India shares its shortest land border with which country?

The correct answer is C, seven. India has a land boundary with Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Myanmar. Option D, nine, is the commonest trap, because nine is the number of neighbours in all when Sri Lanka and the Maldives are added, and those two are maritime neighbours separated by water, not land. Option A is wrong, and option B, five, is the figure students reach when they forget Afghanistan and one of the smaller frontiers; the Afghan border is only about 106 kilometres long and lies in the Pakistan-occupied part of the former state of Jammu and Kashmir, which is why it slips out of memory. Learn the seven in order of length: Bangladesh, China, Pakistan, Nepal, Myanmar, Bhutan, Afghanistan. The same chapter supplies the companion figures: a land frontier of about 15,200 kilometres and a coastline of about 7,516 kilometres counting the island groups.

The correct answer is B, Bhutan. Of the four countries offered here Bhutan is by far the smallest, a landlocked Himalayan kingdom whose border with India runs about 699 kilometres along Sikkim, West Bengal, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. Option C is wrong because Nepal, though also landlocked and small, is several times larger than Bhutan in area. Options A and D are wrong because Myanmar and Pakistan are both large countries, Pakistan being the bigger of the two. Note the wider fact behind this question: among all nine of India's neighbours the smallest in area is the Maldives, an island republic, and the largest is China; so an examiner who includes the Maldives in the options changes the answer, and the list of options must be read carefully.

The correct answer is D, Assam. Nepal touches five Indian states, namely Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Sikkim, so options A, B and C are all genuine Nepal border states and only Assam is not. Assam has international borders of its own, with Bhutan in the north and Bangladesh in the south-west, which is exactly why it is offered here and why the question catches so many students. The geography is worth picturing: the Nepal frontier runs along the Himalayan foothills from Uttarakhand eastward to Sikkim, and between Nepal and Assam lies the narrow Siliguri Corridor of West Bengal, the Chicken's Neck, which separates the two and carries all traffic to the North-East. A useful cross-check is that Bihar also borders Nepal, so a version of this question listing Bihar, Sikkim and Uttarakhand against Assam has the same answer.

The correct answer is A, China, which was never a British territory and is therefore not a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, so it does not take part in the Commonwealth Games. Options B, C and D are wrong because Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka were all part of British India or British Ceylon and are Commonwealth members whose teams compete at the Games. Among India's other neighbours, the Maldives joined the Commonwealth, left and later rejoined, while Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar and Afghanistan are not members. The point to carry away is that Commonwealth membership follows the old British connection, so China and Nepal, which were never British possessions, stand outside it. Among the neighbours that do compete, Sri Lanka and Pakistan have both hosted or contested the Games for decades, and the Commonwealth itself now admits a few states with no British past, such as Rwanda and Mozambique.

The correct answer is C, Bangladesh, with a boundary of about 4,096 kilometres, the longest India has with any country; it runs along West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram. Option A is wrong because the border with China, about 3,488 kilometres, is the second longest and is the one most often marked by students who confuse length with importance in the news. Option B is wrong because the Pakistan border measures about 3,323 kilometres and comes third. Option D is wrong because the Nepal border, about 1,751 kilometres, is well behind the first three. A related fact is asked in the same breath: among Indian states, West Bengal has the longest international border, and most of it faces Bangladesh. The Bangladesh frontier is also the most densely settled of India's borders, running through fields and villages rather than mountains, which is why fencing and enclave settlement have been such long-running issues on it.