Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the context of "Shompen language"

India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area; the most populous country since 2023; and, since its independence in 1947, the world's most populous democracy. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast, it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west; China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the north; and Bangladesh and Myanmar to the east. In the Indian Ocean, India is near Sri Lanka and the Maldives; its Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Myanmar, Thailand, and Indonesia.

Modern humans arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa no later than 55,000 years ago. Their long occupation, predominantly in isolation as hunter-gatherers, has made the region highly diverse. Settled life emerged on the subcontinent in the western margins of the Indus river basin 9,000 years ago, evolving gradually into the Indus Valley Civilisation of the third millennium BCE. By 1200 BCE, an archaic form of Sanskrit, an Indo-European language, had diffused into India from the northwest. Its hymns recorded the early dawnings of Hinduism in India. India's pre-existing Dravidian languages were supplanted in the northern regions. By 400 BCE, caste had emerged within Hinduism, and Buddhism and Jainism had arisen, proclaiming social orders unlinked to heredity. Early political consolidations gave rise to the loose-knit Maurya and Gupta Empires. Widespread creativity suffused this era, but the status of women declined, and untouchability became an organised belief. In South India, the Middle kingdoms exported Dravidian language scripts and religious cultures to the kingdoms of Southeast Asia.

Modern Standard Hindi (आधुनिक मानक हिन्दी, Hunterian: Ādhunik Mānak Hindī), commonly referred to as Hindi, is an Indo-Aryan language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of the Government of India, and is the lingua franca of most of the country. It is also an official language in the Pacific nation of Fiji.

Hindi is an official language in ten states (Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand), and six union territories (Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Delhi, Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir) and an additional official language in the state of West Bengal. Hindi is also one of the 22 scheduled languages of the Republic of India.

The Bay of Bengal forms the northeastern part of the Indian Ocean, located between the Indian subcontinent and the Indochinese peninsula, south of the Bengal region. Spread across an area of 2,600,000 km (1,000,000 sq mi), it is bordered by many of the countries in South Asia and Southeast Asia.

Geopolitically, the bay is bound by mainland India on the west and northwest, Bangladesh in the north, Myanmar in the northeast and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India in the east. Its southern limit is a line between Sangaman Kanda in Sri Lanka, and the northwesternmost point of Sumatra in Indonesia.

Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, formerly known as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It is located in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, and is separated from India by the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait. It shares a maritime border with the Maldives in the southwest and India in the northwest, and it lies across the Bay of Bengal from Bangladesh and Myanmar in the northeast and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the east. Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte is the legislative capital of Sri Lanka, while the largest city, Colombo, is the administrative and judicial capital which is the nation's political, financial and cultural centre. Kandy is the second-largest city and also the capital of the last native kingdom of Sri Lanka. The majority of the population speak Sinhala, while Tamil is the second most-spoken language. They are spoken by approximately 17 million and 5 million people respectively.

Sri Lanka has a population of approximately 22 million and is home to several cultures, languages and ethnicities. The Sinhalese people form the majority of the population, followed by the Sri Lankan Tamils, who are the largest minority group and are concentrated in the north of the island; both groups have played a major role in the island's history. Other long-established groups include the Moors, Indian Tamils, Burghers, Malays, Chinese, and Vedda.

Bengali, also known by its endonym Bangla, is a classical Indo-Aryan language belonging to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. It is primarily spoken by the Bengali people, native to the Bengal region (Bangladesh, India's West Bengal and parts of Southern Assam) as well as Tripura of South Asia. With over 242 million (24.2 crore) native speakers and another 43 million (4.3 crore) as second language speakers as of 2025, Bengali is the sixth most spoken native language and the seventh most spoken language by the total number of speakers in the world.

Bengali is the official, national, and most widely spoken language of Bangladesh, with 98% of Bangladeshis using Bengali as their first language. It is the second-most widely spoken language in India. It is the official language of the Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura and the Barak Valley region of the state of Assam. It is also the second official language of the Indian state of Jharkhand since September 2011. It is the most widely spoken language in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal, and is spoken by significant populations in other states including Bihar, Arunachal Pradesh, Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Odisha and Uttarakhand. Bengali is also spoken by the Bengali diasporas (Bangladeshi diaspora and Indian Bengalis) across Europe, North America, the Middle East and other regions.

Aceh (/ˈɑːtʃeɪ/ AH-chay, Indonesian: [ˈatʃɛh] ; Acehnese: Acèh, Acehnese pronunciation: [atʃɛh]; Jawoë: اچيه; Old Spelling: Atjeh) is the westernmost province of Indonesia. It is located on the northern end of Sumatra island, with Banda Aceh being its capital and largest city. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the west, Strait of Malacca to the northeast, as well bordering the province of North Sumatra to the east, its sole land border, and shares maritime borders with Malaysia and Thailand to the east, and Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India to the north. Granted a special autonomous status, Aceh is a religiously conservative territory, with the majority of the population being Muslim and the only Indonesian province practicing Islamic Sharia law officially. There are ten indigenous ethnic groups in this region, the largest being the Acehnese people, accounting for approximately 70% of the region's population of about 5.55 million people in mid-2024. Its land area of 56,839.09 km is comparable to Croatia, Togo, the U.S. state of West Virginia, or Russia's Pskov Oblast.

Aceh is a provincial region that constitutes a unified legal community with a special status and is granted special authorities to regulate and manage its own governmental affairs and local interests in accordance with laws and regulations within the system and principles of the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia, based on the 1945 Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia, and is led by a Governor.

East India is a region consisting of the Indian states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Odishaand West Bengal and also the union territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

The states of Bihar and West Bengal lie on the Indo-Gangetic plain. Jharkhand is situated on the Chota Nagpur Plateau. Odisha lies on the Eastern Ghats and the Deccan Plateau. West Bengal's capital Kolkata is the largest city of this region. The Kolkata Metropolitan Area is the country's third largest metropolitan region. The region is bounded by Bhutan, Nepal and the state of Sikkim in the north, the states of Uttar Pradesh and Chhattisgarh on the west, the state of Andhra Pradesh in the south and the country of Bangladesh in the east. It is also bounded by the Bay of Bengal in the south-east. It is connected to the Seven Sister States of Northeast India by the narrow Siliguri Corridor in the north east of West Bengal. East India has the fourth-largest gross domestic product of all Indian regions.