Based oncoalescence ofMitochondrial DNA andY Chromosome data, it is thought that the earliest extantlineages of anatomically modern humans orHomo sapiens on the Indian subcontinent had reached there from Africa between 80,000 and 50,000 years ago, and with high likelihood by 55,000 years ago.[26][27][28][76] Their long occupation, initially in varying forms of isolation as hunter-gatherers, has made the region highly diverse, second only to Africa in humangenetic diversity.[29] However, the earliest known modern human fossils in South Asia date to about 30,000 years ago.[27] Evidence for theneolithic period in the western margins of theIndusriver basin, atMehrgarh inBalochistan, Pakistan, dates to after 7000 BCE. Domestication of grain-producing plants (includingbarley) and animals (includinghumped zebu cattle) occurred here. These cultures gradually evolved into theIndus Valley Civilisation, which flourished during 2500–1900 BCE in Pakistan and western India.[77][30] Centred around cities such asMohenjo-daro,Harappa,Dholavira,Ganweriwala, andRakhigarhi,[78] its characteristic features included standardised weights,steatiteseals, a written script, urban planning, public works, and arts and crafts including pottery styles, terracotta human figures and animal statuettes.[78] Networks of towns and villages grew around the cities in a newagro-pastoral economy.[79]
Between 1500 BCE and 1200 BCE, anarchaic form ofSanskrit, anIndo-European language,diffused into India from the northwest. Its evidence today is found in theRig Veda—the oldest scripture associated with what later becameHinduism—which was composed byIndo-Aryan-speaking tribes migrating east from what is today northernAfghanistan and across thePunjab region.[31][32] The settling of theGangesriver plain took place during the next millennium, when large swathes of the river system's adjoining regions were deforested, at times by setting fires, or later by employing iron implements, and prepared for agriculture. The settlement may have involved driving the preexisting people out or enslaving them.[80] TheDravidian languages of India were supplanted in the north, creating a broadlanguage familiy-divide, with the Indo-Aryan languages being spoken mainly in thenorth andwest, and the Dravidian in some parts ofeast India and most of thesouth.[34]Classical Sanskrit, a refined and standardised grammatical form would emerge in the mid-1st millennium BCE and was codified in theAṣṭādhyāyī ('Eight chapters') ofPāṇini.[m] The two major Sanskrit epics, theMahābhārata and theRāmāyaṇa, however, were composed in a range of oral storytelling registers calledEpic Sanskrit which was used in northern India between 400 BCE and 300 CE, and roughly contemporary with classical Sanskrit.[82]
A secondurbanisation had taken place inSouth Asia by 400 BCE, this time on the Ganges plain. In fortified cities,social differentiation bycaste, orvarna, had emerged.[35] By the mid-millennium two new ethical and social systems had arisen:Jainism based on the teachings ofMahavira andBuddhism on those ofthe Buddha. Both religions stressed non-violence and abjured animal sacrifices conducted inBrahmanism,[n] and birth into a fixed hereditaryvarna. By living ethically, lay people could rise socially and morally in these religions.[36] Chronicling the life of the Buddha was central to the beginnings of recorded history in India.[83] The rise of the two religions was a backdrop to the emergence of the first loose-knit geographically extensive power in South Asia, theMaurya Empire. During the rule of the founder's grandson,Ashoka (ca. 268–232 BCE), the empire briefly controlled the major urban hubs and arteries of the subcontinent, except in the deep south.[84][o][p] The empire's period was notable for creativity in art, architecture, inscriptions, and produced texts,[87] but also for the declining rights of women in the mainstreamIndo-Aryan speaking regions.[88] After theKalinga War in which his troops visited great violence on the region, Ashoka embracedBuddhism and promoted its tenets in edicts scattered across South Asia.[89] As the edicts forbade both the killing of wild animals and the destruction of forests, Ashoka is seen by some modern environmental historians as an early embodiment of that ethos.[90][91]
By the 4th and 5th centuries, theGupta Empire had created a complex system of administration and taxation in the greater Ganges Plain;[92] this system became a model for later Indian kingdoms.[93] Under the Guptas, a renewed Hinduism based on devotion, rather than the management of ritual, began to assert itself.[94] The renewal was reflected in a flowering of art, literature, and science.[95][40] In South India, theSangam literature of theTamil language reveals that, between 200 BCE and 200 CE, the southern peninsula was ruled by theCheras and theCholas, along the western and eastern plains, respectively, of theKaveri river valley, and thePandyas farther south along theVaigai river valley.[96] By the sixth century, thePallavas had grown into a regional power. Simultaneously, Buddhism and Jainism, which had favoured a conservativetransactionalism, were replaced by kingly devotion to the gods of particular places, which became a characteristic of theBhakti movement.[97] The Pallavas, in particular,traded extensively with the Roman Empire and withWest andSoutheast Asia.[98]
Colour lithograph, 1895, British Museum.Draupadi, the wife of all fivePandava brothers in theMahabharata, is presented at aparcheesi game whereYudhishthira, the king ofHastinapura, had gambled away all material wealth, one of several instigating factors in the Mahabharata war.
The Indian early medieval age, from 600 to 1200 CE, was defined by regional kingdoms and cultural diversity.[100] No ruler of this period was able to create an empire and consistently control lands much beyond their core region.[q][101] During this time, pastoral peoples, whose land had been cleared to make way for the growing agricultural economy, were accommodated within caste society, as were new non-traditional ruling classes.[102] The caste system consequently began to show regional differences.[102]
In the 6th and 7th centuries, the firstdevotional hymns were composed in Tamil.[103] They were imitated all over India and led to both the resurgence of Hinduism and the development of allmodern languages of the subcontinent.[103] Indian royalty, big and small, and the temples they patronised drew citizens in significant numbers to the capital cities, which became economic hubs as well.[104] Temple towns of various sizes began to appear everywhere as India underwent another urbanisation.[104] By the 8th and 9th centuries, the effects were felt in Southeast Asia, as South Indian culture and political systems were exported to lands that became part of modern-dayMyanmar,Thailand,Laos,Brunei,Cambodia,Vietnam,Philippines,Malaysia, andIndonesia.[105] Indian merchants, scholars, and sometimes armies were involved in this transmission; Southeast Asians took the initiative as well, with many sojourning in Indian seminaries and translating Buddhist and Hindu texts into their languages.[105]
After the 10th century, Muslim Central Asian nomadic clans, usingswift-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 IslamicDelhi Sultanate in 1206.[107] The sultanate was to control much of North India and to make many forays into South India. Although at first disruptive for the Indian elites, the sultanate largely left its vast non-Muslim subject population to its own laws and customs.[108][109]
By repeatedly repulsingMongol raiders in the 13th century, the sultanate saved India from the devastation visited on West and Central Asia,[107] setting the scene for centuries ofmigration of fleeing soldiers, learned men, mystics, traders, artists, and artisans from that region into the subcontinent, thereby creating a syncretic Indo-Islamic culture in the north.[110] The sultanate's raiding and weakening of the regional kingdoms of South India paved the way for the indigenousVijayanagara Empire.[111] Embracing a strongShaivite tradition and building upon the military technology of the sultanate, the empire came to control much of peninsular India,[112] and was to influence South Indian society for long afterwards.[111]
In the early 16th century, northern India, then under mainly Muslim rulers,[113] fell again to the superior mobility and firepower of a new generation of Central Asian warriors.[114] The resultingMughal Empire did not stamp out the local societies it came to rule. Instead, it balanced and pacified them through new administrative practices[115][116] and diverse and inclusive ruling elites,[117] leading to more systematic, centralised, and uniform rule.[118] Eschewing tribal bonds and Islamic identity, especially underAkbar, the Mughals united their far-flung realms through loyalty—expressed through a Persianised culture—to an emperor who had near-divine status.[119]
The Mughal state's economic policies, deriving most revenues from agriculture[120] and mandating that taxes be paid in the well-regulated silver currency,[121] caused peasants and artisans to enter larger markets.[122] The relative peace maintained by the empire during much of the 17th century was a factor in India's economic expansion,[122] resulting in greater patronage ofpainting, literary forms, textiles, andarchitecture.[123] Newly coherent social groups in northern and western India, such as theMarathas, theRajputs, and theSikhs, gained military and governing ambitions during Mughal rule, which, through collaboration or adversity, gave them both recognition and military experience.[124] Expanding commerce during Mughal rule gave rise to new Indian commercial and political elites along the coasts of southern and eastern India.[124] As the empire disintegrated, many among these elites were able to seek and control their own affairs.[125]
By the early 18th century, with the lines between commercial and political dominance being increasingly blurred, several European trading companies, including theEnglish East India Company, had established coastal outposts.[126][127] The East India Company's control of the seas, greater resources, and more advanced military training and technology led it to assert its military strength increasingly and caused it to become attractive to a portion of the Indian elite; these factors were crucial in allowing the company to gain control over theBengal region by 1765 and sideline the other European companies.[128][126][129][130] 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.[131] India was no longer exporting manufactured goods as it long had, but instead supplying theBritish Empire with raw materials. Many historians consider this to be the onset of India's colonial period.[126] 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.[132]
The appointment in 1848 ofLord Dalhousie as Governor General of the East India Company set the stage for changes essential to a modern state: the consolidation and demarcation of sovereignty, the surveillance of the population, and the education of citizens. Technological changes—among them, railways, canals, and the telegraph—were introduced not long after their introduction inEurope.[133][134][135][136] Disaffection with the company also grew during this time and set off theIndian Rebellion of 1857. Fed by diverse resentments and perceptions, including invasive British-style social reforms, harsh land taxes, and summary treatment of some wealthy landowners and princes, the rebellion rocked many regions of northern and central India and shook the foundations of Company rule.[137][138] After the rebellion was suppressed in 1858, the East India Company was disbanded, and the British government began todirectly administer India. Proclaiming aunitary state and a gradual but limited British-style parliamentary system,[139] the new rulers also protected princes and landed gentry as a feudal safeguard against future unrest.[140] In the decades following, public life gradually emerged all over India, leading eventually to the founding of theIndian National Congress in 1885.[141][142][143][144]
The rush of technology and the commercialisation of agriculture in the second half of the 19th century was marked by economic setbacks, and many small farmers became dependent on the whims of faraway markets.[145] There was an increase in the number of large-scalefamines,[146] and, despite the risks of infrastructure development borne by Indian taxpayers, little industrial employment was generated for Indians.[147] However, commercial cropping, especially in the newly canalled Punjab, led to increased food production for internal consumption.[148] The railway network provided critical famine relief,[149] notably reduced the cost of moving goods,[149] and helped nascent Indian-owned industry.[148]
Mahatma Gandhi leaves the Presidency Jail inCalcutta in April 1938, after interviewing political prisoners there.
