Undivided India
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India has several socio-political, historical, and geographical meanings.
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[edit] Greater India
Greater India is another term sometimes used to describe the region between Central Asia in the North and tropical Indonesia in the South, and from the borderlands of Persia to Tibet and western China, which has had a significant Indian influence on its culture and civilization, including religious thought, language, art and literature.
This socio-cultural region is now part of the modern nations of (from the west): Iran (Seistan-Balochistan province), Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, the trans-Tsangpo and Yunnan regions of China, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Maldives, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Brunei, East Timor, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore, the Mauritius, Maldives, Seychelles, Comoros and other islands of the Indian Ocean.
[edit] South Asia
Officially, it is a term which refers to the major part of the South Asia which comprised the British Raj, and included the current sovereign states of India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. Undivided India did not include all geographical regions and nations of the South Asia like Nepal and Bhutan, but included most of the Princely states of India.
References to undivided India are found in some legal enactments including India’s Citizenship Act, 1955, which states that for the meaning of undivided India [1] (in the context of this Act), the undivided India means India as defined in the Government of India Act 1935, as originally enacted. There are innumerable other references to undivided India, in a variety of contexts, but mostly indicating India with boundaries as it existed just before the partition of India into India and Pakistan.
[edit] Indian subcontinent
The term Indian subcontinent largely corresponds to South Asia or Greater India, and is used in geographical or geological contexts rather than political or historical ones.
[edit] Indosphere
Indosphere is a term, defined as "a socio-political sphere subsuming those countries, cultures, and languages that have historically come under influence from the politics, culture, religion, and languages of India (notably, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Burma)." [2]
[edit] Indies
The Indies or East Indies (or East India) is a term used to describe lands of South and Southeast Asia, occupying all of the former British India, the present Indian Union, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and also Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.[citation needed]
The East Indies also include Iranian Baluchistan, Indochina, the Philippine Islands, Brunei, Singapore and East Timor.[citation needed] It does not, however, include Western New Guinea, which is part of Melanesia.
The inhabitants of the East Indies are often called East Indians, distinguishing them both from inhabitants of the Caribbean which is also called the West Indies, and from the indigenous peoples of the Americas who are often called "Indians" or "American Indians."
