International relations (IR) has seen theoretical reshuffling in the wake of changing realities. The process of globalisation initiated a concept of global politics with thrust in de-territoriality replacing the territoriality attached with the term geopolitics. Through the prism of geopolitics, India was the ‘mainland’ of the region and the other states of the region were the ‘hinterland’. With global politics, India again becomes the ‘mainland’ for global economic flows with its immediate neighbours as the ‘hinterland’. With geopolitics, India could afford to have frictions with its regional neighbours, an option that is not open to it with global politics. The article argues that India is reshuffling the South Asian region to meet the realities of global politics and concludes that while at the level of theory IR are changing towards de-territoriality, the ground reality imprints the importance of the realities of geography and demography of big nation states.
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