Meaning of indostán by JOHN

HINDUSTAN Traditional Spanish form of the name formerly used to refer to the entire Indian subcontinent comprising India, Pakistan (Islam), Bangladesh (Bengali), Sri Lanka (island, formerly Ceylon, Buddhist), the Maldives, Bhutan (Buddhist kingdom) and Nepal. In current usage it can designate either the northern region of India, or the set of Hindi-speaking territories or even the entire Indian subcontinent. This denomination was discontinued, probably because it was increasingly ambiguous, since Pakistan separated from India in 1947, when India became independent from the British crown, with a war that cost more than a million dead and produced 15 million displaced, since the Muslims went to Pakistan and the Buddhists and Hindis to India. Subsequently, in 1971, Bangladesh, or Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world, was separated. In 1886 Britain conquered Burma (now Buddhist Myanmar), a province of India until 1937, when it became a colony, which gained its independence in 1948.