CBSE Class 7 — Notes, Chapters & Practice Quizzes

Chapter 1: Geographical Diversity of India

Summary

This chapter takes a bird's-eye journey across India, the seventh-largest country in the world and the heart of the Indian Subcontinent, to show how astonishingly varied its land is. Beginning with the towering Himalayas in the north — divided into the Himadri, Himachal and Shivalik ranges and called the 'Water Tower of Asia' because their melting snows feed the Ganga, Indus and Brahmaputra — the chapter explains that this mountain wall was formed when the Indian landmass broke from Gondwana and collided with Eurasia about 50 million years ago. It then descends to the cold desert of Ladakh, the fertile Gangetic Plains where a large share of Indians live, the golden dunes of the Thar Desert with their ingenious water-saving systems, and the ancient Aravalli Hills that hold back the desert. Moving south, it surveys the Peninsular Plateau bordered by the Western and Eastern Ghats, its mineral wealth and tribal communities, and the rivers that cross it. Finally it explores India's 7500-km coastline, the west and east coasts with their deltas, the Lakshadweep and Andaman & Nicobar islands, the Sundarbans mangrove delta, and the rain-soaked hills of the Northeast. The big idea is that this diversity of landforms shapes India's soils, climate, wildlife, cultures and economic life, helping to make the country a kind of 'mini-continent' that nonetheless remains one nation.

Key terms

Important questions

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