South Asian writers and SAARC

The question of regional literary leadership becomes intriguing as SAARC remains moribund.

The term South Asian writers gained greater currency after some Indian writers, especially a Punjabi fiction writer named Ajeet Cour, took the initiative to create an organisation by this name at the turn of the century. This article is a brief study of what happened to this organisation, and what it means to be using that nomenclature today when the main organisation of the states itself is experiencing angst, to use the term from the vocabulary of existentialist writers. Literary writers organised under the name of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) are meeting once again while the main organisation itself has nearly stalled all its activities. The writers, including those from Afghanistan that became the eighth member of SAARC in 2007, have remained active. The second online conference is currently happening with full participation of the writers. The narrative goes like this.