"Gandhi Bhawan at thePanjab University inChandigarh. Commissioned by India's prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and designed by the Swiss-French architectLe Corbusier, the city was built in the aftermath of India's1947 partition and independence. The city's Capitol Complex is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
India accounts for the bulk of the Indian subcontinent, lying atop theIndian tectonic plate, and a part of theIndo-Australian Plate.[161] India's defining geologic processes began approximately 70 million years ago, when the Indian Plate, then part of the southern supercontinentGondwana, began a north-eastwarddrift caused byseafloor spreading to its south-west, and later, south and south-east.[161] Simultaneously, the vastTethyanoceanic crust, to its northeast, began tosubduct under theEurasian Plate.[161] TheIndian continental crust, however, was obstructed and was sheared horizontally. Its lower crust and mantle slid under, but the upper layer piled up in sheets (ornappes) ahead of the subduction zone.[162] This created theorogeny, or process of mountain building, of the Himalayas.[163] The middle and stiffer layer continued to push into Tibet, causingcrustal thickening of theTibetan Plateau.[164] Immediately south of the emerging Himalayas, plate movement created a vast crescent-shapedtrough that rapidly filled with river-borne sediment[165] and now constitutes theIndo-Gangetic Plain.[166] The original Indian plate makes its first appearance above the sediment in the ancientAravalli range, which extends from theDelhi Ridge in a southwesterly direction. To the west lies theThar Desert, the eastern spread of which is checked by the Aravallis.[167][168][169]
The remaining Indian Plate survives aspeninsular India, the oldest and geologically most stable part of India. It extends as far north as theSatpura andVindhya ranges in central India. These parallel chains run from the Arabian Sea coast in Gujarat in the west to the coal-richChota Nagpur Plateau in Jharkhand in the east.[170] To the south, the remaining peninsular landmass, theDeccan Plateau, is flanked on the west and east by coastal ranges known as theWestern andEastern Ghats;[171] the plateau contains the country's oldest rock formations, some over one billion years old. Constituted in such fashion, India lies to the north of the equator between 6° 44′ and 35° 30′ north latitude[s] and 68° 7′ and 97° 25′ east longitude.[172]
Major Himalayan-origin rivers that substantially flow through India include theGanges and theBrahmaputra, both of which drain into theBay of Bengal.[173] Important tributaries of the Ganges include theYamuna and theKosi. The Kosi's extremely low gradient, caused by long-term silt deposition, leads to severe floods and course changes.[174][175] Major peninsular rivers, whose steeper gradients prevent their waters from flooding, include theGodavari, theMahanadi, theKaveri, and theKrishna, which also drain into the Bay of Bengal;[176] and theNarmada and theTapti, which drain into theArabian Sea.[177]
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.[178] According to the Indian naval hydrographic charts, themainland coastline consists of the following: 43% sandy beaches; 11% rocky shores, including cliffs; and 46%mudflats or marshy shores.[178] Coastal features include the marshyRann of Kutch of western India and the alluvialSundarbans delta of eastern India; the latter is shared with Bangladesh.[179] India has twoarchipelagos: theLakshadweepcoral atolls off India's south-western coast; and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a volcanic chain in theAndaman Sea.[180]
The Indian climate is strongly influenced by the Himalayas and the Thar Desert, both of which drive the economically and culturally pivotal summer and wintermonsoons.[182] The Himalayas prevent cold Central Asiankatabatic winds from blowing in, keeping the bulk of the Indian subcontinent warmer than most locations at similar latitudes.[183][184] The Thar Desert plays a crucial role in attracting the moisture-laden south-west summer monsoon winds that, between June and October, provide the majority of India's rainfall.[182]
India's most dense forests, such as thetropical moist forest of theAndaman Islands, theWestern Ghats, andNortheast India, occupy approximately 3% of its land area.[195][196]Moderately dense forest, whose canopy density is between 40% and 70%, occupies 9.39% of India's land area.[195][196] It predominates in thetemperate coniferous forest of theHimalayas, the moist deciduoussal forest of eastern India, and the dry deciduousteak forest of central and southern India.[197] India has two natural zones ofthorn forest, one in theDeccan Plateau, immediately east of the Western Ghats, and the other in the western part of the Indo-Gangetic plain, now turned into rich agricultural land by irrigation, its features no longer visible.[198] Among the Indian subcontinent's notable indigenous trees are theastringentAzadirachta indica, orneem, which is widely used in rural Indianherbal medicine,[199] and the luxuriantFicus religiosa, orpeepul,[200] which is displayed on the ancient seals ofMohenjo-daro,[201] and under whichthe Buddha is recorded in thePali canon to have sought enlightenment.[202]
Many Indian species have descended from those ofGondwana, the southernsupercontinent from which India separated more than 100 million years ago.[203] India's subsequent collision with Eurasia set off a mass exchange of species. However,volcanism andclimatic changes later caused the extinction of many endemic Indian forms.[204] Still later, mammals entered India from Asia through twozoogeographic passes flanking the Himalayas.[205] This lowered endemism among India's mammals, which stands at 12.6%, contrasting with 45.8% among reptiles and 55.8% among amphibians.[191] Among endemics are the vulnerable[206]hooded leaf monkey[207] and the threatenedBeddome's toad[208][209] of the Western Ghats.
In 1996, the BJP briefly formed a government after winning thegeneral election.United Front coalition governments followed, which relied on external political support,H. D. Deve Gowda andI. K. Gujral serving as prime ministers. After the1998 Indian general election,Atal Bihari Vajpayee of the BJP became prime minister; his government was short-lived due to the lack of a continued mandate. Elections were held again in1999. The BJP, now a part of theNational Democratic Alliance (NDA), formed a coalition government led by Vajpayee, who became the first non-Congress prime minister to complete a five-year term.[226] In the2004 general election, the NDA was defeated. Congress emerged as the largest single party and formed a coalition, theUnited Progressive Alliance (UPA).Manmohan Singh, a Sikh, who was proposed by Congress PresidentSonia Gandhi to be parliamentary leader, served as prime minister of the UPA government, but with some external support.[v] The UPA returned to power in the2009 general election with increased numbers, no longer dependent on external support.[227] Singh became the first prime minister to be re-elected after Jawaharlal Nehru in 1962.[228] In the2014 general election, the BJP underNarendra Modi became the first political party since 1984 to win an absolute majority.[229] The party won a larger majority in the2019 general election. After losing the majority in the2024 general election, the BJP formed a coalition government with its NDA partners. Modi is the longest-serving non-Congress prime minister.[230]
The Constitution of India was drafted by theConstituent Assembly of India with uncommon speed and absence of irregularities between 1946 and 1949.[232] TheGovernment of India Act 1935 was used as a model and framework.[232] Long passages from the Act were included. The constitution describes a federal state with a parliamentary system of democracy.[232] The federal structure was conspicuous for the strength of the central government, which exclusively exercised control of defence, foreign affairs, railways, ports, and currency.[232] The President, the constitutional head of state, has reserve powers for taking over the administration of a state.[232] The central legislature has two houses: theLok Sabha, whose delegates are directly elected by the people in general elections every five years, and theRajya Sabha, whose members are nominated by the elected representatives in the states.[232] There are also features not to be found in the Act of 1935. The definition of fundamental rights is based on theConstitution of the United States, and the constitutional directives, or goals of endeavor, are based on theConstitution of Ireland.[233] An Indian institution recommended by the constitution is thepanchayat or village committees.[233]Untouchability is illegal (Article 17) and caste distinctions are derecognized (Articles 15(2) and 16(2)).[233] The promulgation of the Indian constitution transformed India into a republic within the Commonwealth.[233]
ThePrime Minister of India is thehead of government and exercises mostexecutive power.[234] Appointed by the president,[235] the prime minister is supported by theparty orpolitical alliance with a majority of seats in the lower house of parliament.[234] The executive of the Indian government consists of the president, thevice-president, and theUnion Council of Ministers—with thecabinet being its executive committee—headed by the prime minister. Any minister holding a portfolio must be a member of one of the houses of parliament.[236] In the Indian parliamentary system, the executive is subordinate to the legislature; the prime minister and their council are directly responsible to the lower house of the parliament.Civil servants act as permanent executives and all decisions of theexecutive are implemented by them.[237]
The original preamble of theConstitution of India in 1950. In 1976, during the tenure of Indian prime ministerIndira Gandhi, the first sentence was changed to "Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic".
A clickable map of the 28 states and 8 union territories of India
India is a federal union comprising 28states and 8union territories.[12] All states, as well as the union territories ofJammu and Kashmir,Puducherry and theNational Capital Territory of Delhi, have elected legislatures and governments following theWestminster system. The remaining five union territories are directly ruled by the central government through appointed administrators. In 1956, under theStates Reorganisation Act, states were reorganised on a linguistic basis.[243] There are over a quarter of a million local government bodies at city, town, district, block and village levels.[244]
India remained a member of theCommonwealth of Nations after becoming a republic in 1950.[245][246] It strongly supported decolonisation in Africa and Asia in the 1950s, and played a leading role in the Non-Aligned Movement.[247] After cordial relations with China during the greater part of the 1950s, India and China went towar in 1962; India was widely thought to have been decisively defeated.[248] By 1967, however, India was able to fend offChinese excursions into Sikkim.[249]
According to theInternational Monetary Fund, the Indian economy in 2024 was nominally worth $3.94 trillion; it is thefifth-largest economy by market exchange rates and, at around $15.0 trillion, thethird-largest bypurchasing power parity (PPP).[16] With an average annual GDP growth rate of 5.8% over the past two decades, and reaching 6.1% during 2011–2012,[263] India is one of theworld's fastest-growing economies.[264] However, it has a low per capita GDP, ranking144th in the world in nominal terms and123rd adjusted for PPP.[16] The vast majority of Indians fall into the global low-income group based on average daily income.[265]
Averaging an economic growth rate of 7.5% for several years before 2007,[267] India has more than doubled its hourly wage rates during the first decade of the 21st century.[278] Some 431 million Indians have left poverty since 1985; India's middle classes are projected to number around 580 million by 2030.[279] In 2024, India's consumer market was theworld's third largest.[280] India's nominalGDP per capita increased steadily from US$308 in 1991, when economic liberalisation began, to US$1,380 in 2010, to an estimated US$2,731 in 2024. It is expected to grow to US$3,264 by 2026.[16]
In 2019, 43% of India's total workforce was employed in agriculture.[281]
A woman growing radish in the foreground and garlic to the right in a village in theNilgiris, Tamil Nadu. 55% of India's female workforce was employed in agriculture in 2019.[282]
India is theworld's largest producer of milk, with the largest population of cattle. In 2018, nearly 80% of India's milk was sourced from small farms with herd size between one and two, the milk harvested by hand milking.[283]
TheIndian automotive industry, the world's second-fastest growing, increased domestic sales by 26% during 2009–2010,[284] and exports by 36% during 2008–2009.[285] In 2022, India became the world's third-largest vehicle market after China and the United States, surpassing Japan.[286] At the end of 2011, theIndian IT industry employed 2.8 million professionals, generated revenues close to US$100 billion equalling 7.5% of Indian GDP, and contributed 26% of India's merchandise exports.[287]
Thepharmaceutical industry in India includes 3,000 pharmaceutical companies and 10,500 manufacturing units; India is the world's third-largest pharmaceutical producer, largest producer of generic medicines, and supplies up to 50–60% of global vaccines demand, contributing up toUS$24.44 billion in exports. India's local pharmaceutical market is estimated up toUS$42 billion.[288][289] India is among the top 12 biotech destinations in the world.[290][291] The Indian biotech industry grew by 15.1% in 2012–2013, increasing its revenues from₹204.4 billion (Indian rupees) to₹235.24 billion (US$3.94 billion at June 2013 exchange rates).[292]
A tea garden in Sikkim. India, theworld's second-largest producer of tea, is a nation of one billion tea drinkers, who consume 70% of India's tea output.
