Undivided India has several socio-political, historical, and geographical meanings.

Raj

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 (in the

Akhanda Bharatam

Akhanda Bharatam (literally "undivided India") is the historic homeland of the Hindus, before Islamic conquest and colonial partition, which resulted in the subsequent conversion of a significant number to Islam and Christianity. It includes all of present day Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Tibet.

The geographic frontiers of this region range from the Himalayan region in the north to the ocean in the south. This is derived from the Vishnu puranam text of India.

Uttaram yad



samudrasya himadreschaiva dakshinam

varsham tad Bharatam naama Bharati yatra santati

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.

Akhanda Bharatam is the Sanskrit name for this region. Hinduism and Buddhism are the predominant religions. The Indonesia-Malaysia region, the Pakistan-Afghanistan region and the Sistan-Balochistan region later were converted to Islam.

Akhand Bharat is largely based on the concepts of religious or ethnic nationalism rather than a political state. It is an important part of the irredentist ideology of Hindutva subscribed to by Hindu nationalist organizations such as Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and political parties such as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

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 civilizaton, including religious thought, language, art and literature. The term is difficult to define exactly, and has been largely replaced by the name South Asia, although this is usually used as a term for the political entities of the South Asia rather than for the geographical region itself.

See also

• Hindu nationalism
• South Asia
• British Raj