How Central Asian reality is wrongly perceived by South Asia and the global community

What is it about?

The paper aims at discussion of certain inaccuracies and incorrectness in perception by representatives of India and Pakistan of various aspects of internal and external situation within and around the Central Asian republics, with special emphasis upon Kazakhstan. The issues of internal and external security, religious factor and economy in Central Asia are covered among others. It is shown that, mostly due to objective reasons, outdated materials, including these created by often biased Western and Russian authors, as well as own mistaken convictions and conjectures are regularly involved to describe both previous and current situation in the states of Central Asia. At that, attempts of South Asian intellectuals aimed at overcoming this problem are also considered. Finally, it is argued that the factor of ‘soft power’ and hence, of information security, in Central Asian countries indeed suffers enough, and that on the basis of discussed examples as well as experience offered by South Asian states all such inaccuracies in perception should be properly taken into account with the view of their mitigation or/and elimination.

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Why is it important?

This paper debunks certain both insignificant and crucial, both short- and long-lasting, both naturally emerged and artificially created myths about the reality inside and outside Central Asia (on the example of how this region and its separate states are seen in South Asia that often blindly follows Western and Russian wrong opinions and imaginations).

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