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New Moore Island, also called Purbasha or South Talpatti, triggered a geopolitical dispute between India and Bangladesh before rising sea levels and erosion erased it completely.
News18
For years, India and Bangladesh argued over a tiny uninhabited island in the Bay of Bengal. Then the island disappeared entirely.
Known as New Moore Island in India and South Talpatti Island in Bangladesh, the remote sandbar emerged suddenly in the 1970s near the mouth of the Hariabhanga River after a powerful cyclone and shifting sediment patterns altered the coastline in the Sundarbans delta region.
At first, the island seemed insignificant.
It measured only a few square kilometres, had no permanent population and consisted largely of muddy, low-lying land vulnerable to tides and storms. Yet despite its tiny size, the island quickly became geopolitically sensitive because both India and Bangladesh claimed sovereignty over it.
According to The Los Angeles Times, the dispute intensified because ownership could potentially affect maritime boundaries and access to offshore resources in the Bay of Bengal.
The island’s location mattered strategically.
It lay in waters connected to fishing zones, shipping routes and possible oil and gas reserves. During the Cold War period and afterward, territorial control in the Bay of Bengal carried increasing geopolitical importance for both countries.
India eventually referred to the island as New Moore Island or Purbasha, while Bangladesh called it South Talpatti.
The dispute remained unresolved for decades.
Yet even while diplomats argued over maps and maritime claims, nature was quietly erasing the island itself.
Scientists and environmental researchers repeatedly warned that the island was extremely fragile because of its low elevation and the unstable sedimentary nature of the Sundarbans delta. The Bay of Bengal region experiences constant coastal reshaping through cyclones, tidal surges, erosion and rising sea levels.
By the late 2000s, satellite imagery began showing dramatic changes.
According to the School of Oceanographic Studies at Jadavpur University, the island had gradually submerged beneath rising waters and erosion. Researchers eventually confirmed that the landmass had disappeared completely below sea level.
By around 2010, New Moore Island effectively no longer existed.
The disappearance carried symbolic weight internationally.
Environmental experts frequently referenced the island as an early visible example of how sea-level rise and climate-driven coastal erosion could physically erase territory itself. The Sundarbans region remains one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable coastal zones because much of the landscape sits only slightly above sea level.
Ironically, the island’s disappearance also quietly resolved the territorial dispute.
A land conflict that once carried diplomatic tension between two nations simply ceased to matter once the ocean reclaimed the territory altogether.
The story feels almost surreal even today.
An island suddenly appeared from the sea, became part of an international geopolitical argument for decades, entered official maps under different names — and then vanished completely beneath the water before most people had even heard of it.
Which may be why New Moore Island continues fascinating historians and climate researchers alike.
It was not just a disappearing island.
It was a reminder that in some parts of the world, even national borders themselves may not remain permanent when geography starts changing faster than politics can react.
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