Differentiate between frontiers and boundaries and present a detailed account on the types of boundaries giving suitable examples from the Indian subcontinent.

Frontier and boundary

• A frontier is a transitional belt where state control, culture, and settlement thin out, such as a tribal hill tract or a desert margin before it is surveyed.
• A boundary is an agreed or claimed line that separates two sovereignties on a map and, after pillars, on the ground.
• Frontiers can be absorbed when a state advances roads and posts; boundaries remain even when the frontier character of the borderland continues.
• In the subcontinent, the older North-West tribal belt behaved as a frontier; the Radcliffe Line of 1947 was drawn as a boundary, however hurried.

Types of boundaries, with examples

• Natural or physical boundaries follow a mountain, river, or desert: the crest of the Himalaya in parts of the India–China claim, the Thar as a dry belt toward Pakistan, and river sectors on the India–Bangladesh border before they were adjusted.
• Geometric boundaries follow latitude, longitude, or a straight survey line: parts of the India–Pakistan border in the desert, and colonial lines in the Rann of Kutch before the later tribunal award.
• Anthropogeographic or cultural boundaries attempt to follow language or religion: Radcliffe’s 1947 lines in Punjab and Bengal were of this claimed type and still left mixed districts.
• Relict boundaries are former lines that remain in landscape or memory, such as princely-state borders inside India after accession.
• Superimposed boundaries are drawn by an outside power with limited local fit: colonial Durand Line between British India and Afghanistan, which Pakistan inherited, and which Afghanistan has often treated as a frontier not a settled boundary.
• Subsequent boundaries are drawn after settlement, with more local knowledge; many internal state boundaries after 1956 linguistic reorganisation are of this kind inside India.
• Antecedent boundaries are drawn before dense settlement; few subcontinental international lines are purely antecedent, though some Himalayan watershed claims are argued in that language.
• Fortified or live boundaries have fences and patrols, such as the India–Pakistan international border and the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir, which is a military line rather than a fully agreed boundary.
• Maritime boundaries are lines at sea: India–Sri Lanka in the Palk Bay and Gulf of Mannar, and India–Maldives and India–Myanmar delimitations, plus the unsettled or sensitive Sir Creek sector with Pakistan.

Detail to keep

• The McMahon Line is a claimed Himalayan boundary whose frontier character on the ground produced the later LAC.
• Internal boundaries of Indian states are legal, but they are not international boundaries.