Beyond the standard format of a discipline confined to the national framework, there is a dire need for a disciplinary practice that entails connections within the region. Such connections were visible during the COVID-19 pandemic in the varied and common experiences of issues across the region. Reasoning with thematic and experiential connections, there is space for building a sociology of South Asia. Without such a possible sociology in and of South Asia, the requisite overcoming of the moribund state of the discipline will remain a far cry and wishful thinking.

In a difficult time, sociology shall enable everyone participating in it as teachers and students, scholars and researchers, writers and institution builders, to ask difficult questions. In general, as Bourdieu (1993) admitted, sociologists ought to be troublemakers. The point is whether sociology in South Asia allows difficult questions to come to the limelight. And the most difficult question, suitable for the time, is about the character of sociology in and of South Asia. There is a double proposition entailed in the formulation: one is to critically examine the state of sociology across the region; and the other is to think of developing a sociology of South Asia in which region is a social category.

The COVID-19 outbreak and ensuing lockdown pushed us to grapple with this question more urgently than ever before. That is, whether sociology in South Asia persists with (geopolitical) borders and (intellectual) boundaries. This is not altogether a new question. The annals of disciplinary history show that it has haunted sociologists in the region for at least a quarter of a century. The question led to a recognition resonant in an interesting congregation, namely the South Asian regional conference towards the end of the last century, precisely in 1997. Summarily, the conference emphasised, among other things, the need to burst open boundaries. In the latter part of this article, we will note that this was yet another sterile attempt, seldom showing any dent in the much-cherished disciplinary citadel. The current state of theories and concepts, methodology and perspectives, and ways of seeing and feeling remained intact for sociology in South Asia. And thus, in the face of the human crisis looming over society, sociologists were either fumbling for an adequate way of seeing, or resorting to, the same old tired concepts, hackneyed perspectives, and emotionally dishonest approaches.

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