- published: 12 Dec 2015
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The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by the Indian Subcontinent and Arabian Peninsula (or, more generally, by southern and western Asia); on the west by eastern Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and Australia; and on the south by the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, by Antarctica). The ocean is named after the geographic location of India.
As one component of the interconnected global ocean, the Indian Ocean is delineated from the Atlantic Ocean by the 20° east meridian running south from Cape Agulhas, and from the Pacific by the meridian of 146°55' east. The northernmost extent of the Indian Ocean is approximately 30° north in the Persian Gulf. This ocean is nearly 10,000 kilometres (6,200 mi) wide at the southern tips of Africa and Australia; its area is 73,556,000 square kilometres (28,350,000 sq mi), including the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf.
The term British Indian (also Indian British or Indian Britons) refers to citizens of the United Kingdom whose ancestral roots lie in India. This includes people born in the UK who are of Indian descent, and Indian-born people who have migrated to the UK. Today, Indians number around one and a half million in the UK (not including those of mixed Indian and Other ancestry), making them the single largest visible ethnic minority population in the country. They make up the largest subgroup of British Asians, and are one of the largest Indian communities in the Indian diaspora, largely due to the Indian-British relations (including historical links such as India having been under British occupation and still being part of the Commonwealth of Nations). The British Indian community is the fifth largest in the Indian diaspora, behind the Indian communities in Nepal, the United States, Malaysia and Burma.
British Indians are a well established and middle class ethnic group. A study by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in 2007 found British Indians have among the lowest poverty rates among different ethnic groups in Britain second only to White British.