Coastal India is a geo-cultural region in the Indian subcontinent that spans the entire coastline of India.(7516.6 km; Mainland: 5422.6 km, Island Territories: 2094 km)[1]
Coastal India is a geo-cultural region in the Indian subcontinent that spans the entire coastline of India.(7516.6 km; Mainland: 5422.6 km, Island Territories: 2094 km)[1]
Coastal India spans from the Gulf of Kutch in its westernmost corner and stretches across the Gulf of Khambhat, and southwards through Konkan and Kanara region and further down along the Malabar through Cape Comorin in the southernmost region of mainland India forming the Western coastline along the Arabian sea and the Indian Ocean. and runs further from Cape Comorin towards north east through the Coromandal Coast, Northern Circars and Utkal Plains extends until the easternmost Corner of shoreline near the Sunderbans along the Bay of Bengal making the Eastern Coastline. There are many beaches and springs here, as well as beautiful sea and oceans like the Arabian Sea.
The people along coastal India exhibit vast diversity along an underlying commonality as a result of its coastal topography and sea trade between west Asian Mediterranean traders along its west coastline. The region includes Gujaratis in the westernmost region, Maharashtrians, Konkanis, Tuluvas, Bearys and Malayalis across western coastline, and Tamilians, the Telugus, Odia and the Bengali people across the eastern coastline along the Bay of Bengal.
A thriving trade existed between the Mediterranean world and Coastal Indian regions [2][3][4][5] This led to significant intermingling between the people of Coastal India and the west asian world, particularly along the South West Indian Coastline along the Arabian Sea. Several west Asian communities have also settled and become part of the diversity of coastal south west India. These include the Parsis,[6] Bohras[7] and Baghdadi Jews[8] in the westernmost region, The descendants of west asian and mediterranean traders like The Bearys of Kanara region and the Mappilas [9] along Malabar region, and the cochin jews[2][3][4][9][10][11][12] and Syriac Nasranis[2][3][4][9][10][11][12] along the southernmost region of South India. The Chola Empire established vast Tamil influence across South East Asian region [13][14][15] across Indonesia, Java, Bali and Sumatra. This brought South Indian Heritage to Cambodia, Indonesia and Bali where the Balinese Hindu traditions still thrives. This also lead to intermingling between coastal India and the south east Asia particularly in the South eastern Cholamandalam coastline along the Bay of Bengal.
The linguistic diversity of Coastal India includes languages of the Dravidian language family including Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Tulu, Beary and Kannada; languages belonging to the western zone of Indo Iranian language families including Gujarati, Marathi, Konkani, languages belonging to the central zone of the Indo-Iranian language families including Urdu and Persian and languages belonging to the eastern zone of Indo Iranian language family including Odia and Bengali. The region also has speakers of Semitic languages like Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic. The common elements of the people of coastal India includes cuisine that consists of agrarian and coastal products and clothing that involves long flowing drapes with bare midriff for both men and women suited for humid and warm climate.[16] Throughout coastal India women wear drapes called saree in various styles.[16] In the western corner of the region the drapes are called as Dhoti for men.[16] and Chaniya choli for women,[16] further southwards the drapes are called as lungi or mundu for men.[16] and veshti for women.[16] Towards the southernmost tip of coastal south western India the social system of inheritance was once matrilineal.[16][17][18][19][20] There are various festivals celebrated in the coastal states centered on deities.[21]
The tourism is enabled by numerous islands, beaches[22] and coral reefs[23] in coastal India, full potential of which is yet to be exploited.
