India
India, officially the Republic of India (ISO: Bhārat Gaṇarājya),[21] is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area; the most populous country as of June 2023;[22][23] and from the time of its independence in 1947, the world's most populous democracy.[24][25][26] Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast, it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west;[j] China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the north; and Bangladesh and Myanmar to the east. In the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives; its Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Thailand, Myanmar, and Indonesia.
This article is about the Republic of India. For other uses, see India (disambiguation).
Republic of IndiaBhārat Gaṇarājya
- 8th Scheduled
- State level[e]
- 79.8% Hinduism
- 14.2% Islam
- 2.3% Christianity
- 1.7% Sikhism
- 0.7% Buddhism
- 0.4% Jainism
- 0.23% unaffiliated
- 0.65% other[12]
Federal parliamentary republic
9.6
424.5/km2 (1,099.4/sq mi) (30th)
2024 estimate
2024 estimate
35.7[18]
medium
Indian rupee (₹) (INR)
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- dd-mm-yyyy[i]
left[20]
Modern humans arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa no later than 55,000 years ago.[27][28][29]
Their long occupation, initially in varying forms of isolation as hunter-gatherers, has made the region highly diverse, second only to Africa in human genetic diversity.[30] Settled life emerged on the subcontinent in the western margins of the Indus river basin 9,000 years ago, evolving gradually into the Indus Valley Civilisation of the third millennium BCE.[31]
By 1200 BCE, an archaic form of Sanskrit, an Indo-European language, had diffused into India from the northwest.[32][33] Its evidence today is found in the hymns of the Rigveda. Preserved by an oral tradition that was resolutely vigilant, the Rigveda records the dawning of Hinduism in India.[34] The Dravidian languages of India were supplanted in the northern and western regions.[35]
By 400 BCE, stratification and exclusion by caste had emerged within Hinduism,[36]
and Buddhism and Jainism had arisen, proclaiming social orders unlinked to heredity.[37]
Early political consolidations gave rise to the loose-knit Maurya and Gupta Empires based in the Ganges Basin.[38]
Their collective era was suffused with wide-ranging creativity,[39] but also marked by the declining status of women,[40] and the incorporation of untouchability into an organised system of belief.[k][41] In South India, the Middle kingdoms exported Dravidian-languages scripts and religious cultures to the kingdoms of Southeast Asia.[42]
In the early medieval era, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism became established on India's southern and western coasts.[43]
Muslim armies from Central Asia intermittently overran India's northern plains,[44]
eventually founding the Delhi Sultanate, and drawing northern India into the cosmopolitan networks of medieval Islam.[45]
In the 15th century, the Vijayanagara Empire created a long-lasting composite Hindu culture in south India.[46]
In the Punjab, Sikhism emerged, rejecting institutionalised religion.[47]
The Mughal Empire, in 1526, ushered in two centuries of relative peace,[48]
leaving a legacy of luminous architecture.[l][49]
Gradually expanding rule of the British East India Company followed, turning India into a colonial economy, but also consolidating its sovereignty.[50] British Crown rule began in 1858. The rights promised to Indians were granted slowly,[51][52] but technological changes were introduced, and modern ideas of education and the public life took root.[53] A pioneering and influential nationalist movement emerged, which was noted for nonviolent resistance and became the major factor in ending British rule.[54][55] In 1947 the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two independent dominions,[56][57][58][59] a Hindu-majority Dominion of India and a Muslim-majority Dominion of Pakistan, amid large-scale loss of life and an unprecedented migration.[60]
India has been a federal republic since 1950, governed through a democratic parliamentary system. It is a pluralistic, multilingual and multi-ethnic society. India's population grew from 361 million in 1951 to almost 1.4 billion in 2022.[61]
During the same time, its nominal per capita income increased from US$64 annually to US$2,601, and its literacy rate from 16.6% to 74%. From being a comparatively destitute country in 1951,[62] India has become a fast-growing major economy and a hub for information technology services, with an expanding middle class.[63] India has a space programme with several planned or completed extraterrestrial missions. Indian movies, music, and spiritual teachings play an increasing role in global culture.[64] India has substantially reduced its rate of poverty, though at the cost of increasing economic inequality.[65] India is a nuclear-weapon state, which ranks high in military expenditure. It has disputes over Kashmir with its neighbours, Pakistan and China, unresolved since the mid-20th century.[66] Among the socio-economic challenges India faces are gender inequality, child malnutrition,[67] and rising levels of air pollution.[68] India's land is megadiverse, with four biodiversity hotspots.[69] Its forest cover comprises 21.7% of its area.[70] India's wildlife, which has traditionally been viewed with tolerance in India's culture,[71] is supported among these forests, and elsewhere, in protected habitats.
