An exciting program of the Ethics and Public Policy Center addresses the major countries of South Asia — India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. This program has already dramatically refocused the policy debate in Washington concerning this crucial though often neglected region, and we are confident that it will continue to do so for years to come.

Over the past two decades, all the major countries of South Asia have witnessed the rise of dangerous forms of religious extremism. India has seen the rise of an extremist Hindu nationalism, Pakistan has promoted Islamic militancy and terrorism, Bangladesh has witnessed the increasing political influence of radical Islam and the growing presence of terrorist groups, and Sri Lanka has been torn apart by deadly conflict between an extremist Buddhist nationalism and an ethnic-Tamil separatism and terrorism. With the rise of religious extremism, South Asian peace, democracy, and prosperity have suffered profoundly. And a largely inattentive America has seen its own foreign policy objectives — whether the war on terror, nuclear nonproliferation, or the promotion of democracy — seriously undermined as a consequence.

Unfortunately, most Washington think-tanks and university programs on South Asia are not well-equipped to address the dangers that religious extremism poses for the region itself or for US interests. While they usefully examine its economic, social, political, and strategic problems, an often secular mindset prevents them from appreciating the role that religion plays — for good and bad — in shaping its present and its future. As a consequence, for example, the US policy community utterly failed to anticipate the just elected BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) government’s decision to take India over the nuclear threshold in May 1998 — even though this had been a long-declared commitment of Hindu-nationalist ideology. Especially when it comes to what has been called “the most dangerous place on earth,” inattention to religious issues is bound to have dangerous consequences.

The Ethics and Public Policy Center, on the other hand, has a long history of addressing the often neglected moral and religious dimensions of public policy issues. Our South Asian Studies Program is no exception. Directed by Dr. Timothy Samuel Shah, a Harvard-trained political scientist who has done extensive work on religion and politics in the developing world, the focus of the program is the impact of religious extremism on both the domestic politics and the geopolitics of this volatile region.

The new South Asian Studies Program is already challenging the Washington policy community to grapple with the growing danger of religious extremism in the subcontinent. It organized a symposium on June 10, 2002, “Hindu Nationalism vs. Islamic Jihad: Religious Militancy in South Asia,” which brought experts from South Asia to discuss the dangers of religious militancy in the region with nearly 100 Washington policymakers, congressional staff, journalists, academics, and policy analysts. As a direct result of this event, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom held special hearings on Hindu militancy in India and its threat to religious minorities, drawing on the same human rights experts and policy analysts EPPC brought to Washington for its symposium. These hearings led the Commission to formulate a new set of findings and recommendations concerning religious freedom in India.

In 2003-2004, the Program in South Asian Studies anticipates a greatly expanded set of initiatives. These initiatives include:

• A Policy Task Force on South Asia, which will define a new and compelling policy paradigm to guide US policy towards South Asia in the face of the growing and complex dangers of religious extremism. Several prominent and highly influential Washington-based experts on South Asia have been approached and have agreed to participate. The Task Force will begin to meet in September and will produce a detailed analysis of the region’s religious extremism and its political dangers that will have a decisive impact on US policy for years to come.
  
• A Seminar Series, which will cumulatively educate the Washington policy community concerning religious extremism in South Asia and its impact on the region’s domestic politics and geopolitics and what this impact means for US interests.
  
• A Major Conference, which will bring together academics, government officials, policy thinkers and members of the South Asian community in the US to share and disseminate the best available information, perspectives, and analyses of religious extremism in the region and the best policy strategies for dealing with it.