further their understanding. We have no excuse at all. The regions we looked at need a whole lot of detailed understanding, because I am convinced that the future of the world will be shaped by developments there--which is also why I did not want us to spend time looking at the Americas, Western Europe, and Oceania. Not that these vast regions become irrelevant .... you get my point, I hope.

So, after all this, here is the final assignment--take time until next Wednesday (29th) if you need to:

• Read the two essays
• Identify an observation from each context
• Write about why those observations caught your attention, and explain whether you think those might be the same case with the rest of Eastern Europe as well
• All together in about 800 words

BTW, lots of metaphors here, eh!

Afghanistan's place in the world

I am done reading through your essays. In my second reading, I will formally evaluate your work, and then pass along my comments to you—individually, of course.

Through your work, you have identified how much of an interesting, and important, location Afghanistan has—now and in history. This is a country with a rich history, and a complex one too, and its modern story is even more complicated.

If we look at it from a physical geography perspective, the Indian Subcontinent is bordered by huge mountains all around. Well, this is no surprise given our understanding that this landmass is still on the move, pushing itself against the larger landmass, which is also why the Himalayas continues to grow at a little over two inches a year!

Afghanistan is on the other side of these mountains. From a crude sketch of the physical geography, we can then make an observation that this is a country that does belong more with Iran and the rest of Southwest Asia.

Southwest Asia is mostly Islamic, which is also the religion that pretty much all of Afghanistan practices. This too then adds to the argument that perhaps Afghanistan belongs to the Southwest Asian group, and not to South Asia. It is not that South Asia does not have Muslims; the country with the second largest Muslim population in the world is India. (Do you know which country has the largest number of Muslims? Need a hint? It is NOT in Southwest Asia!) South Asia has a dominant Hindu population, and there are other significant religious groups as well—Christians, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, ….

On the other hand, Afghanistan has a long history with the Indian Subcontinent. While the Subcontinent was the jewel in the British Empire, Afghanistan fiercely resisted any occupation. (Later the Soviet Union also found that Afghanistan was no pushover. These two experiences were why many policy analysts were not too keen on America and NATO occupying Afghanistan for too long.) If not for the fiercely independent Afghans, the British Empire would have extended even further.

Going back some more in time, it was through the Khyber Pass that Central Asian warriors reached India, and then established the Mughal Dynasty. And even further back, before the advent of Islam, Buddhism played a major role even well into Afghanistan. As a couple of you pointed out, it was not any freakish accident that there were those giant Buddha statues in Afghanistan that later the Taliban blew up.

Retracing the historical path, we have ample evidence of a great deal of interaction between erstwhile kingdoms in Afghanistan and India.

It is, therefore, a tough call to make on whether Afghanistan is in Southwest Asia or in South Asia. It is not merely a matter of semantics—such a classification shapes our understanding of not only Afghanistan itself, but of those regions too.

As long as you have examined both the arguments, I don’t care whether you decided that Afghanistan is in South Asia, or Southwest Asia, or neither.

One student wondered as an aside whether Afghanistan belongs to neither group, but to Central Asia. I would think that be a difficult argument to make. Afghanistan has way, way, more in common with SW or S Asia, compared to Central Asia. But, yes, we do have to note the presence of Central Asian ethnicities in Afghanistan. If you have seen the movie, The Kite Runner, you might recall that the friend of the protagonist is made fun of by the bullies because of his Mongol features/ethnicity.

Any comments? Rejoinders?