In casting Asia as Europe's ‘Other’, it is often assumed that European spatial imaginaries are unproblematically assimilated by the peoples of Asia themselves. In this paper I challenge this assumption by charting the changing characterization of India, from being virtually synonymous with Asia for centuries to being virtually excluded from the reigning conceptions of Asia. I provide a thumbnail sketch of the spatial imaginaries of some of the peoples inhabiting the cartographic quadrant labeled ‘Asia‘. Against this background, I examine how these imaginaries were subverted by the incorporation of Asia within the capitalist world system. I then chart the impact of modernization theories on the newly independent states of the region. I argue that as several major centers of capital accumulation emerged in Asia, and capitalism ceased to be a Euro-American narrative, a new conception of Asia emerged in the 1980s. If India's lack of industrial development marginalized it from these imaginaries, it is suggested that the meltdown of the Asian ‘miracles' has once again destabilized hitherto-dominant conceptions of Asia.
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