A panorama ofBangalore, the centre of India's software development economy. In the 1980s, when the firstmultinational corporations began to set up centres in India, they chose Bangalore because of the large pool of skilled graduates in the area, in turn due to the many science and engineering colleges in the surrounding region.[298]
AChinese fishing net being raised out of the water inKochi. Fishing, which contributes 1.07% to India's totalGDP,[299] supports the livelihood of over 28 million people, especially within marginalized and vulnerable communities.[300] India is the third-largest fish producing country in the world, accounting for 7.96% of global production.[299]
With an estimated 1,428,627,663 residents in 2023, India is the world's most populous country.[13] 1,210,193,422 residents were reported in the2011 provisional census report.[301] The median age was 28.7 in 2020.[271] Medical advances made in the last 50 years as well as increased agricultural productivity brought about by the "Green Revolution" have caused India's population to grow rapidly,[302] though India's decennial rates of growth are decreasing: its population grew by 17.64% from 2001 to 2011,[303] compared to 21.54% growth in the previous decade (1991–2001).[303] The first post-colonial census, conducted in 1951, counted 361 million people.[304] Thelife expectancy at birth has increased from 49.7 years in 1970–1975 to 72.0 years in 2023.[305][306] The under-fivemortality rate for the country was 113 per 1,000 live births in 1994 whereas in 2018 it reduced to 41.1 per 1,000 live births.[305]
The human sex ratio, according to the 2011 census, is 940 females per 1,000 males.[301]Female infanticide in India, and latelyfemale foeticide, have created lop-sided gender ratios; the number ofmissing women in the country quadrupled from 15 million to 63 million during the period 1964–2014, faster than the population growth during the same period.[307] According to an Indian government study, an additional 21 million girls are unwanted and do not receive adequate care.[308] Despite a government ban on sex-selective foeticide, the practice has far from stopped.[309]
Migration from rural to urban areas has been an important dynamic in India's recent history. The number of people living in urban areas grew by 31.2% between 1991 and 2001.[310] In 2001, over 70% lived in rural areas.[311][312] The level of urbanisation increased further from 27.81% in the 2001 census to 31.16% in the 2011 census. The slowing down of the overall population growth rate was due to the sharp decline in the growth rate in rural areas since 1991.[313] In the 2011 census, there were 53million-plus urban agglomerations in India. Among themMumbai,Delhi,Kolkata,Chennai,Bengaluru,Hyderabad andAhmedabad, in decreasing order by population.[314]
The historical development of life expectancy in India from 1881 to 2023
The child mortality rate in India from 1960 to 2023
The official language of India's federal government was chosen by theConstituent Assembly of India in September 1949 after three years of debate between two opposing camps.Hindi language protagonists wanted Hindi in theDevanagari script to be the sole "national language" of India whereas delegates from South India preferred English to have a place in the Constitution.[317][318] The compromise reached declared (i) Hindi to be the "official language" of India's federal government; (ii) English to be an associate official language for 15 years during which Hindi's formal lexicon would be developed; and (iii) the international form ofHindu–Arabic numerals to be the official numerals.[317][318] The compromise resolution became articles 343–351 of India's constitution, which came into effect on 26 January 1950.[317][318] In 1965, when the 15 years were up, the Government of India announced that English would continue to be the "de facto formal language of India".[317][318]
The regions of first-language speech of the main languages of India
The main languages of India by relative sizes of speakers
On the reverse of each of India'spaper money notes, the denomination is listed in a panel on the left in 15 languages, in addition to Hindi and English, which appear more prominently elsewhere. These are from top to bottom: 1.Assamese, 2.Bengali, 3.Gujarati, 4.Kannada, 5.Kashmiri, 6.Konkani, 7.Malayalam, 8.Marathi, 9.Nepali, 10.Oriya, 11.Punjabi, 12.Sanskrit, 13.Tamil, 14.Telugu, 15.Urdu.[322]
A member of theGond tribe during theDandari festival inJainoor, Telangana. Some 8.6% of India's population belong to tribal groups. The supercontinentGondwana is named after the Gond region of India. Their religion predates theHindu synthesis of the mid-first-millennium BCE.
AJain woman making an offering at the feet of Bahubali Gomateswara atShravanabelagola, Karnataka
The exterior of St Judes Church,Chinnathurai, Tamil Nadu. Christianity is believed to have been introduced to India by the late 2nd century bySyriac-speaking Christians.
The literacy rate in 2011 was 74.04%: 65.46% among females and 82.14% among males.[328] The rural-urban literacy gap, which was 21.2 percentage points in 2001, dropped to 16.1 percentage points in 2011. The improvement in the rural literacy rate is twice that of urban areas.[313]Kerala is the most literate state with 93.91% literacy; whileBihar the least with 63.82%.[328] In 1981 the respective literacy rates for total population, men and women were 41%, 53% and 29%. In 1951, the rates were 18%, 27% and 9%. In 1921, the rates 7%, 12% and 2%. In 1891, they were 5%, 9% and 1%.[329][330] According to Latika Chaudhary, in 1911 there were under three primary schools for every ten villages. Statistically, more caste and religious diversity reduced private spending. Primary schools taught literacy, so local diversity limited its growth.[331]
The education system of India is the world's second-largest.[332] India has over 900 universities, 40,000 colleges[333] and 1.5 million schools.[334] In India's higher education system, a significant number of seats are reserved underaffirmative action policies for the historically disadvantaged. In recent decades India's improved education system is often cited as one of the main contributors toits economic development.[335][336]
Children await school lunch in Rayka (also Raika), a village in rural Gujarat. The salutationJai Bhim written on the blackboard honours the jurist, social reformer, andDalit leaderB. R. Ambedkar.
India bears a disproportionately large burden of the world'stuberculosis rates, withWorld Health Organization (WHO) statistics for 2022 estimating 2.8 million new infections annually, accounting for 26% of the global total.[339] It is estimated that approximately 40% of the population of India carrytuberculosis infection.[340]
Although sometimes applied to other cultures and religions, caste is a uniquely Indian, and Hindu, social institution.[x] All Hindus fall broadly into four castes, orvarnas:Brahmin, or priests, at the top; below themKshatriya, or warriors; further below,Vaishya, or merchants and farmers; and at the bottom,Shudra, or the service class. Outside the caste system, and therefore of traditional Hinduism, lie people formerly called "outcastes" or "untouchables," and nowscheduled caste (a term used in India's constitution) orDalit, a later self-description of pride, meaning "broken" or "downtrodden". Each caste is further divided into sub-castes, orjatis, many of which are tied to occupations. The custom ofendogamy, or marrying within one's subcaste, however, makes caste a hereditary label, not of one occupational choice, and has caused the caste system, therefore, to become entrenched.[344] TheConstituent Assembly of India abolished untouchability in 1947,[345] theRepublic of India did more formally in 1950, and India has since enacted other anti-discriminatory laws and social welfare initiatives related to caste. Still, caste-based inequality, discrimination, segregation, andviolence persist.[346][347]
Multi-generationalpatrilinealjoint families have been the norm in India, thoughnuclear families are becoming common in urban areas.[348] A very large majority of Indians havetheir marriages arranged by their parents or family elders.[349] Marriage is thought to be for life;[349] and the divorce rate is extremely low;[350] less than one in a thousand marriages end in divorce.[351] Many women marry before reaching 18, which is their legal marriageable age;child marriages are not uncommon, especially in rural areas.[352] In large parts of Hindu northern India, moreover, a form of territorialexogamy is observed in which a bride marries out of her natal village and her parents do not visit her in her married home; the annual riteraksha bandhan, during which married women return to theirnatal homes, has served both to affirm bonds with their natal families and offer a recourse in times of marital stress.[353][354]
A member of theRamnami Samaj, a movement amongDalits, whose members worship the HindudeityRama and tattoo their bodies with his name
India has a very ancient tradition of art, which has exchanged many influences with the rest ofEurasia, especially in the first millennium. During this periodBuddhist art spread with Indian religions toCentral,East andSoutheast Asia, the last also greatly influenced by Hindu art.[355] Thousands ofseals from the Indus Valley civilisation of the third millennium BCE have been found, usually carved with animals, but also some with human figures. ThePashupati seal, excavated inMohenjo-daro, Pakistan, in 1928–29, is the best known.[356][357] Virtually no art survives from a long period following the Indus Valley Civilisation.[357][358] Almost all surviving ancient Indian art thereafter is in various forms of religioussculpture in durable materials, or coins. There was probably originally far more in wood, which is lost. In north IndiaMauryan art is the first imperial movement.[359][360][361]
Over the following centuries a distinctly Indian style of sculpting the human figure developed, with less interest in articulating precise anatomy thanancient Greek sculpture but showing smoothly flowing forms expressingprana ("breath" or life-force).[362][363] This is often complicated by the need to give figures multiple arms or heads, or represent different genders on the left and right of figures, as with theArdhanarishvara form of Shiva andParvati.[364][365]
Ancient paintings have only survived at a few sites, of which the crowded scenes of court life in theAjanta Caves are some of the most important.[375][376] Painted manuscripts of religious texts survive from Eastern India from 10th century onwards, most of the earliest being Buddhist and later Jain. These significantly influenced later artistic styles.[377] The Persian-derivedDeccan painting, starting just before theMughal miniature, between them give the first large body of secular painting, with an emphasis on portraits, and the recording of princely pleasures and wars.[378][379] The style spread to Hindu courts, especiallyamong the Rajputs, and developed a variety of styles, with the smaller courts often the most innovative, with figures such asNihâl Chand andNainsukh.[380][381] As a market developed among European residents, it was supplied byCompany painting by Indian artists with considerable Western influence.[382][383] In the 19th century, cheapKalighat paintings of gods and everyday life, done on paper, were urbanfolk art fromCalcutta, which later saw theBengal School of Art, reflecting the art colleges founded by the British, the first movement inmodern Indian painting.[384][385]
Significant mathematics began in India in the first millennium BCE. TheŚulba Sūtras (literally, "Aphorisms of the Chords" inVedic Sanskrit) (c. 700–400 BCE) contain the earliest extant verbal expression of thePythagorean theorem (although very likely it had been known to theOld Babylonians.)[386][y] All mathematical works were orally transmitted until approximately 500 BCE; thereafter, they were transmitted both orally and in manuscript form. The oldest extant mathematical document produced on the Indian subcontinent is the birch barkBakhshali manuscript from the 7th century CE.[389][390]
India contains a wide array of musical practices, including many differentfolk musics from different regions.Indian classical music has Vedic origins, and split in the 13th century into the two main traditions ofHindustani andCarnatic music. Hindustani is associated with North India and is moreimprovisational, featuring instruments such as thesitar andtabla, and Carnatic is South Indian and more focused on writtencompositions such as thekriti, while both styles contain common elements such as theraga melodic framework andtala rhythmic meter.[400] Indian music has influenced western genres, notablyrock andjazz musicians during the1960s counterculture.[401]
