The Actors Reshaping the Region Overlapping South Asia and Southeast Asia: Inheriting the British Colonial Legacy in the Neo-Geopolitical Upheaval

০৩ রা অক্টোবর, ২০২৫ বিকাল ৪:৫০

_

_______________________________________

Introduction
The overlapping frontier between South Asia and Southeast Asia has long been a zone of cultural flows, commercial exchange, and geopolitical contestation. Historically, this region—stretching from the Bay of Bengal littoral (Bangladesh, Myanmar, India’s Northeast) to the Andaman Sea corridor—was profoundly reshaped by British colonial expansion. Today, in an era of “neo-geopolitical upheaval,” the same legacy of maritime trade routes, resource extraction, religious intervention, and strategic chokepoints continues to shape the actions of both regional and global actors. The current reshuffling of power is not simply a replay of colonial rivalries; it is a complex negotiation between rising powers, fragile states, and global interests.
Colonial Legacies and Their Modern Echoes
The British Raj and its extensions into Burma and Malaya left behind four enduring legacies:
1. Artificial Borders and Fragmented Polities – The colonial cartographic division of Bengal, Assam, and Burma created long-standing ethnic and territorial disputes that still feed insurgencies in the Northeast of India and in Myanmar.
2. Port-Centric Economies – British priorities elevated ports such as Kolkata, Rangoon, and Singapore into global nodes of trade, laying the foundation for the modern Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC).
3. Strategic Maritime Corridors – Control over the Malacca Strait and Bay of Bengal was central to Britain’s dominance; today, these are equally crucial to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and to U.S.-led Indo-Pacific strategies.
4. Christianization and Cultural Reordering – British colonial expansion was accompanied by missionary activity that sought not only conversion but also the restructuring of education, literacy, and social hierarchies. Christianization particularly impacted Northeast India, parts of Burma/Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and smaller communities in Bengal. Mission schools promoted English as a language of both salvation and upward mobility, creating elite Christianized groups who later played disproportionate roles in postcolonial governance and identity politics. This religious intervention produced enduring cultural divides that remain geopolitically significant in contemporary conflicts.
Thus, the contemporary neo-geopolitical landscape inherits unresolved colonial contradictions—territorial, economic, strategic, and religious—while layering on new rivalries.
Key Regional Actors
1. India: The Aspiring Regional Anchor
India, inheritor of the Raj’s geopolitical architecture, views the Bay of Bengal as its strategic backyard. Through its Act East Policy, New Delhi seeks to link its Northeast to Southeast Asia via infrastructure and energy corridors, countering Chinese encirclement. Yet, India’s capacity is constrained by internal insurgencies and communal tensions, some rooted in colonial-era Christian missionary activities in Nagaland, Mizoram, and Meghalaya. These Christian-majority hill states remain distinct in identity and politics, shaping India’s regional diplomacy.
2. Bangladesh: The Balancing Middle Power
Emerging from the colonial-British partition and subsequent Pakistani domination, Bangladesh now positions itself as a bridge between South and Southeast Asia. Dhaka’s balancing between India, China, and Japan reveals its pragmatic diplomacy. While overwhelmingly Muslim, Bangladesh retains small but influential Christian communities, a legacy of colonial missions, especially in education and healthcare sectors. These networks tie Dhaka to Western NGOs and development actors, subtly affecting its international positioning.
3. Myanmar: The Geopolitical Faultline
Myanmar represents the most fragile yet pivotal actor. Its colonial-era divisions between Burman heartlands and ethnic peripheries continue to produce civil war. Christianization in the Chin, Kachin, and Karen regions during the British era created communities that remain deeply alienated from Buddhist-Burman nationalism. These Christian ethnic groups have been central to both armed insurgencies and humanitarian diplomacy, tying Myanmar’s conflicts to Western intervention and complicating Chinese and Indian engagement.
4. Thailand and Singapore: Southeast Asian Gateways
Both states leverage their colonial-era maritime positioning. Thailand, never colonized but deeply shaped by missionary-linked education reforms, provides logistical depth for mainland Southeast Asia. Singapore, once a British naval fortress, is now a global financial hub where Christian missionary legacies live on in institutions of higher learning and governance.
Extra-Regional Actors
1. China: The Neo-Colonial Challenger
China seeks to rewrite the colonial maritime order by building new corridors: the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor, Hambantota Port in Sri Lanka, and deep-water investments in Bangladesh. Yet Beijing faces resistance in Christianized ethnic zones (e.g., Kachin, Chin), where missionary legacies have linked local actors to Western NGOs and churches, making Chinese penetration more complicated than in Buddhist or Muslim-majority regions.
2. The United States: Guardian of Sea Lanes and Faith Networks
The U.S. presence in the Indo-Pacific echoes Britain’s maritime dominance. But Washington also capitalizes on colonial-era Christianization legacies. American evangelical and Catholic networks remain influential in Northeast India, Myanmar, and parts of Southeast Asia, where they connect local Christian groups to U.S. lobbying and humanitarian aid, thereby indirectly shaping regional geopolitics.
3. Japan and the EU: The Developmental Balancers
Japan, with its “Partnership for Quality Infrastructure,” offers alternatives to China’s BRI, particularly in Bangladesh and Myanmar. The EU, while less militarily active, often frames its engagement through human rights and development discourses, many of which draw on colonial-era Christian moralizing traditions. Support for minority Christian groups often doubles as a channel of soft power projection.
Neo-Geopolitical Upheaval: Patterns Emerging
1. Maritime Re-Militarization – Colonial Britain relied on naval supremacy; today, both the U.S. and China reinforce their naval presence in the Bay of Bengal.
2. Infrastructure Diplomacy – Railways and ports, once imperial instruments, are again battlegrounds for influence, with India, China, and Japan competing for contracts.
3. Religious-Ethnic Faultlines – The Rohingya crisis in Myanmar reflects colonial religious divisions; similarly, Christianized ethnic minorities in Myanmar and India’s Northeast remain pivotal in insurgency and identity politics, making Christianization a living geopolitical variable.
4. Regional Institutionalism – BIMSTEC and ASEAN-India frameworks attempt to transcend colonial-era fragmentation but are hampered by diverging interests and the legacies of identity politics shaped by religious missions.
Conclusion
The overlapping zone of South and Southeast Asia is once again at the epicenter of global contestation. The neo-geopolitical upheaval—driven by China’s assertiveness, India’s ambitions, U.S. naval dominance, and ASEAN’s balancing—echoes Britain’s colonial patterns but in a multipolar form. Unlike the colonial era, no single power can dominate the region unilaterally. Instead, the future will be defined by how local actors like Bangladesh and Myanmar navigate external pressures while reconciling colonial-era faultlines.
Crucially, the legacy of Christianization—once a tool of colonial control through education, identity transformation, and minority politics—remains a potent factor. It continues to influence insurgencies, soft power networks, and humanitarian diplomacy across this frontier. The British colonial legacy is therefore not merely territorial or economic; it is also deeply cultural and religious, providing the backdrop against which today’s geopolitical actors improvise their strategies.
The Bay of Bengal, once the “Empire’s Lake,” is again becoming a geopolitical theater—only now in a far more complex, multipolar world where ports, pipelines, and prayers intersect.
________________________________________

০ টি +০/-০