Sri Lanka
Topic: India and her Neighbours · NCERT: Class 11, Ch 1 "India - Location"
Meaning
Sri Lanka is an island country in the Indian Ocean, southeast of India. It is one of India's two island neighbours; the other is the Maldives. It shares a sea boundary with India but no land border, so it is a maritime neighbour (a country joined to India by a shared sea). At the nearest point it is only about 32 km from Tamil Nadu. Two water bodies separate them: the Palk Strait (a narrow, shallow sea passage) and the Gulf of Mannar (an arm of the sea that cuts into the land). Ashoka's son Mahendra and daughter Sanghamitra took Buddhism to Sri Lanka in the 3rd century BCE.
Example
Adam's Bridge (Rama Setu) is a 48 km chain of limestone shoals (shallow sandbanks and rocks). It runs from Pamban (Rameswaram) Island in Tamil Nadu to Mannar Island in Sri Lanka. It separates Palk Bay to the north from the Gulf of Mannar to the south. Nearby, in the Palk Strait, is Katchatheevu, a small islet with no people living on it. A 1974 agreement recognised it as Sri Lankan.
Don't confuse with
- Maldives: this island neighbour is a group of over 1,100 small coral islands in 26 atolls (ring-shaped coral reefs) to the southwest of India. It lies about 130 km from Minicoy (Lakshadweep), across the Eight Degree Channel. Sri Lanka is one large island to the southeast, across the Palk Strait.