The Indian tectonic plate is located in the north east hemisphere. It is bounded by 4 major tectonic plates. North of the Indian plate is the Eurasian plate, to the south east, the Australian plate, to the south west, the African plate and to the west the Arabian plate.
About 140 million years ago the main landmass on Earth was concentrated together in a super continent called Gondwana which started to break up in four tectonic plates; African, Antarctic, Australian and Indian plates. The rifting is thought to be caused by the rising of a mantle plume which caused the Indian plate to drift northwards and resulted in the opening of the Indian Ocean. The velocity of the drifting of the Indian plate northwards was surprisingly high, 18 to 20 cm per year prior to the collision with the Eurasian plate. During the same period of time the adjacent African and Australian plates moved much slower, 2 to 4 cm per year. It is speculated that the Indian plate had such a high drifting velocity because of its low lithospheric thickness which extends to about 100 km where the other plates that formed Gondwanaland have lithospheric thicknesses of above 180 km which increased the drag and decreased the drift velocity.