Hard Edges and Soft Ones
India is unusual among civilisations in that most of its edges are real. They can be pointed to on a map and felt underfoot. The northwest is closed by the Hindu Kush, a wall that both protected and punctured India through invasion. The north is sealed by the Himalayas, which turned the subcontinent inward for millennia. The south ends cleanly in the Indian Ocean, a hard geographic edge that also became India’s great outward highway. These are faces with sharp contours.
India is bounded in the northwest by mountains, in the north by ice, in the south by water, and in the east by diffusion.
The east is different. It does not end. It thins.
A Boundary That Does Not Behave Like One
Geographically, there is a boundary. The Indo-Burman ranges run from Arunachal through Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, and down into Burma. They are real mountains, thick with forest, rain, and disease. But they are not high enough, cold enough, or empty enough to function like the Himalayas. They slow movement without stopping it. They divide ecologies more than peoples.
This matters because civilisation follows ecology before it follows flags.
Where India Becomes Something Else, Gradually
Continue reading India’s Eastern Face: Where Civilisation Dissolves Instead of Ending