![India has the majority of the world's wild tigers, approximately 3,170 in 2022.[224]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/da/Panthera_tigris_tigris_Tidoba_20150306.jpg/270px-Panthera_tigris_tigris_Tidoba_20150306.jpg)
A chital (Axis axis) stag in the Nagarhole National Park in a region covered by a moderately dense[o] forest.
![A chital (Axis axis) stag in the Nagarhole National Park in a region covered by a moderately dense[o] forest.](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/36/Axis_axis_%28Nagarhole%2C_2010%29.jpg/270px-Axis_axis_%28Nagarhole%2C_2010%29.jpg)
Three of the last Asiatic cheetahs in India were shot dead in 1948 in Surguja district, Madhya Pradesh, Central India by Maharajah Ramanuj Pratap Singh Deo. The young male cheetahs, all from the same litter, were sitting together when they were shot at night.
India is a megadiverse country, a term employed for 17 countries which display high biological diversity and contain many species exclusively indigenous, or endemic, to them.[197] India is a habitat for 8.6% of all mammal species, 13.7% of bird species, 7.9% of reptile species, 6% of amphibian species, 12.2% of fish species, and 6.0% of all flowering plant species.[198][199] Fully a third of Indian plant species are endemic.[200] India also contains four of the world's 34 biodiversity hotspots,[69] or regions that display significant habitat loss in the presence of high endemism.[n][201]
According to official statistics, India's forest cover is 713,789 km2 (275,595 sq mi), which is 21.71% of the country's total land area.[70] It can be subdivided further into broad categories of canopy density, or the proportion of the area of a forest covered by its tree canopy.[202] Very dense forest, whose canopy density is greater than 70%, occupies 3.02% of India's land area.[202][203] It predominates in the tropical moist forest of the Andaman Islands, the Western Ghats, and Northeast India. Moderately dense forest, whose canopy density is between 40% and 70%, occupies 9.39% of India's land area.[202][203] It predominates in the temperate coniferous forest of the Himalayas, the moist deciduous sal forest of eastern India, and the dry deciduous teak forest of central and southern India.[204] Open forest, whose canopy density is between 10% and 40%, occupies 9.26% of India's land area.[202][203] India has two natural zones of thorn forest, one in the Deccan 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.[205]
Among the Indian subcontinent's notable indigenous trees are the astringent Azadirachta indica, or neem, which is widely used in rural Indian herbal medicine,[206] and the luxuriant Ficus religiosa, or peepul,[207] which is displayed on the ancient seals of Mohenjo-daro,[208] and under which the Buddha is recorded in the Pali canon to have sought enlightenment.[209]
Many Indian species have descended from those of Gondwana, the southern supercontinent from which India separated more than 100 million years ago.[210] India's subsequent collision with Eurasia set off a mass exchange of species. However, volcanism and climatic changes later caused the extinction of many endemic Indian forms.[211] Still later, mammals entered India from Asia through two zoogeographical passes flanking the Himalayas.[212] This had the effect of lowering endemism among India's mammals, which stands at 12.6%, contrasting with 45.8% among reptiles and 55.8% among amphibians.[199] Among endemics are the vulnerable[213] hooded leaf monkey[214] and the threatened[215] Beddome's toad[215][216] of the Western Ghats.
India contains 172 IUCN-designated threatened animal species, or 2.9% of endangered forms.[217] These include the endangered Bengal tiger and the Ganges river dolphin. Critically endangered species include the gharial, a crocodilian; the great Indian bustard; and the Indian white-rumped vulture, which has become nearly extinct by having ingested the carrion of diclofenac-treated cattle.[218] Before they were extensively used for agriculture and cleared for human settlement, the thorn forests of Punjab were mingled at intervals with open grasslands that were grazed by large herds of blackbuck preyed on by the Asiatic cheetah; the blackbuck, no longer extant in Punjab, is now severely endangered in India, and the cheetah is extinct.[219] The pervasive and ecologically devastating human encroachment of recent decades has critically endangered Indian wildlife. In response, the system of national parks and protected areas, first established in 1935, was expanded substantially. In 1972, India enacted the Wildlife Protection Act[220] and Project Tiger to safeguard crucial wilderness; the Forest Conservation Act was enacted in 1980 and amendments added in 1988.[221] India hosts more than five hundred wildlife sanctuaries and eighteen biosphere reserves,[222] four of which are part of the World Network of Biosphere Reserves; seventy-five wetlands are registered under the Ramsar Convention.[223]
Government
General information
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