The peoples of south Asia speak 19 major languages and hundreds of local dialects. In India alone the government officially recognizes 14 languages, although Hindi is chief among them. English, the common language of international buisness and tourism, is also widely spoken in the parts of South Asia that were once under British rule. most languages spoken in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and northern India fall into the Indo-European family of languages.The peoples of the region possess several distinguishing features that set them apart anthropologically from the rest of Asia; the dominant peoples and cultures are Indo-Aryan and Dravidian, and have a great affinity with the Iranian Plateau and the Caucuses particularly in the north west region of South Asia encompassing the modern states of Pakistan and Afghanistan,Persian, Arab and Turkish cultural traditions from the west also form an integral part of Islamic South Asian culture, but have been radically adapted to form a Muslim culture distinct from what is found in the MIddle East e.g. pilgrimage to dargahs.

South Asia ranks among the world's most densely-populated regions. About 1.6 billion people live here – about one-fourth of all the people in the world. The region's population density of 305 persons per square kilometre is more than seven times the world average.

The region has a long history. Ancient civilizations developed in the Dwaraka region and the Indus River Valley. The region was at its far more prosperous before the 18th century, when the Mughal empire held sway in the north and the Maratha Empire held sway in the south and central; European colonolism led to its expansion in the region, by Portugal and Holland, and later Britain and to a lesser degree France. Most of the region gained independence from Europe by the late 1940's.