Dance in India has drawn heavily fromIndian classical dance traditions. Many of these in turn arose in temples or other religious contexts. Their sponsorship and promotion, however, has continued in secular, modern India.[403][aa] India also has local and modern dance traditions.[403] Whether or not a dance is classical is determined by theSangeet Natak Academi, the Indian government's organisation for performing arts.[ab] Although more dances could perhaps meet the criteria for classical, the Akademi has chosen eight.[ac]
The best-known classical dance is Bharatnatyam, which began in the temple dances ofTamildevadasis.[403] Identified with "prostitutes and courtesans", their dancing was formally banned in 1947.[ad] Concurrently, the dance was rehabilitated as a "pure" art form, withRukmini Devi Arundale as a prominent figure. A devdasi who went on to attain national and international prominence wasThanjavur Balasaraswati.[403] Some sources consider the dance-dramasChhau ofJharkhand,West Bengal, andOdissa andYakshagana ofKarnataka to also belong to the classical tradition.[405]
Local dance traditions vary widely across India. In addition to the dance-dramas Chhau and Yakshagana, they include dance-dramasRaslila of westernUttar Pradesh andTerukkuttu of Tamil Nadu; calendrical and festival dances such as theBhangra of Punjab, especially atVaisakhi, the onset of spring, andGarba ofGujarat duringNavratri; and tribal orAdivasi dances, such as those of theSantal andToda people, the latter, for example, in honour of the godÖn who brought buffalo to earth.[403]
Among 20th-century directions is themodern dance ofUday Shankar in which classical styles were employed but not adhered to rigidly. Examples are dance-dramas based on the ancient Indiananimal fables,Panchatantra, and Nehru's mid-century meditation on Indian history,The Discovery of India.[403] Dance has been an essential aspect of Indian films from the firsttalkies of the 1930s. The individual and group dances ofBollywood, for example, show a broad range of influences, including classical, local, and Western popular dance.[403] Towards the end of the 20th century, innovations inBritish South Asian music and dance, such asPost-Bhangra, fed back into dance in India.[403]
From ancient times until the advent of the modern, the most widely worn traditional dress in India wasdraped.[406] For women it took the form of asari, a single piece of cloth many yards long.[406] The sari was traditionally wrapped around the lower body and the shoulder.[406] In its modern form, it is combined with an underskirt, or Indianpetticoat, and tucked in along the waist band for more secure fastening. It is also commonly worn with an Indianblouse, orcholi, which serves as the primary upper-body garment, the sari's end—passing over the shoulder—covering the midriff and obscuring the upper body's contours.[406] For men, a similar but shorter length of cloth, thedhoti, has served as a lower-body garment.[407]
The use of stitched clothes became widespread after Muslim rule was established by theDelhi sultanate (c. 1300 CE) and continued by theMughal Empire (c. 1525 CE).[408] Among the garments introduced during this time and still commonly worn are: theshalwars andpyjamas, both styles of trousers, and the tunicskurta andkameez.[408] Shalwars are atypically wide at the waist but narrow to a cuffed bottom. They are held up by a drawstring, which causes them to become pleated around the waist.[409] When the pants are cut quite narrow, on thebias, they are calledchuridars. The kameez is a long shirt or tunic.[410] Its side seams left open below the waistline.[411] Thekurta is traditionally collarless and made of cotton or silk; it is worn plain or with embroidered decoration, such aschikankari; and typically falls to either just above or just below the wearer's knees.[412]
In the last 50 years, fashions have changed a great deal in India. Increasingly, in urban northern India, the sari is no longer the apparel of everyday wear, though they remain popular on formal occasions. The traditional shalwar kameez is rarely worn by younger urban women, who favour churidars or jeans. In office settings, ubiquitous air conditioning allows men to wear sports jackets year-round. For weddings and formal occasions, men in the middle and upper classes often wear bandhgala, or shortNehru jackets, with pants, with the groom and hisgroomsmen sportingsherwanis and churidars.[413]
Female tourists fromManipur in shawl andphanek—lower-body garment similar to asarong, and made of a rectangular piece of cloth with one pair of opposite sides stitched together[414]
The foundation of a typical Indian meal is a cereal cooked plainly and complemented with savoury dishes.[415] The cooked cereal could be steamed rice;chapati, a thin unleavened bread;[416]idli, a steamed breakfast cake; ordosa, a griddled pancake.[417] The savoury dishes might includelentils,pulses, vegetables, meat, poultry and fish commonly spiced withginger andgarlic, but alsocoriander,cumin,turmeric,cinnamon,cardamon and others.[415] In some instances, the ingredients may be mixed during the cooking process.[418] India has distinctive vegetarian cuisines, each a feature of the geographical and cultural histories of its adherents.[419] About 20% to 39% of India's population consists of vegetarians.[420][421] Although meat is eaten widely, the proportional consumption of meat is low.[422]
The most significant import of cooking techniques into India during the last millennium occurred during theMughal Empire, spreading into northern India from regions to its northwest,[423] along with dishes such aspilaf.[424][425] Onions, garlic, almonds, and spices were added to the simple yogurt marinade of Persia.[423] Rice was partially cooked and layered alternately with sauteed meat, the pot sealed tightly, and slow cooked according to another Persian cooking technique, to producebiryani,[423] a feature of festive dining in many parts of India.[426]
The diversity of Indian food served worldwide has been partially concealed by the dominance ofPunjabi cuisine. The popularity oftandoori chicken—cooked in atandoor oven, which had traditionally been used for baking bread in the rural Punjab and the Delhi region, especially among Muslims, but which is originally fromCentral Asia—dates to the 1950s, and was caused in large part by an entrepreneurial response among people from the Punjab who had been displaced by the 1947 partition.[419]
A street-corner game ofpachisi inPushkar, Rajasthan
The Indian hockey team, captained byDhyan Chand (standing second from left), after winning the finals at the1936 Summer Olympics – their third of six consecutive Olympic golds
^Originally written inSanskritised Bengali and adopted as the national anthem in its Hindi translation
^"[...]Jana Gana Mana is the National Anthem of India, subject to such alterations in the words as the Government may authorise as occasion arises; and the songVande Mataram, which has played a historic part in the struggle for Indian freedom, shall be honoured equally withJana Gana Mana and shall have equal status with it."[5]
^Not all the state-level official languages are in the eighth schedule and not all the scheduled languages are state-level official languages. For example, theSindhi language is an 8th scheduled but not a state-level official language.
According toEthnologue, there are 424 living indigenous languages in India, in contrast to 11 extinct indigenous languages. In addition, there are 30 living non-indigenous languages.[10]
Different sources give widely differing figures, primarily based on how the terms "language" and "dialect" are defined and grouped.
^"The country's exact size is subject to debate because some borders are disputed. The Indian government lists the total area as 3,287,260 km2 (1,269,220 sq mi) and the total land area as 3,060,500 km2 (1,181,700 sq mi); the United Nations lists the total area as 3,287,263 km2 (1,269,219 sq mi) and total land area as 2,973,190 km2 (1,147,960 sq mi)."[12]
^TheGovernment of India also regardsAfghanistan as a bordering country, as it considers all ofKashmir to be part of India.[25] However, this isdisputed, and the region bordering Afghanistan is administered by Pakistan.
^"A Chinese pilgrim also recorded evidence of the caste system as he could observe it. According to this evidence the treatment meted out to untouchables such as the Chandalas was very similar to that which they experienced in later periods. This would contradict assertions that this rigid form of the caste system emerged in India only as a reaction to the Islamic conquest."[40]
^"All these achievements are dwarfed, though, by the Sanskrit linguistic tradition culminating in the famous grammar by Pāṇini, known as the Aṣṭhādhyāyī. The elegance and comprehensiveness of its architecture have yet to be surpassed by any grammar of any language, and its ingenious methods of stratifying out use and mention, language and metalanguage, and theorem and metatheorem predate key discoveries in western philosophy by millennia."[81]
^the historic religion of theVedas, and the precursor toHinduism
^The Mauryan economy was helped by the rise of Buddhism and Jainism, creeds that promoted nonviolence, proscribed ostentation, or superfluous sacrifices and rituals, and reduced the costs of economic transactions; by coinage that increased economic accommodation in the region; and by the use of writing, which might have boosted more intricate business dealings.[85]
^To promote movement and trade, the Mauryans built roads, most prominently a chiefly winter-time road—the Uttarapath—which connected eastern Afghanistan to their capitalPataliputra, during the time of year when the water levels in the intersecting rivers were low, and they could be easilyforded.[86]
^WhenHarsha ofKannauj, who ruled much of the Indo-Gangetic Plain from 606 to 647 CE, attempted to expand southwards, he was defeated by theChalukya ruler of the Deccan. When his successor attempted to expand eastwards, he was defeated by thePala king ofBengal. When the Chalukyas attempted to expand southwards, they were defeated by thePallavas from farther south, who in turn were opposed by thePandyas and theCholas from still farther south.[101]
^Central Asian warriors became supreme during South Asia’s medieval transition by deploying swift-horse cavalry skilled in firing arrows at full gallop, volley after volley.[106]
^The northernmost point under Indian control is the disputedSiachen Glacier inJammu and Kashmir; however, theGovernment of India regards the entire region of the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, includingGilgit-Baltistan administered by Pakistan, to be its territory. It therefore assigns the latitude 37° 6′ to its northernmost point.
^A biodiversity hotspot is abiogeographical region which has more than 1,500vascular plant species, but less than 30% of its primary habitat.[194]
^During the last years ofBritish rule, elections were held in 1946 in allprovinces of British India.[221] The Congress won electoral victories in eight of 11 provinces.[222] A Congress-led government was formed in September; Jawaharlal Nehru served as interim prime minister.[223]
^Congress had the support ofleft-leaning parties and MPs who opposed the BJP.
^The 0% results from rounding to two decimal places.
^Caste is a form ofsocial stratification characterised byendogamy, hereditary transmission of an occupation, ritual status in a hierarchy, and customary social interaction or exclusion defined by cultural notions of purity and pollution.[343]
^Ancient and medieval Indian mathematical works, all composed inSanskrit usually consisted of two sections:sutras in which a set of rules or problems were stated with economy in verse, and a prose commentary that explained the problem in more detail and provided justification for the solution.[387][388]
^Among young urban middle-class women, for example, a proficiency in classical dance is sometimes a sought-after social achievement.[403]
^The classical status increases a dance's visibility and attracts more funding from agencies and ticket purchases from audiences.[403]
^Given the geographical distribution of the chosen dances and their stylistic range, the choices could be seen as a facet of India's ethos of national integration.[403]
^Genetic studies have shown that mangos were first domesticated in the region between northeastern India, northwestern Myanmar, and Bangladesh.[430][431]
^abc"National Symbols | National Portal of India".India.gov.in. Archived fromthe original on 4 February 2017. Retrieved1 March 2017.The National Anthem of India Jana Gana Mana, composed originally in Bengali by Rabindranath Tagore, was adopted in its Hindi version by the Constituent Assembly as the National Anthem of India on 24 January 1950.
^Metcalf & Metcalf 2012, p. 327: "Even though much remains to be done, especially in regard to eradicating poverty and securing effective structures of governance, India's achievements since independence in sustaining freedom and democracy have been singular among the world's new nations."
