India: Location, Extent and Neighbours

Open a world map and look for India: it sits in the southern, central part of Asia, hanging down into the warm Indian Ocean like a great peninsula. That one position explains a lot of our history and trade. The Himalaya in the north protected us from cold winds and invaders, the long coast opened the sea routes to Africa, Arabia and South-East Asia, and the Indian Ocean is the only ocean in the world named after a single country. Let us first fix the numbers that the examiner loves, then the reasons behind them.

The geographic frame, consistent with what you learned in the earth-and-latitudes chapter, is this: the mainland extends from 8°4′N to 37°6′N and from 68°7′E to 97°25′E. Both spreads are close to 30 degrees, but the north-south distance is about 3,214 km and the east-west distance about 2,933 km. Because the whole country lies north of the equator and east of the Prime Meridian, India is entirely in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres. Including the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the southern limit moves down to 6°45′N.

Now the area. India covers about 32.87 lakh sq km (3,287,263 sq km), which is about 2.4 per cent of the world's land area. That makes it the seventh-largest country in the world after Russia, Canada, the USA, China, Brazil and Australia (the order of the USA and China depends on how disputed areas and water are counted, so questions usually ask only for India's rank). Yet India supports a far larger share of humanity: it is the most populous country in the world as of 2023-24, with roughly one-sixth of the world's people.

Two imaginary lines give India its climate and its clock. The Tropic of Cancer (23°30′N) passes through the middle of the country and touches eight states, from west to east: Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Tripura and Mizoram. It divides India into the tropical south and the subtropical north. The Standard Meridian of India is 82°30′E; it passes near Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh and crosses five states: Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Andhra Pradesh. Indian Standard Time (IST) is based on it and is 5 hours 30 minutes ahead of GMT (82.5 degrees x 4 minutes = 330 minutes).

India is both a land power and a sea power, and the numbers for the two frontiers are asked again and again. The land frontier is about 15,106.7 km (usually written as about 15,200 km in older books), shared with seven countries. The coastline is 7,516.6 km in all. Learn the single largest and single smallest in each list; those are what the examiner picks.

The order is easy to keep if you remember that the longest border is with the neighbour that wraps around us in the east (Bangladesh) and the shortest is with the one we reach only through the disputed north-west (Afghanistan, about 106 km, in the area India claims as part of Ladakh, currently under Pakistan's control). Bangladesh > China > Pakistan > Nepal > Myanmar > Bhutan > Afghanistan.

The India-Bangladesh border is the longest, and it runs through five Indian states. West Bengal has by far the longest stretch (about 2,217 km), followed by Tripura (856 km), Meghalaya (443 km), Mizoram (318 km) and Assam (263 km). These add up to about 4,096.7 km. Only part of it is a river or hill boundary; much of it is open plain, which is why fencing and enclave exchange (the Land Boundary Agreement of 2015) have mattered so much.

Now the sea. The coastline of 7,516.6 km (mainland about 6,100 km, islands about 1,417 km; the older official series) is the figure most exam questions use. In 2025 the government released a re-measurement at a finer scale that gives 11,098.81 km. The extra length comes from better mapping, which captures more of the coast's bends, not from the coast growing. Gujarat has the longest coastline among the states. Goa has the shortest. Among Union Territories, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands have the longest coast. India has 9 coastal states and 4 coastal Union Territories.

India also has legal rights over the sea beyond the coast. Under the 1976 maritime-zones law, India's territorial waters extend 12 nautical miles (about 22 km) from the baseline, the contiguous zone 24 nautical miles, and the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) 200 nautical miles, an area of roughly 2 million sq km. In the EEZ India has sovereign rights over fish, oil, gas and seabed minerals, though other countries may sail through.

India has seven land neighbours and two sea neighbours. The land neighbours are Pakistan and Afghanistan in the north-west, China, Nepal and Bhutan in the north, and Bangladesh and Myanmar in the east. The sea neighbours are Sri Lanka and the Maldives. The easiest way to learn them is to walk around the map clockwise starting from Gujarat, and then to learn which Indian states touch each country.

Some states touch more than one country, and these are favourite exam questions. Three states touch three countries each: Sikkim (China, Nepal, Bhutan), West Bengal (Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh) and Arunachal Pradesh (China, Bhutan, Myanmar). Assam touches Bhutan and Bangladesh; Uttarakhand touches China and Nepal; Mizoram touches Bangladesh and Myanmar. Five states have no coast and no international border at all: Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Haryana and Telangana.

A few more facts help in elimination. Nepal and Bhutan are landlocked. Bhutan is the smallest land neighbour in area. China is the largest neighbour in area and has the second-longest border with India. The Siliguri Corridor (the 'Chicken's Neck') in West Bengal is only about 20 to 22 km wide at its narrowest and connects the north-eastern states to the rest of India, lying between Nepal and Bangladesh. The Sir Creek and the Rann of Kutch lie on the Gujarat-Pakistan frontier. India's nearest neighbour to the Nicobar Islands is Indonesia (Sumatra), about 150 km from Indira Point; Myanmar's Coco Islands lie just north of the Andamans; Thailand also shares a maritime boundary in the Andaman Sea.

A boundary is first drawn on paper by a treaty or a commission and only later fixed on the ground, so most famous boundary lines carry the name of the person who drew them. Learn each line in three parts: who drew it, which two countries it separates, and in which year. Many examiners simply ask 'McMahon Line separates India from which country?' or 'Which line divides India and Pakistan?'.

Now the unsettled and sensitive spots. With Pakistan: the Sir Creek (a marshy tidal inlet in the Rann of Kutch, Gujarat) and the Siachen Glacier (the world's highest battlefield, held by India). With China: Aksai Chin in Ladakh (claimed by India, held by China) and parts of Arunachal Pradesh, and the Doklam plateau near the Sikkim-Bhutan-China tri-junction (stand-off of 2017). With Nepal: Kalapani-Lipulekh-Limpiyadhura in Uttarakhand, where the question is where the Kali river actually begins, and Susta in the Gandak area. With Sri Lanka: Katchatheevu island and fishing rights in the Palk Strait.

Why are so many borders in the Himalaya 'lines' and not rivers? Because high mountains and glaciers were never surveyed in detail when the treaties were signed. In the plains, rivers and ridges give natural limits; in the snow desert, a line on a map is all there is. That is why India-China uses the idea of a line of actual control while India-Pakistan in Kashmir uses a line of control from a cease-fire, and why each side's maps differ.

The Indian Union is made of 28 states and 8 Union Territories (as of 2025). The Union Territories are Delhi (National Capital Territory), Puducherry, Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh, Chandigarh, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep, and Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu. Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh became Union Territories on 31 October 2019, and the two older territories of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu were merged into one on 26 January 2020. Telangana, formed on 2 June 2014, is the youngest state.

India also owns two island groups far from the mainland. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands lie in the Bay of Bengal between about 6°45′N and 13°41′N. The capital is Sri Vijaya Puram (earlier Port Blair, renamed in 2024). The Ten Degree Channel, along 10°N, separates the Andaman group in the north from the Nicobar group in the south. Lakshadweep lies in the Arabian Sea, off the coast of Kerala, between about 8°N and 12°13′N and 71°E and 74°E; its capital is Kavaratti. It is the smallest Union Territory by area, and the islands are coral atolls.