That SAARC for decades has been in a limbo is a clear evidence of our failure in this era of super-achievements when no physical barrier hinders the human will to connect and communicate across lands, oceans, air, or even the cosmos. The sole barrier that remains today is that of our mind and the inertia of our habits and attitudes

A single glance at the map of the subcontinent of South Asia shows the peninsula is disconnected from Sri Lanka in the south by the Palk Strait, a mere stretch of 12 kilometres.

But the Ramayana tells us the fascinating tale of Rama's efforts to connect the island to bring back Sita through a bridge there through primate labour.

Did it all happen in real life or was it mere poet Balmiki's imagination? Fact or fiction, that feat of human engineering and the prowess accomplished millennia ago hide the message of not just the triumph of virtue over evil, but also the triumph of Man over Nature. That grand saga of conquest over Nature and evil, first narrated by Balmiki and retold countless times by poets like Tulsi Das and others, remains etched in the public memory of millions to this day. Setubandh thus evokes not just a human feat possibly achieved in some distant past but also the scope for bridging hearts and minds across natural frontiers and state boundaries.

Given the logic, given the wisdom that epic bears, given the coherence of myriad events and episodes, given, moreover, the intricacy behind the human psychology of the variables factored into its happenings, the events and characters, it is difficult to believe it was the figment of a single narrator, however imaginative or an accretion of ideas.

The remains of that feat are said to be visible to this day, apart from the remains of Dwarka in Gujerat submerged in a deluge aeons ago. Didn't the Iliad remain a fiction of a blind poet Homer until Troy was discovered in Asia Minor in the middle of the 19th century? The supreme irony of the subcontinent today is that it remains isolated and disconnected both physically and mentally. More now than ever before. Nature, perhaps, left the Palk Strait as a small gap that could have been filled in by humans who were never deterred by the Himalayas in the north to scale the heights.

That SAARC for decades has been in a limbo is a clear evidence of our failure in this era of super-achievements when no physical barrier hinders the human will to connect and communicate across lands, oceans, air, or even the cosmos. The sole barrier that remains today is that of our mind and the inertia of our habits and attitudes, of perception and thinking. Bridging hearts and minds is thus the key missing link in our vision and strategy. That, in fact, is the central paradox of South Asia, whose historic links, physical connectivity and cultural solidarity that we are not tired of narrating and celebrating.

What has gone wrong and where? In the four decades of SAARC's tortuous journey, Setubandh revokes not only the fascinating tale of an aeons-old saga, but also beckons the scope for bridging hearts and minds together in the vision and strategy designed to bring together the billion plus human mass of the region.

There is, for just one instance, the South Asian University that epitomises the effort to build an epistemic or cultural superstructure. But where is the school of regional span to cultivate South Asian minds, attitudes or habits as an infrastructure to nurture the perception, behaviour and interaction patterns that could replenish the common roots atrophying fast on a subcontinental basis? The regional university clearly shows a link missing.

That over four-tenths of the respondents approached in a 2013 survey are still unaware of the island-state in the south may not be very surprising. But that 26 per cent were unaware of Bangladesh, 15 per cent and 5 per cent about our next-door neighbours China and India respectively, 43 per cent about the Maldives, and 23 per cent about Pakistan does not bode well for the region's solidarity. As far as this observer knows, nothing probably has been done to scale up regional awareness so fundamental to regional interaction, solidarity and prosperity.

Hypothetically, the larger the momentum of regional education, the greater the prospects for the prosperity of South Asia. Another link missing is the gap in the South Asian curricula and texts. The earlier that gap is filled up, the better the destiny of the mass here.

This is not all. No less critical in bridging the hearts and minds of the South Asian people is the role that public diplomacy would play. As the epicenter of some of the most chronic conflicts of the world, the subcontinent not only juxtaposes five major regions of Asia (the Arab West, Turk Central Asia, Confucian China, preeminently Buddhist southeastern Asia and a predominantly Hindu peninsula), but also includes the Third Pole in the Himalayan icecap, whence from originate three major rivers to traverse thousands of kilometres southward, giving life to a billion-plus human population to join again in the Indian Ocean, underscoring, via the Hindukush-Himalayan arc in the north and the ocean in the south, not only the common roots of the people who inhabit this space but also the common future and prosperity they can achieve.

It is a destiny that will materialise only by sharing the problems and solutions together rather than by contesting and fighting wars they have been engaged in the millennia so far. But can we leave our murky past behind?

Bridging hearts and minds can make it possible. But what could be more noble in this regard than activating Track Three and intensifying Deliberation, Dialogue, Discussion, Debate and Discourse - the 5 D's - to expedite Track Three?

A version of this article appears in the print on August 3, 2022 of The Himalayan Times.