^Stein, Burton (2012).Arnold, David (ed.).A History of India. The Blackwell History of the World Series (2nd ed.). Wiley-Blackwell.One of these is the idea of India as 'the world's largest democracy', but a democracy forged less by the creation of representative institutions and expanding electorate under British rule than by the endeavours of India's founding fathers – Gandhi, Nehru, Patel and Ambedkar – and the labours of the Constituent Assembly between 1946 and 1949, embodied in the Indian constitution of 1950. This democratic order, reinforced by the regular holding of nationwide elections and polling for the state assemblies, has, it can be argued, consistently underpinned a fundamentally democratic state structure – despite the anomaly of the Emergency and the apparent durability of the Gandhi-Nehru dynasty.
^Fisher 2018, pp. 184–185: "Since 1947, India's internal disputes over its national identity, while periodically bitter and occasionally punctuated by violence, have been largely managed with remarkable and sustained commitment to national unity and democracy."
^abPetraglia & Allchin 2007, p. 10: "Y-Chromosome and Mt-DNA data support the colonization of South Asia by modern humans originating in Africa. [...] Coalescence dates for most non-European populations average to between 73 and 55 ka."
^abcDyson 2018, p. 1: "Modern human beings—Homo sapiens—originated in Africa. Then, intermittently, sometime between 60,000 and 80,000 years ago, tiny groups of them began to enter the north-west of the Indian subcontinent. It seems likely that initially they came by way of the coast. [...] it is virtually certain that there wereHomo sapiens in the subcontinent 55,000 years ago, even though the earliest fossils that have been found of them date to only about 30,000 years before the present."
^abFisher 2018, p. 23: "Scholars estimate that the first successful expansion of theHomo sapiens range beyond Africa and across the Arabian Peninsula occurred from as early as 80,000 years ago to as late as 40,000 years ago, although there may have been prior unsuccessful emigrations. Some of their descendants extended the human range ever further in each generation, spreading into each habitable land they encountered. One human channel was along the warm and productive coastal lands of the Persian Gulf and northern Indian Ocean. Eventually, various bands entered India between 75,000 years ago and 35,000 years ago."
^abLowe 2015, pp. 1–2: "It consists of 1,028 hymns (sūktas), highly crafted poetic compositions originally intended for recital during rituals and for the invocation of and communication with the Indo-Aryan gods. Modern scholarly opinion largely agrees that these hymns were composed between around 1500 BCE and 1200 BCE, during the eastward migration of the Indo-Aryan tribes from the mountains of what is today northern Afghanistan across the Punjab into north India."
Witzel 2003, pp. 68–70: "It is known from internal evidence that the Vedic texts were orally composed in northern India, at first in the Greater Punjab and later on also in more eastern areas, including northern Bihar, between ca. 1500 BCE and ca. 500–400 BCE. The oldest text, the Rgveda, must have been more or less contemporary with the Mitanni texts of northern Syria/Iraq (1450–1350 BCE); [...] The Vedic texts were orally composed and transmitted, without the use of script, in an unbroken line of transmission from teacher to student that was formalised early on. This ensured an impeccable textual transmission superior to the classical texts of other cultures; it is in fact something of atape-recording of ca. 1500–500 BCE. Not just the actual words, but even the long-lost musical (tonal) accent (as in old Greek or in Japanese) has been preserved up to the present. [...] The RV text was composed before the introduction and massive use of iron, that is before ca. 1200–1000 BCE."
Doniger 2014, pp. xviii, 10: "A Chronology of Hinduism: ca. 1500–1000 BCE Rig Veda; ca. 1200–900 BCE Yajur Veda, Sama Veda and Atharva Veda [...] Hindu texts began with theRig Veda ('Knowledge of Verses'), composed in northwest India around 1500 BCE; the first of the three Vedas, it is the earliest extant text composed in Sanskrit, the language of ancient India."
^*Jamison & Brereton 2020, pp. 2, 4–5: "The Ṛgveda is one of the four Vedas, which together constitute the oldest texts in Sanskrit and the earliest evidence for what will become Hinduism. [...] Although Vedic religion is very different in many regards from what is known as Classical Hinduism, the seeds are there. Gods like Viṣṇu and Śiva (under the name Rudra), who will become so dominant later, are already present in the Ṛgveda, though in roles both lesser than and different from those they will later play, and the principal Ṛgvedic gods like Indra remain in later Hinduism, though in diminished capacity."
Flood 2020, p. 4, see note 4: "I take the term 'Hinduism' to meaningfully denote a range and history of practice characterised by a number of features, particularly reference to Vedic textual and sacrificial origins, belonging to endogamous social units (jāti/varṇa), participating in practices that involve making an offering to a deity and receiving a blessing (pūjā), and a first-level cultural polytheism (although many Hindus adhere to a second-level monotheism in which many gods are regarded as emanations or manifestations of the one, supreme being)."
Michaels 2017, p. 86: "Almost all traditional Hindu families observe until today at least threesamskaras (initiation, marriage, and death ritual). Most other rituals have lost their popularity, are combined with other rites of passage, or are drastically shortened. Althoughsamskaras vary from region to region, from class (varna) to class, and from caste to caste, their core elements remain the same owing to the common source, the Veda, and a common priestly tradition preserved by theBrahmin priests."
Flood 1996, p. 35: "It is this Sanskrit, vedic, tradition which has maintained a continuity into modern times and which has provided the most important resource and inspiration for Hindu traditions and individuals. The Veda is the foundation for most later developments in what is known as Hinduism."
Glenn Van Brummelen (2014)."Arithmetic". In Thomas F. Glick; Steven Livesey; Faith Wallis (eds.).Medieval Science, Technology, and Medicine: An Encyclopedia.Routledge. pp. 46–48.ISBN978-1-135-45932-1.
^Chiriyankandath, James (2016).Parties and Political Change in South Asia. Routledge. p. 2.ISBN978-1-317-58620-3.South Asian parties include several of the oldest in the post-colonial world, foremost among them the 129-year-old Indian National Congress that led India to independence in 1947
^Metcalf & Metcalf 2012, p. 202: "The year 1919 was a watershed in the modern history of India. [...] By its end the Montagu–Chelmsford reforms... were enacted. [...] The year, however, also brought the repressive Rowlatt bills and the catastrophe of the Amritsar massacre. For many, if not most, Indians the reforms had become a poisoned chalice. They chose instead a novel course of political action, that of 'non-violent non-cooperation', and a new leader, Mohandas K. Gandhi, only recently returned from twenty years in South Africa. Gandhi would endure as a lasting symbol of moral leadership for the entire world community."
^Stein 2010, p. 289: "Gandhi was the leading genius of the later and ultimately successful campaign for India's independence"
"Kashmir, region Indian subcontinent".Encyclopaedia Britannica.Archived from the original on 13 August 2019. Retrieved15 August 2019.Kashmir, region of the northwestern Indian subcontinent... has been the subject of dispute between India and Pakistan since the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947.
Pletcher, Kenneth."Aksai Chin, Plateau Region, Asia".Encyclopaedia Britannica.Archived from the original on 2 April 2019. Retrieved16 August 2019.Aksai Chin, Chinese (Pinyin) Aksayqin, portion of the Kashmir region, ... constitutes nearly all the territory of the Chinese-administered sector of Kashmir that is claimed by India
Bosworth, C. E (2006)."Kashmir".Encyclopedia Americana: Jefferson to Latin.Scholastic Library Publishing. p. 328.ISBN978-0-7172-0139-6.KASHMIR, kash'mer, the northernmost region of the Indian subcontinent, administered partly by India, partly by Pakistan, and partly by China. The region has been the subject of a bitter dispute between India and Pakistan since they became independent in 1947
^Paturi, Joseph; Patterson, Roger (2016). "Hinduism (with Hare Krishna)". In Hodge, Bodie; Patterson, Roger (eds.).World Religions & Cults Volume 2: Moralistic, Mythical and Mysticism Religions. United States: New Leaf Publishing Group. pp. 59–60.ISBN978-0-89051-922-6.The actual term Hindu first occurs as a Persian geographical term for the people who lived beyond the Indus River. The term Hindu originated as a geographical term and did not refer to a religion. Later, Hindu was taken by European languages from the Arabic term al-Hind, which referred to the people who lived across the Indus River. This Arabic term was itself taken from the Persian term Hindū, which refers to all Indians. By the 13th century, Hindustan emerged as a popular alternative name for India, meaning the "land of Hindus."
^Mattern 2019, pp. 146–147 All non-African human populations share a common ancestry in the recent past, about 80,000 to 50,000 years ago. Some time within this period, a group of modern humans migrated from Africa, traversed southern Asia, and crossed the sea to the ancient continent of Sahul (now Australia, Tasmania, and Papua New Guinea), picking up Neanderthal and Denisovan genes along the way; branches reached Europe somewhat later, and Americas last. This was not the first migration of anatomically modern humans out of Africa. ... But for the most part, earlier populations of humans around Eurasia sputtered out, returned to Africa, or were replaced by humans from the last migration out of Africa.}}
^Lowe, John J. (2017).Transitive Nouns and Adjectives: Evidence from Early Indo-Aryan. Oxford University Press. p. 58.ISBN978-0-19-879357-1.The term 'Epic Sanskrit' refers to the language of the two great Sanskrit epics, the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa. ... It is likely, therefore, that the epic-like elements found in Vedic sources and the two epics that we have are not directly related, but that both drew on the same source, an oral tradition of storytelling that existed before, throughout, and after the Vedic period.
^Elverskog, Johan (2020).The Buddha's Footprint: An Environmental History of Asia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 56.ISBN978-0-8122-5183-8.The imperial edicts of Asoka echo this commodity view of trees. In Pillar Edict V, Asoka decreed that "forests must not be burned without reason." The Buddhist community took this mandate further by declaring that in order to protect forests from such conflagrations monks were allowed to set counterfires
^Lowe, John J. (2017).Transitive Nouns and Adjectives: Evidence from Early Indo-Aryan.Oxford University Press. p. 58.ISBN978-0-19-879357-1.The term 'Epic Sanskrit' refers to the language of the two great Sanskrit epics, the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa. ... It is likely, therefore, that the epic-like elements found in Vedic sources and the two epics that we have are not directly related, but that both drew on the same source, an oral tradition of storytelling that existed before, throughout, and after the Vedic period.
^Stein 2010, p. 245: An expansion of state functions in British and in princely India occurred as a result of the terrible famines of the later nineteenth century, ... A reluctant regime decided that state resources had to be deployed and that anti-famine measures were best managed through technical experts.
^Javalgi, Rajshekhar (Raj) G.; Grossman, David A. (2016). "7 Understanding the Characteristics and Entrepreneurial Activities of Middle-Class Consumers in Emerging Markets: The Case of India". In Marsh, Leslie L.; Li, Hongmei (eds.).The Middle Class in Emerging Societies: Consumers, Lifestyles and Markets. Routledge Research in Cultural and Media Studies Series. Routledge.doi:10.4324/978135717692-10 (inactive 8 December 2025).ISBN978-1-138-85882-4.Between now and 2039, India is projected to add over 1 billion people to the global middle class creating the world's fifth-largest consumer market (Dobbs). ... India's middle class saw its largest growth during the early 1990s when economic reforms led to integration into global markets. As Western countries were experiencing economic contraction, India's economy continued to grow above 5 percent.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of December 2025 (link)
^Kaul 1970, p. 160, " The Aravalli range boldy defines the eastern limit of the arid and semi-arid zone. Probably the more humid conditions that prevail near the Aravallis prevented the extension of aridity towards the east and the Ganges Valley. It is noteworthy that, wherever there are gaps in this range, sand has advanced to the east of it."
