Introduction

I thank the editors of this volume for the opportunity to contribute this essay to honour Dr Allen G. Noble, a cultural geographer, who retired from the University of Akron, Ohio, as Professor Emeritus after a long and distinguished career. I first met Allen at one of the annual conferences of the Association of American Geographers in the early 1970s. The meeting marked the beginning of an enriching professional relationship that has spanned three decades.

The South Asian region is ‘set apart from the rest of the globe’ (Norton, 1997) for its diversity of peoples, plurality of cultures and distinctive landscapes. The region has been a reservoir of rich cultural heritage from the very dawn of civilization. While many aspects of the geography of the region are well recorded in historical contexts, its cultural geographical phenomena, reflecting the spatial patterns of people, places, and societies have received much less attention from geographers. Statements made in the context of India, the core country of the region, are also equally applicable to the other South Asian regions: