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India’s coastline measures 7,517 kilometres (4,700 mi) in length; of this distance, 5,423 kilometres (3,400 mi) belong to peninsular India and 2,094 kilometres (1,300 mi) to the Andaman, Nicobar, and Lakshadweep island chains. Major Himalayan-origin rivers that substantially flow through India include the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, both of which drain into the Bay of Bengal. These parallel chains run from the Arabian Sea coast in Gujarat in the west to the coal-rich Chota Nagpur Plateau in Jharkhand in the east. The remaining Indian Plate survives as peninsular India, the oldest and geologically most stable part bet365 of India. To the west lies the Thar Desert, the eastern spread of which is checked by the Aravallis. Immediately south of the emerging Himalayas, plate movement created a vast crescent-shaped trough that rapidly filled with river-borne sediment and now constitutes the Indo-Gangetic Plain.

Much of India’s territory lies within a large peninsula, surrounded by the Arabian Sea to the west and the Bay of Bengal to the east; Cape Comorin (Kanniyakumari), the southernmost point of the Indian mainland, marks the dividing line between those two bodies of water. Though the country’s population remains largely rural, India has three of the most populous and cosmopolitan cities in the world—Mumbai (Bombay), Kolkata (Calcutta), and Delhi. The subcontinent was then partitioned along religious lines into two separate countries—India, with a majority of Hindus, and Pakistan, with a majority of Muslims; the eastern portion of Pakistan later split off to form Bangladesh.

There are two main language families in India, the Indo-Aryan and the Dravidian languages. There are many different languages and cultures in India. Altogether, 1,625 languages are spoken in India. Hindi and English are official languages of India.

Kochi Biennale is India’s largest contemporary art exhibition, held every two years in the city. Rameshwaram is home to the world’s second-largest and India’s first-ever sea bridge, the Pamban Bridge. The historic Ashokan pillar originally erected in Sarnath was also the source of inspiration for the national emblem of India. Chandigarh, a union territory with its own administration, serves as the capital for two Indian states – Punjab and Haryana! 1990s – Government initiates a programme of economic liberalisation and reform, opening up the economy to global trade and investment.

By this time, with its economic power severely curtailed by the British parliament and having effectively been made an arm of British administration, the East India Company began more consciously to enter non-economic arenas, including education, social reform, and culture. By the early 18th century, with the lines between commercial and political dominance being increasingly blurred, several European trading companies, including the English East India Company, had established coastal outposts. Newly coherent social groups in northern and western India, such as the Marathas, the Rajputs, and the Sikhs, gained military and governing ambitions during Mughal rule, which, through collaboration or adversity, gave them both recognition and military experience. Embracing a strong Shaivite tradition and building upon the military technology of the sultanate, the empire came to control much of peninsular India, and was to influence South Indian society for long afterwards. Although at first disruptive for the Indian elites, the sultanate largely left its vast non-Muslim subject population to its own laws and customs. After the 10th century, Muslim Central Asian nomadic clans, using swift-horse cavalry and raising vast armies united by ethnicity, repeatedly overran South Asia’s north-western plains,r leading eventually to the establishment of the Islamic Delhi Sultanate in 1206.

In terms of PPP, the economy is 3rd largest (worth US$8.720 trillion). It is the 7th largest in the world with a nominal GDP of $2,250 billion (USD). India’s economy is among the world’s fastest growing.

A very large majority of Indians have their marriages arranged by their parents or family elders. Multi-generational patrilineal joint families have been the norm in India, though nuclear families are becoming common in urban areas. The Constituent Assembly of India abolished untouchability in 1947, the Republic of India did more formally in 1950, and India has since enacted other anti-discriminatory laws and social welfare initiatives related to caste. India bears a disproportionately large burden of the world’s tuberculosis rates, with World Health Organization (WHO) statistics for 2022 estimating 2.8 million new infections annually, accounting for 26% of the global total. In India’s higher education system, a significant number of seats are reserved under affirmative action policies for the historically disadvantaged.

• The Prime Minister of India is the head of government and exercises most executive power.
• An acute balance of payments crisis in 1991 forced the nation to liberalise its economy; since then, it has moved increasingly towards a free-market system by emphasising both foreign trade and direct investment inflows.
• The official language of India’s federal government was chosen by the Constituent Assembly of India in September 1949 after three years of debate between two opposing camps.
• About 69% of Indians speak an Indo-Arayan language, and about 26% speak a Dravidian language.

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Disaffection with the company also grew during this time and set off the Indian Rebellion of 1857. India was no longer exporting manufactured goods as it long had, but instead supplying the British Empire with raw materials. Its further access to the riches of Bengal and the subsequent increased strength and size of its army enabled it to annexe or subdue most of India by the 1820s. As the empire disintegrated, many among these elites were able to seek and control their own affairs. The Mughal state’s economic policies, deriving most revenues from agriculture and mandating that taxes be paid in the well-regulated silver currency, caused peasants and artisans to enter larger markets.

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Many British institutions stayed in place (such as the parliamentary system of government); English continued to be a widely used lingua franca; and India remained within the Commonwealth. Direct administration by the British, which began in 1858, effected a political and economic unification of the subcontinent. Eventually, some of those raiders stayed; by the 13th century much of the subcontinent was under Muslim rule, and the number of Muslims steadily increased. Especially important was the coming of Islam, brought from the northwest by Arab, Turkish, Persian, and other raiders beginning early in the 8th century ce. Throughout its history, India was intermittently disturbed by incursions from beyond its northern mountain wall.

Critically endangered species include the gharial, a crocodilian; the great Indian bustard; and the Indian white-rumped vulture, which has become nearly extinct by having ingested the carrion of diclofenac-treated cattle. India contains 172 IUCN-designated threatened animal species, or 2.9% of endangered forms. This lowered endemism among India’s mammals, which stands at 12.6%, contrasting with 45.8% among reptiles and 55.8% among amphibians. Still later, mammals entered India from Asia through two zoogeographic passes flanking the Himalayas.

Similarly, the Republic of India does not recognise the Pakistani and Chinese parts of Kashmir. However, Pakistan and China do not recognise this area as part of India. For example, India claims Jammu and Kashmir as an Indian state. Different countries disagree about where India’s borders lie. This differs with names that outsiders use for the country.

India’s foreign exchange remittances of US$100 billion in 2022, highest in the world, were contributed to its economy by 32 million Indians working in foreign countries. An acute balance of payments crisis in 1991 forced the nation to liberalise its economy; since then, it has moved increasingly towards a free-market system by emphasising both foreign trade and direct investment inflows. The vast majority of Indians fall into the global low-income group based on average daily income. With an average annual GDP growth rate of 5.8% over the past two decades, and reaching 6.1% during 2011–2012, India is one of the world’s fastest-growing economies.

At first, they had lived in the subcontinent as hunter-gatherers. Sri Lanka and the Maldives are nearby to the south. It is also the most populated country in the world. The content available on India Portal is owned and managed by the respective Ministries and Departments.

Among them Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad, in decreasing order by population. In the 2011 census, there were 53 million-plus urban agglomerations in India. The slowing down of the overall population growth rate was due to the sharp decline in the growth rate in rural areas since 1991.

A nationalist movement emerged in India, the first in the non-European British Empire and an influence on other nationalist movements. In south India, the Vijayanagara Empire created a long-lasting composite Hindu culture. The resulting Delhi Sultanate drew northern India into the cosmopolitan networks of medieval Islam. In the early centuries of the 2nd millennium Muslim armies from Central Asia intermittently overran India’s northern plains. In the 1st millennium, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism became established on India’s southern and western coasts.

It has been the world’s largest democracy by number of people since 1947. India (भारत  (Hindi) Bhārat Gaṇarājya) officially the Republic of India, also known as Hindustān, is a country in South Asia. Translations of the content into languages other than English are generated using automated tools and may not always be accurate. His campaign focused on a blend of economic development, national security, and social welfare programs, which resonated widely with the populace.Shri Modi’s third term is expected to build on the foundations laid during his … The Indus valley people practiced agriculture, domesticated animals, made tools and weapons from copper, bronze and tin and even traded with some Middle East countries.