^Prasad 1974, p. 372, " The topography of the Indian Desert is dominated by the Aravalli Ranges on its eastern border, which consist largely of tightly folded and highly metamorphosed Archaean rocks."
^Fisher 2018, p. 83, " East of the lower Indus lay the inhospitable Rann of Kutch and Thar Desert. East of the upper Indus lay the more promising but narrow corridor between the Himalayan foothills on the north and the Thar Desert and Aravalli Mountains on the south. At the strategic choke point, just before reaching the fertile, well-watered Gangetic plain, sat Delhi. On this site, where life giving streams running off the most northern spur of the rocky Aravalli ridge flowed into the Jumna river, and where the war-horse and war-elephant trade intersected, a series of dynasties built fortified capitals."
^Tritsch 2001, p. 12: "India has two natural zones of thorn forest, one in the rain shadow area of the Deccan Plateau east of the Western Ghats, and the other in the western part of the Indo-Gangetic plain. Growth is limited only by moisture availability in these areas, so with irrigation the fertile alluvial soil of Punjab and Haryana has been turned into India's prime agricultural area. Much of the thorn forest covering the plains probably had savannah-like features now no longer visible."
^Ameri, Marta (2018). "Letting the Pictures Speak: An Image-Based Approach to the Mythological and Narrative Imagery of the Harappan World". In Ameri, Marta; Costello, Sarah Kielt; Jamison, Gregg; Scott, Sarah Jarmer (eds.).Seals and Sealing in the Ancient World: Case Studies from the Near East, Egypt, the Aegean, and South Asia.Cambridge University Press. pp. 156–157.ISBN978-1-108-17351-3. Quote: "The last of the centaurs has the long, wavy, horizontal horns of a markhor, a human face, a heavy-set body that appears bovine, and a goat tail ... This figure is often depicted by itself, but it is also consistently represented in scenes that seem to reflect the adoration of a figure in a pipal tree or arbour and which may be termed ritual. These include fully detailed scenes like that visible in the large 'divine adoration' seal from Mohenjo-daro."
^Tritsch 2001, p. 15: "Before it was so heavily settled and intensively exploited, the Punjab was dominated by thorn forest interspersed by rolling grasslands which were grazed on by millions of Blackbuck, accompanied by their dominant predator, the Cheetah. Always keen hunters, the Moghul princes kept tame cheetahs which were used to chase and bring down the Blackbuck. Today the Cheetah is extinct in India and the severely endangered Blackbuck no longer exists in the Punjab."
^Storm, Eric (2024).Nationalism: A World History. Princeton University Press.ISBN978-0-691-23309-3.LCCN2024015293.The whole constellation changed when India and Pakistan gained independence as dominions, which was a solution that made possible a speedier withdrawal of the British. In the end, India decided to become a republic, although the leadership preferred to remain within the Commonwealth.
^(a)Guyot-Rechard, Berenice (2017).Shadow States: India, China and the Himalayas, 1910–1962. Cambridge University Press. p. 235.ISBN978-1-107-17679-9.By invading NEFA, the PRC did not just aim to force a humiliated India to recognise its possession of the Aksai Chin. It also hoped to get, once and for all, the upper hand in their shadowing competition. (b)Chubb, Andrew (2021)."The Sino-Indian Border Crisis: Chinese Perceptions of Indian Nationalism". In Golley, Jane; Jaivan, Linda; Strange, Sharon (eds.).Crisis. Australian National University Press. pp. 231–232.ISBN978-1-76046-439-4.The ensuing cycle of escalation culminated in the 1962 Sino-Indian border war in which Mao Zedong's troops overran almost the entire state of Arunachal Pradesh in the eastern sector before unilaterally withdrawing, as if to underline the insult; most of the war's several thousand casualties were Indian. The PLA's decisive victories in the 1962 war not only humiliated the Indian Army, they also entrenched a status quo in Ladakh that was highly unfavourable for India, in which China controls almost all of the disputed territory. A nationalistic press and commentariat have kept 1962 vivid in India's popular consciousness. (c)Lintner, Bertil (2018).China's India War: Collision Course on the Roof of the World. Oxford University Press.ISBN978-0-19-909163-8.Lin Biao was put in charge of the operation and that alliance between Mao and his loyal de facto chief of the PLA made the attack on India possible. With China's ultimate victory in the war, Mao's ultra-leftist line had won in China; whatever critical voices that were left in the Party after all the purges fell silent. (d)Medcalf, Rory (2020).Indo-Pacific Empire: China, America and the contest for the world's pivotal. Manchester University Press.ISBN978-1-5261-5077-6.From an Indian perspective, the China-India war of 1962 was a shocking betrayal of the principles of co-operation and coexistence: a surprise attack that humiliated India and personally broke Nehru. (e)Ganguly, Sumit (1997).The Crisis in Kashmir: Portents of War, Hope of Peace. Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Cambridge University Press. p. 44.ISBN978-0-521-65566-8.In October 1962 India suffered the most humiliating military debacle in its post-independence history, at the hands of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA). The outcome of this conflict had far-reaching consequences for Indian foreign and defence policies. The harsh defeat that the Chinese PLA had inflicted on the Indian Army called into question some of the most deeply held precepts of Nehru's foreign and defence policies. (f)Raghavan, Srinath (2019)."A Missed Opportunity? The Nehru-Zhou Enlai Summit of 1960". In Bhagavan, Manu (ed.).India and the Cold War. University of North Carolina Press. p. 121.ISBN978-1-4696-5117-0.The 'forward policy' adopted by India to prevent the Chinese from occupying territory claimed by them was undertaken in the mistaken belief that Beijing would be cautious in dealing with India owing to Moscow's stance on the dispute and its growing proximity to India. These misjudgments would eventually culminate in India's humiliating defeat in the war of October–November 1962.
^Muir, Hugh (13 July 2009)."Diary".The Guardian. Archived fromthe original on 19 October 2014. Retrieved17 October 2021.Members of the Indian armed forces have the plum job of leading off the great morning parade for Bastille Day. Only after units and bands from India's navy and air force have followed the Maratha Light Infantry will the parade be entirely given over to ... France's armed services.
^Kapoor, Mudit; Shamika, Ravi (10 February 2014)."India's missing women".The Hindu. Retrieved17 November 2019.In the last 50 years of Indian democracy, the absolute number of missing women has increased fourfold from 15 million to 68 million. This is not merely a reflection of the overall population growth, but rather a worsening of the dangerous trend over time. As a percentage of the female electorate, missing women have gone up significantly — from 13 per cent to approximately 20 per cent
^"More than 63 million women 'missing' in India, statistics show".Associated Press viaThe Guardian. 30 January 2018. Retrieved17 November 2019. Quote: "More than 63 million women are "missing" statistically across India, and more than 21 million girls are unwanted by their families, government officials say. The skewed ratio of men to women is largely the result of sex-selective abortions, and better nutrition and medical care for boys, according to the government's annual economic survey, which was released on Monday. In addition, the survey found that "families where a son is born are more likely to stop having children than families where a girl is born".
^abcdJolad, Shivakumar; Agarwal, Aayush (2024). "Mapping India's Linguistic Diversity and Exclusion in the Indian Census 1". In Dodd, Maya; Menon, Nirmala (eds.).Practices of Digital Humanities in India: Learning by Doing. Routledge India.doi:10.4324/9781003325239.ISBN978-1-003-32523-9.
^abcdLerner, Hanna (2016)."The Indian Founding: A Comparative Perspective". In Choudhry, Sujit; Khosla, Madhav; Mehta, Pratap Bhanu (eds.).The Oxford Handbook of the Indian Constitution. Oxford University Press. pp. 63–64.ISBN978-0-19-870489-8.Ultimately, it was the pragmatic consensus-seeking approach that triumphed. On 14 September 1949, after three years of debate, the assembly overwhelmingly approved a compromise resolution, known as the Munshi—Ayyangar formula, which later became Articles 343-51 of the Indian Constitution. Instead of declaring a 'national language', Hindi was labelled the 'official language of the Union', while English was to continue to be used 'for all official purposes'. It was decided that this arrangement would apply for a period of fifteen years, during which time Hindi was to be progressively introduced into official use. What would happen at the end of this interim period was left undetermined, with the Constitution providing for the establishment of a parliamentary committee to examine the issue in the future. In addition, the Constitution recognised fourteen other languages for official use (listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution). ... Fifteen years after the enactment of the Constitution, Hindi was still not widely used by the Union government. Following a series of violent riots in non-Hindi-speaking States in the 1960s, Parliament renounced the ideal of an Indian national language. In 1965, when the fifteen-year interim period prescribed by the Constitution elapsed, the government announced that English would remain the de facto formal language of India.
^abcdIsaka, Riho (2021).Language, Identity, and Power in Modern India: Gujarat, c. 1850–1960. Routledge New Horizons in South Asian Studies. Routledge. pp. 126–197.ISBN978-1-000-46858-8.Partition may have 'killed' Hindustani, but it had a marked effect on the debates regarding the position of English and provincial languages in the Constitution. The Hindi protagonists became even more insistent on establishing Hindi as the sole national language and imposing it on the non-Hindi-speaking regions to enhance 'national unity'. In addition, these leaders even began to argue that the Devanagari form of numerals should be used instead of the international form. This was firmly opposed by members from South India. To solve the continuing dispute among the Assembly members, (K. M.) Munshi and N. Gopalaswami Ayyangar, a Tamil member of the Assembly, drew up detailed language provisions. These, in the words of the latter, represented a 'compromise between opinions not easily reconcilable' (Constituent Assembly Debates 1X 1966: 1319). The provisions were proposed to the Congress on 2nd September 1949 and engendered a heated discussion. It was eventually decided that they would be proposed in the Assembly by Munshi, Ayyangar, and Bhimrao Ambedkar (the Chairman of the Drafting Committee) in their personal capacities, not as an official proposal on behalf of the Drafting Committee.
^Annamalai, E. (2008)."Contexts of multilingualism". In Braj B. Kachru; Yamuna Kachru; S. N. Sridhar (eds.).Language in South Asia. Cambridge University Press. pp. 223–.ISBN978-1-139-46550-2.Some of the migrated languages ... such as Sanskrit and English, remained primarily as a second language, even though their native speakers were lost.
^Gazzola, Michele; Wickström, Bengt-Arne (2016).The Economics of Language Policy. MIT Press. pp. 469–.ISBN978-0-262-03470-8.The Eighth Schedule recognizes India's national languages as including the major regional languages as well as others, such as Sanskrit and Urdu, which contribute to India's cultural heritage. ... The original list of fourteen languages in the Eighth Schedule at the time of the adoption of the Constitution in 1949 has now grown to twenty-two.
^Groff, Cynthia (2017).The Ecology of Language in Multilingual India: Voices of Women and Educators in the Himalayan Foothills. Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp. 58–.ISBN978-1-137-51961-0.As Mahapatra says: "It is generally believed that the significance for the Eighth Schedule lies in providing a list of languages from which Hindi is directed to draw the appropriate forms, style and expressions for its enrichment" ... Being recognized in the Constitution, however, has had significant relevance for a language's status and functions.
^Chaudhary, Latika (March 2009). "Determinants of Primary Schooling in British India".The Journal of Economic History.69 (1):269–302.doi:10.1017/S0022050709000400.
