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The Indian subcontinent is a large section of the Asian continent consisting of countries lying substantially on the Indian tectonic plate. The subcontinent includes parts of various countries in South Asia, including those on the continental crust (India, Pakistan east of the river Indus, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan), an island country on the continental shelf (Sri Lanka), and an island country rising above the oceanic crust (the Maldives). The term subcontinent signifies "having a certain geographical or political independence" from the rest of the continent,[1] or "a vast and more or less self-contained subdivision of a continent."[2] Although the term Indian subcontinent is often used geographically, it is not entirely a geographical term. The approximately equivalent but more geopolitical term, South Asia or Southern Asia, however, sometimes includes territories found external (but proximal) to the Indian Plate—including Tibet and Myanmar (formerly Burma). The subcontinent is surrounded by three water bodies the Bay of Bengal, the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea. Geographically, the Indian subcontinent is a peninsular region south of the Himalayas and Kuen Lun mountain ranges and east of the Indus River and the Iranian Plateau, extending southward into the Indian Ocean between the Arabian Sea (to the southwest) and the Bay of Bengal (to the southeast). It covers about 4,480,000 km² (1,729,738 mi²) or 10 percent of the Asian continent; however, it accounts for about 40 percent of Asia's population.
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