Indian subcontinent

The Indian subcontinent is a physiographic region of Asia that sits south of the Himalayas and juts into the Indian Ocean, flanked by the Bay of Bengal on the east and the Arabian Sea on the west. Today, it is split among Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. While the terms Indian subcontinent and South Asia are frequently swapped to describe a broader area—one that also includes Bhutan, the Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka—the former is more about physical geography, and the latter leans toward geopolitics. South Asia is also often defined to encompass Afghanistan, though even in an extended sense, Afghanistan is not considered part of the subcontinent. In many historical records, the region around and southeast of the Indus River was simply called India. Even now, historians use "India" to refer to the entire Indian subcontinent when covering history up to the British Raj. Over time, though, the word "India" shifted to mean a specific political entity that eventually became a nation-state. The Oxford English Dictionary defines "subcontinent" as a "subdivision of a continent which has a distinct geographical, political, or cultural identity" and also a "large land mass somewhat smaller than a continent." Its application to the Indian subcontinent dates from the early twentieth century, when most of the territory was either part of the British Empire or allied with it. It was a handy label for the area covering both British India and the princely states. The term was especially common in the British Empire and its successors, whereas "South Asia" is more frequently used in Europe, North America, and sometimes in most countries within South Asia itself. Historians Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal note that the Indian subcontinent has come to be called South Asia "in more recent and neutral parlance." Indologist Ronald B. Inden argues that "South Asia" is gaining ground because it clearly sets the region apart from East Asia. Since the Partition of India, citizens of Pakistan (which gained independence from British India in 1947) and Bangladesh (which became independent from Pakistan in 1971) often view the term "Indian subcontinent" as offensive or suspicious, given the prominence of India in the name. As a result, it is used less and less in those countries. Meanwhile, many Indian analysts prefer it because of the region's shared socio-cultural traits. The area has also been called the "Asian subcontinent," the "South Asian subcontinent," and "India" or "Greater India" in classical and pre-modern contexts. Cricket, introduced to the region by the British, is especially popular in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan. In cricket talk, these nations are sometimes simply referred to as "the subcontinent"—for example, "Australia's tour of the subcontinent." The term is also used adjectivally in cricket, as in "subcontinental conditions." Before the Indian plate broke away from Gondwana and drifted north toward Eurasia, two other landmasses—the Qiangtang terrane and the Lhasa terrane—had already attached to Eurasia. These were part of a string of microcontinents called Cimmeria, which today make up parts of Turkey, Iran, Pakistan (including the Karakoram), China, Myanmar, Thailand, and Malaysia. Cimmeria closed the Paleo-Tethys Ocean above it and opened the Neo-Tethys Ocean between itself and Gondwana, eventually colliding with Eurasia and causing the Cimmerian Orogeny. After the Lhasa terrane joined Eurasia, an active continental margin formed along its southern edge, where the Neo-Tethys oceanic plate began to subduct. Magmatic activity there created the Gangdese batholith in what is now the Tibetan trans-Himalaya. Another subduction zone opened to the west, in the ocean basin above the Kohistan-Ladakh island arc. This arc—formed when one oceanic plate subducted beneath another, with magma rising to create continental crust—drifted north, closed its ocean basin, and collided with Eurasia. Today, Ladakh lies in the Indian-administered region of Kashmir, and Kohistan is in Pakistan's Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, both on the Indian subcontinent. The collision of India with Eurasia closed the Neo-Tethys Ocean. The suture zone—the remnants of the Neo-Tethys subduction zone pinched between the two continental crusts, marking where India welded to Eurasia—is called the Indus-Yarlung suture zone. It lies north of the Himalayas. The headwaters of the Indus River and the Yarlung Tsangpo (which later becomes the Brahmaputra) flow along this suture zone. These two Eurasian rivers, whose courses were continually diverted by the rising Himalayas, define the western and eastern limits of the Himalayan mountain range.