^abHeadrick, Daniel R. (1988).The Tentacles of Progress: Technology Transfer in the Age of Imperialism, 1850–1940. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 317.ISBN0-19-505115-7.The first engineering college was an outgrowth of the Ganges Canal. Named after the lieutenant governor of the North-Western Provinces who founded it in 1847, the Thomason Engineering College at Roorkee trained employees for the irrigation branch of the Public Works Department. It offered different curricula for different types of students: an engineering class for domiciled Europeans and a few Indians, an upper subordinates class to train British noncommissioned officers as construction foremen, and a lower subordinates class to train Indian surveyors. By the mid-1880s, the school has a hundred students, substantial buildings, and a reputation as an important center for the study of hydraulic engineering.
^abSubramanian, Ajantha (2019).The Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. pp. 30–31.ISBN978-0-674-98788-3.Before the 1854 despatch, there was already one engineering college in operation: the Thomason College of Civil Engineering at Roorkee. The college was founded in 1847 and was affiliated to theUniversity of Calcutta, in response to the demand for civil engineers to aid the construction of the Ganges Canal in the North-west Provinces.
Lagasse, Paul, ed. (2007)."Caste".The Columbia Encyclopedia. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.ISBN978-0-231-14446-9. Retrieved24 September 2012. Quote: "caste [Port., casta=basket], ranked groups based on heredity within rigid systems of social stratification, especially those that constitute Hindu India. Some scholars, in fact, deny that true caste systems are found outside India. The caste is a closed group whose members are severely restricted in their choice of occupation and degree of social participation. Marriage outside the caste is prohibited. Social status is determined by the caste of one's birth and may only rarely be transcended."
Madan, T. N. (2012).caste. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Quote: "caste, any of the ranked, hereditary, endogamous social groups, often linked with occupation, that together constitute traditional societies in South Asia, particularly among Hindus in India. Although sometimes used to designate similar groups in other societies, the "caste system" is uniquely developed in Hindu societies."
Gupta, Dipankar (2008)."Caste". In Schaefer, Richard T. (ed.).Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society. Thousand Oaks: SAGE. pp. 246–250.ISBN978-1-4129-2694-2. Retrieved5 August 2012. Quote: "Caste: What makes Indian society unique is the phenomenon of caste. Economic, religious, and linguistic differentiations, even race-based discrimination, are known elsewhere, but nowhere else does one see caste but in India."
Béteille 2002, pp. 136–137. Quote: "Caste: Caste has been described as the fundamental social institution of India. Sometimes the term is used metaphorically to refer to rigid social distinctions or extreme social exclusiveness wherever found, and some authorities have used the term 'colour-caste system' to describe the stratification based on race in the United States and elsewhere. But it is among the Hindus in India that we find the system in its most fully developed form although analogous forms exist among Muslims, Christians. Sikhs and other religious groups in South Asia. It is an ancient institution, having existed for at least 2,000 years among the Hindus who developed not only elaborate caste practices hut also a complex theory to explain and justify those practices (Dumont 1970). The theory has now lost much of its force although many of the practices continue."
Mitchell, Geoffrey Duncan (2006)."Castes (part of SOCIAL STRATIFICATION)".A New Dictionary of the Social Sciences. New Brunswick, NJ: Aldine Transaction Publishers. pp. 194–195.ISBN978-0-202-30878-4. Retrieved10 August 2012. Quote:"Castes A pure caste system is rooted in the religious order and may be thought of as a hierarchy of hereditary, endogamous, occupational groups with positions fixed and mobility barred by ritual distances between each caste. Empirically, the classical Hindu system of India approximated most closely to pure caste. The system existed for some 3,000 years and continues today despite many attempts to get rid of some of its restrictions. It is essentially connected with Hinduism."
"caste, n.".Oxford English Dictionary, Second edition; online version June 2012. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. 1989. Retrieved5 August 2019. Quote: "caste, n. 2a. spec. One of the several hereditary classes into which society in India has from time immemorial been divided; ...This is now the leading sense, which influences all others."
^Atrey, Shreya (2019).Intersectional Discrimination. Oxford, UK and New York, NY: Oxford University Press. p. 63–64.ISBN978-0-19-884895-0.
^"Indians Outlaw 'Untouchability' In Formal Action by Assembly; UNTOUCHABILITY' FORMALLY BANNED". Reuters/New York Times. 30 April 1947.NEW DELHI, India, April 29 -- India's Constituent Assembly, discussing the Fundamental Rights Committee's report, today adopted this provision: "Untouchability in any form is abolished and the imposition of any disability on that account shall be an offense.
^Teltumbde, Anand (2010).The Persistence of Caste: The Khairlanji Murders and India's Hidden Apartheid. Bloomsbury Academic.ISBN978-1-84813-449-2.
^Agarwal, Bina (1994).A Field of One's Own: Gender and Land Rights in South Asia. Cambridge University Press. p. 264.ISBN978-0-521-42926-9.Mayer's (1960: 219) observation for central India would not be inaccurate for most communities in the subcontinent: "A man's tie with his sister is accounted very close. The two have grown up together, at an age when there is no distinction made between the sexes. And later, when the sister marries, the brother is seen as her main protector, for when her father has died to whom else can she turn if there is trouble in her conjugal household.(Adrian C. Mayer,Caste and kinship in Central India (1960)" The parental home, and after the parents' death the brother's home, often offers the only possibility of temporary or longer-term support in case of divorce, desertion, and even widowhood, especially for a woman without adult sons. Her dependence on this support is directly related to economic and social vulnerability.
^Coleman, Leo (2017).A Moral Technology: Electrification as Political Ritual in New Delhi. Cornell University Press. p. 127.ISBN978-1-5017-0791-9. Quote: Rakhi and its local performances in Kishan Garhi were part of a festival in which connections between out-marrying sisters and village-resident brothers were affirmed. In the "traditional" form of this rite, according to Marriott, sisters exchanged with their brothers to ensure their ability to have recourse—at a crisis, or during childbearing—to their natal village and their relatives there even after leaving for their husband's home. For their part, brothers engaging in these exchanges affirmed the otherwise hard-to-discern moral solidarity of the natal family, even after their sister's marriage.
^Ifrah 2000, p. 346: "The measure of the genius of Indian civilisation, to which we owe our modern (number) system, is all the greater in that it was the only one in all history to have achieved this triumph. Some cultures succeeded, earlier than the Indian, in discovering one or at best two of the characteristics of this intellectual feat. But none of them managed to bring together into a complete and coherent system the necessary and sufficient conditions for a number-system with the same potential as our own."
^Bourbaki 1998, p. 46: "...our decimal system, which (by the agency of the Arabs) is derived from Hindu mathematics, where its use is attested already from the first centuries of our era. It must be noted moreover that the conception of zero as a number and not as a simple symbol of separation) and its introduction into calculations, also count amongst the original contribution of the Hindus."
^Bourbaki 1998, p. 49: Modern arithmetic was known during medieval times as "Modus Indorum" or method of the Indians.Leonardo of Pisa wrote that compared to method of the Indians all other methods is a mistake. This method of the Indians is none other than our very simple arithmetic of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Rules for these four simple procedures was first written down byBrahmagupta during the 7th century AD. "On this point, the Hindus are already conscious of the interpretation that negative numbers must have in certain cases (a debt in a commercial problem, for instance). In the following centuries, as there is a diffusion into the West (by intermediary of the Arabs) of the methods and results of Greek and Hindu mathematics, one becomes more used to the handling of these numbers, and one begins to have other "representation" for them which are geometric or dynamic."
^ab"algebra" 2007.Britannica Concise EncyclopediaArchived 29 September 2007 at theWayback Machine. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 16 May 2007. Quote: "A full-fledged decimal, positional system certainly existed in India by the 9th century (AD), yet many of its central ideas had been transmitted well before that time to China and the Islamic world. Indian arithmetic, moreover, developed consistent and correct rules for operating with positive and negative numbers and for treating zero like any other number, even in problematic contexts such as division. Several hundred years passed before European mathematicians fully integrated such ideas into the developing discipline of algebra."
^Pingree 2003, p. 45 Quote: "Geometry, and its branch trigonometry, was the mathematics Indian astronomers used most frequently. Greek mathematicians used the full chord and never imagined the half chord that we use today. Half chord was first used by Aryabhata which made trigonometry much more simple. In fact, the Indian astronomers in the third or fourth century, using a pre-Ptolemaic Greek table of chords, produced tables of sines and versines, from which it was trivial to derive cosines. This new system of trigonometry, produced in India, was transmitted to the Arabs in the late eighth century and by them, in an expanded form, to the Latin West and the Byzantine East in the twelfth century."
^Bourbaki 1998, p. 126: "As for trigonometry, it is disdained by geometers and abandoned to surveyors and astronomers; it is these latter (Aristarchus,Hipparchus,Ptolemy) who establish the fundamental relations between the sides and angles of a right angled triangle (plane or spherical) and draw up the first tables (they consist of tables giving thechord of the arc cut out by an angle on a circle of radiusr, in other words the number; the introduction of the sine, more easily handled, is due to Hindu mathematicians of the Middle Ages)."
^Hardy, G. H. (2015) [1927]. "Notice".Collected papers of Srinivasa Ramanujan. Cambridge University Press. pp. xxi–xxxv.ISBN978-1-107-53651-7.It was his insight into algebraical formulae, transformation of infinite series, ... that was most amazing. On this side most certainly I have never met his equal, and I can compare him only withEuler andJacobi. He worked, far more than the majority of modern mathematicians, by induction from numerical examples. ... But with his memory, his patience, and his power of calculation, he combined a power of generalisation, a feeling for form, and a capacity for rapid modification of his hypotheses, that were often really startling, and made him, in his own peculiar field, without a rival in his day.
^Capwell, Charles (2012). "The Music of India".Excursions in World Music (6th ed.).Pearson. pp. 31, 52.
^Lavezzoli, Peter (24 April 2006).The Dawn of Indian Music in the West. p. 14.
^abcdefghijklmVatsyayan, Kapila; Lord, Maria (revision) (2020) [2001]. "India, subcontinent of, IX. Dance".Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press.
^Frank Burch Brown (2013).The Oxford Handbook of Religion and the Arts. Oxford University Press. pp. 195–196.ISBN978-0-19-972103-0., Quote: All of the dances considered to be part of the Indian classical canon (Bharata Natyam, Chhau, Kathak, Kathakali, Kuchipudi, Manipuri, Mohiniattam, Odissi, Sattriya, and Yakshagana) trace their roots to religious practices (...) the Indian diaspora has led to the translocation of Hindu dances to Europe, North America and the world."
^Haripriya, Soibam (2024). "Irom Sharmila's Poetry and the Problem of Anthologizing Indian Literature". In Anjaria, Ulka; Nerleker, Anjali= (eds.).The Oxford Handbook of Modern Indian Literatures. Oxford University Press. p. 423.ISBN978-0-19-764791-2.
^Davidson, Alan (2014).The Oxford Companion to Food.Oxford University Press. p. 161.ISBN978-0-19-967733-7.Chapatis are made from finely milled whole-wheat flour, called chapati flour or atta, and water. The dough is rolled into thin rounds which vary in size from region to region and then cooked without fat or oil on a slightly curved griddle called a tava.
^Tamang, J. P.; Fleet, G. H. (2009)."Yeasts Diversity in Fermented Foods and Beverages". In Satyanarayana, T.; Kunze, G. (eds.).Yeast Biotechnology: Diversity and Applications. Springer. p. 180.ISBN978-1-4020-8292-4.Idli is an acid-leavened and steamed cake made by bacterial fermentation of a thick batter made from coarsely ground rice and dehulled black gram. Idli cakes are soft, moist and spongy, have desirable sour flavour, and is eaten as breakfast in South India. Dosa batter is very similar to idli batter, except that both the rice and black gram are finely grounded. The batter is thinner than that of idli and is fried as a thin, crisp pancake and eaten directly in South India.
^Jhala, Angma Day (2015).Royal Patronage, Power and Aesthetics in Princely India. Routledge. p. 70.ISBN978-1-317-31657-2.With the ascent of the Mughal Empire in sixteenth-century India, Turkic, Persian and Afghan traditions of dress, 'architecture and cuisine' were adopted by non-Muslim indigenous elites in South Asia. In this manner, Central Asian cooking merged with older traditions within the subcontinent, to create such signature dishes as biryani (a fusion of the Persian pilau and the spice-laden dishes of Hindustan), and the Kashmiri meat stew of Rogan Josh. It not only generated new dishes and entire cuisines, but also fostered novel modes of eating. Such newer trends included the consumption of Persian condiments, which relied heavily on almonds, pastries and quince jams, alongside Indian achars made from sweet limes, green vegetables and curds as side relishes during Mughlai meals.
^Sengupta, Jayanta (2014)."India". In Freedman, Paul; Chaplin, Joyce E.; Albala, Ken (eds.).Food in Time and Place: The American Historical Association Companion to Food History.University of California Press. p. 74.ISBN978-0-520-27745-8.
^Kohli, Megha (2023). "Breads". In Taylor Sen, Colleen; Bhattacharyya, Sourish; Saberi, Helen (eds.).The Blooomsbury Handbook of Indian Cuisine. London, New York, and Dublin: Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 60.ISBN978-1-3501-2863-7.Khamiri roti is the Indian version ofsourdough bread. "Khamir" means yeast or starter inUrdu. ... It is made in a tandoor. ... The culture of purchasaing breads from outside is Central Asian and came to India with the Mughals. The bestkhamiri roti is sold in various shops inOld Delhi run by people who claim to be the direct descendants of the cooks who worked for the Mughals and use the same recipe as their ancestors.
^Haidar, Sakina; Hussain, Sajjad; Naz, Safina; Ali, Sajid; Noor, Anam (2025). "Introduction and History of Mango". In Hussain, Sajjad; Nahar, Kamrun; Rajwana, Ishtiaq A.; Ercisli, Sezai; Ahmad, Shakeel (eds.).Handbook of Research on Mango Fruit: Postharvest Science, Production, Nutrition, and Processing Technology. CRC Press, Routledge. p. 1–2.ISBN978-1-77964-338-4.
^Srinivasan, Radhika; Jermyn, Leslie; Lek, Hui Hui (2001).India. Times Books International. p. 109.ISBN978-981-232-184-8. Quote: "Girls in India usually play jump rope, or hopscotch, and five stones, tossing the stones up in the air and catching them in many different ways ... the coconut-plucking contests, groundnut-eating races, ... of rural India."
Barrow, Ian J. (2003). "From Hindustan to India: Naming change in changing names".South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies.26 (1):37–49.doi:10.1080/085640032000063977.
Elverskog, Johan (2020).The Buddha's Footprint: An Environmental History of Asia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.ISBN978-0-8122-5183-8.
Gilbert, Marc Jason (2017).South Asia in World History. The New Oxford World History series. Oxford University Press. pp. 54–56.ISBN978-0-19-517653-7.
Judd, Denis (2004).The Lion and the Tiger: The Rise and Fall of the British Raj, 1600–1947. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Pp. xiii, 280.ISBN978-0-19-280358-0.
Mattern, Susan (2019).The Slow Moon Climbs: The Science, History, and Meaning of Menopause. Princeton, NJ, and London: Princeton University Press.ISBN978-0-691-17163-0.
Roy, Tirthankar (2012).India in the World Economy: From Antiquity to the Present. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.ISBN978-1-107-00910-3.
Sripati, V. (1998). "Toward Fifty Years of Constitutionalism and Fundamental Rights in India: Looking Back to See Ahead (1950–2000)".American University International Law Review.14 (2):413–496.
Kaul, R. N. (1970). "The Indian Subcontinent: Indo-Pakistan". In Kaul, R. N. (ed.).Afforestation in Arid Zones. The Hague: Dr. W. Junk, N.V., Publishers.ISBN978-94-010-3352-7.
Prasad, Ishwar (1974). "The Ecology of Vertebrates of the Indian Desert". In Mani, M. S. (ed.).Ecology and Biogeography in India. The Hague: Dr. W. Junk bv Publishers.ISBN978-94-010-2333-7.
Madhavan, M. R. (2024)."The Lok Sabha". In Ganguly, Sumit; Sridharan, Eshwaran (eds.).The Oxford Handbook of Indian Politics. Oxford University Press.ISBN978-0-19-889428-5.
Malik, Yogendra K.; Singh, V. B. (April 1992). "Bharatiya Janata Party: An Alternative to the Congress (I)?".Asian Survey.32 (4):318–336.doi:10.2307/2645149.JSTOR2645149.
Béteille, André (2002)."Caste". In Barnard, Alan; Spencer, Jonathan (eds.).Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology. New York; London:Routledge.ISBN978-0-415-28558-2.
Medora, N. (2003). "Mate Selection in Contemporary India: Love Marriages Versus Arranged Marriages". In Hamon, R. R.; Ingoldsby, B. B. (eds.).Mate Selection Across Cultures.SAGE Publications. pp. 209–230.ISBN978-0-7619-2592-7.
Plofker, K. (2007). "Mathematics of India". In Katz, Victor J. (ed.).The Mathematics of Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, India, and Islam: A Sourcebook. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. pp. 385–514.ISBN978-0-691-11485-9..
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![The Tungabhadra, with rocky outcrops, flows into the peninsular Krishna River.[181]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aTungabhadra_River_and_Coracle_Boats.JPG)
![India has the majority of the world's wild tigers, approximately 3,170 in 2022.[217]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aBengal_tiger_in_Sanjay_Dubri_Tiger_Reserve_December_2024_by_Tisha_Mukherjee_11.jpg)
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![As part of Janadesh 2007, 25,000 pro–land reform landless people in Madhya Pradesh listen to Rajagopal P. V.[231]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aRajagopal_speaking_to_25%2c000_people%2c_Janadesh_2007%2c_India.jpg)
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![Rashtrapati Bhavan, the official residence of the President of India, was designed by British architects Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker for the Viceroy of India, and constructed between 1911 and 1931 during the British Raj.[242]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aRashtrapati_Bhavan-Delhi-India4445.JPG)
![In the 1950s and 60s, India played a pivotal role in the Non-Aligned Movement.[261] From left to right: Gamal Abdel Nasser of United Arab Republic (now Egypt), Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia and Jawaharlal Nehru in Belgrade, September 1961.](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aJawaharlal_Nehru%2c_Nasser_and_Tito_at_the_Conference_of_Non-Aligned_Nations_held_in_Belgrade.jpg)
![Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh and French president Nicolas Sarkozy review the 221st Bastille Day military parade in Paris, July 2009. India's oldest regiment, the Maratha Light Infantry, founded in 1768, led the parade.[262]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aThe_Prime_Minister%2c_Dr._Manmohan_Singh_with_the_President_of_France%2c_Mr._Nicolas_Sarkozy%2c_at_the_Bastille_Day_Parade_of_France%2c_in_Paris_on_July_14%2c_2009_(2).jpg)
![In 2019, 43% of India's total workforce was employed in agriculture.[281]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aPlowing_the_land_in_India_-_modern_and_traditional.jpg)
![A woman growing radish in the foreground and garlic to the right in a village in the Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu. 55% of India's female workforce was employed in agriculture in 2019.[282]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aFields_Akoni_Nilgiris_Tamil_Nadu_Nov24_A7CR_05287.jpg)
![India is the world's largest producer of milk, with the largest population of cattle. In 2018, nearly 80% of India's milk was sourced from small farms with herd size between one and two, the milk harvested by hand milking.[283]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aILRI%2c_Stevie_Mann_-_Villager_and_calf_share_milk_from_cow_in_Rajasthan%2c_India.jpg)
![A panorama of Bangalore, the centre of India's software development economy. In the 1980s, when the first multinational corporations began to set up centres in India, they chose Bangalore because of the large pool of skilled graduates in the area, in turn due to the many science and engineering colleges in the surrounding region.[298]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aBangalore_Panorama_edit1.jpg)
![A Chinese fishing net being raised out of the water in Kochi. Fishing, which contributes 1.07% to India's total GDP,[299] supports the livelihood of over 28 million people, especially within marginalized and vulnerable communities.[300] India is the third-largest fish producing country in the world, accounting for 7.96% of global production.[299]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aChinese_Fishing_Net_Raising_Birds_Sunrise_Ashtamudi_Kollam_Mar22_A7C_01784.jpg)
![On the reverse of each of India's paper money notes, the denomination is listed in a panel on the left in 15 languages, in addition to Hindi and English, which appear more prominently elsewhere. These are from top to bottom: 1.Assamese, 2.Bengali, 3.Gujarati, 4.Kannada, 5.Kashmiri, 6.Konkani, 7.Malayalam, 8.Marathi, 9.Nepali, 10.Oriya, 11.Punjabi, 12.Sanskrit, 13.Tamil, 14.Telugu, 15.Urdu.[322]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3a1000_rupee_of_India_-_S.jpg)
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![The Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, formerly the Thomason College of Civil Engineering, is the oldest engineering college in India.[337][338] It was founded as the College of Civil Engineering in 1847 during East India Company rule to train officers and surveyors employed in the construction of the Ganges Canal.[338][337]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aThomasonCollegeOfEngineeringRoorkeeEst1847.jpg)
![Immunisation health workers in 2006. Eight years later, and three years after India's last case of polio, WHO declared India to be polio-free.[342]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aFemale_health_workers_in_India_(34332433890).jpg)
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![Female tourists from Manipur in shawl and phanek—lower-body garment similar to a sarong, and made of a rectangular piece of cloth with one pair of opposite sides stitched together[414]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aGroupFromNorthEastIndiaAtTaj.jpg)
![Mango, the national fruit of India, is eaten widely in the summer months.[429][af]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aKhairdeen%2c_alias_Pritam%2c_relishing_a_mango_at_the_dusk_of_his_life_05.jpg)
![Girls play hopscotch in Juara, Madhya Pradesh. Hopscotch has been commonly played by girls in rural India.[438]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aFilles_jouant_%25C3%25A0_la_marelle%2c_Jaura%2c_Inde.jpg)
![Gukesh Dommaraju, the reigning world chess champion,[439] receives India's highest sporting honour, the Dhyan Chand Award from India's president Droupadi Murmu, January 17, 2025.](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aPresident_of_Bharat_Smt._Droupadi_Murmu_confers_Major_Dhyan_Chand_Khel_Ratna_Award_on_Shri_Gukesh_Dommaraju.jpg)
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