India History, Maps, Population, Economy, & Facts

Towards the end of the 20th century, innovations in British South Asian music and dance, such as Post-Bhangra, fed back into dance in India. Examples are dance-dramas based on the ancient Indian animal fables, Panchatantra, and Nehru’s mid-century meditation on Indian history, The Discovery of India. Whether or not a dance is classical is Bet365 determined by the Sangeet 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 Indian classical music has Vedic origins, and split in the 13th century into the two main traditions of Hindustani and Carnatic music. A later landmark in Indian mathematics was the development of the series expansions for trigonometric functions (sine, cosine, and arc tangent) by mathematicians of the Kerala school in the 15th century CE.

India has repeatedly asserted its claim over the entire region of Jammu and Kashmir. The now-deleted map omitted such distinctions and included all disputed territories within India’s borders. Previously, US government maps typically showed Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) demarcated separately, reflecting Pakistan’s claims. In a U-turn, the US Trade Representative’s office has now deleted a map of India that showed both Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) and Aksai Chin within Indian territory.

For example, India claims Jammu and Kashmir as an Indian state. Different countries disagree about where India’s borders lie. This differs with names that outsiders use for the country. The name India comes from the Greek word Indus.

Humans came to the Indian subcontinent from Africa more than 55,000 years ago. It has been the world’s largest democracy by number of people since 1947. India (भारत  (Hindi) Bhārat Gaṇarājya) officially the Republic of India, also known as Hindustān, is a country in South Asia. Translations of the content into languages other than English are generated using automated tools and may not always be accurate.

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

They are elected directly by the people’s vote. Most members are elected indirectly by the legislatures of state and union territories. The legislature of India is called the Parliament (संसद Sansad). All three parts are in New Delhi, the capital city of India. That means a strong federal government with weak state governments.

Chess, which originated in India, is also becoming popular. Tennis has become popular due to the victories of the India Davis Cup team. There is also the Indian cricket league and Indian premier league Twenty20 competitions.

Languages

Several modern religions are linked to India, namely modern Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism. Cave paintings from the Stone Age are found across India. In the north, many people speak Punjabi, Bengali, Gujarati, and Marathi, Odia, and Maithili. There may be as many as 1,652 different dialects in India. It has the status of a ‘subsidiary official language’. About 65% of Indians live in rural areas, or land set aside for farming.

Cricket in India is controlled by the Board of Control for Cricket in India or BCCI. The Indian cricket team won the 1983 and 2011 Cricket World Cup and the 2007 ICC World Twenty20. India became the first nation in the world to have launched over a hundred satellites in one mission. That made it the fourth country and first Asian country to do so, successfully. India sent a spacecraft to Mars for the first time in 2014.

India has distinctive vegetarian cuisines, each a feature of the geographical and cultural histories of its adherents. The foundation of a typical Indian meal is a cereal cooked plainly and complemented with savoury dishes. Increasingly, in urban northern India, the sari is no longer the apparel of everyday wear, though they remain popular on formal occasions. It is also commonly worn with an Indian blouse, or choli, 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. In its modern form, it is combined with an underskirt, or Indian petticoat, and tucked in along the waist band for more secure fastening. From ancient times until the advent of the modern, the most widely worn traditional dress in India was draped.

The decimal number system in use today was first recorded in Indian mathematics. In the classical period of Indian mathematics (400 CE to 1200 CE), important contributions were made by Aryabhata, Brahmagupta, Bhaskara II, Varāhamihira, and Madhava. As a market developed among European residents, it was supplied by Company painting by Indian artists with considerable Western influence. But in the South, under the Pallava and Chola dynasties, sculpture in both stone and bronze had a sustained period of great achievement; the large bronzes with Shiva as Nataraja have become an iconic symbol of India. Over the following centuries a distinctly Indian style of sculpting the human figure developed, with less interest in articulating precise anatomy than ancient Greek sculpture but showing smoothly flowing forms expressing prana («breath» or life-force). Almost all surviving ancient Indian art thereafter is in various forms of religious sculpture in durable materials, or coins.

The Vijayanagara empire was another significant Indian empire. There were also many other Indian dynasties (empires) such as the Chalukyas, Cholas, Pallavas, and Pandyas. It has become a very popular name for India since the middle of the 19th century. The ancient Greeks called Indians as Indoi (Ἰνδοί), which means «the people of the Indus». Most of Indians follow Hinduism at 80%, but people of different religions such as Buddhism, Sikhism and Islam also live there. India has reduced its rate of poverty but its economic inequality has increased.

It has six national parties, for example the Indian National Congress (INC) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It is the largest democracy in the world by the number of people. Because of some of India’s deserts, the entire country gets rain for four months of the year.

• The executive of the Indian government consists of the president, the vice-president, and the Union Council of Ministers—with the cabinet being its executive committee—headed by the prime minister.
• 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.
• The Indian cricket team won the 1983 and 2011 Cricket World Cup and the 2007 ICC World Twenty20.
• It resulted into the formation of the Delhi Sultanate, which was finally succeeded by the Mughal Empire, under which India once again achieved a large measure of political unity.
• Indore has held the title of India’s cleanest city for six consecutive years, from 2017 to 2022.
• King Shivaji used the guerrilla tactics to capture a part of, the then, dominant Mughal empire.

A very large majority of Indians have their marriages arranged by their parents or family elders. Multi-generational patrilineal joint families have been the norm in India, though nuclear families are becoming common in urban areas. The Constituent Assembly of India abolished untouchability in 1947, the Republic of India did more formally in 1950, and India has since enacted other anti-discriminatory laws and social welfare initiatives related to caste.

National Task Force

After 1947, India had a socialist planned economy. The first official leader (Prime Minister) of India was Jawaharlal Nehru. Every year, on this day, Indians celebrate Republic Day.

According to some current projections, the number and severity of droughts in India will have markedly increased by the end of the present century. 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. The Himalayas prevent cold Central Asian katabatic winds from blowing in, keeping the bulk of the Indian subcontinent warmer than most locations at similar latitudes. The Indian climate is strongly influenced by the Himalayas and the Thar Desert, both of which drive the economically and culturally pivotal summer and winter monsoons.

In 2008, India’s share of world trade was 1.7%; in 2021, India was the world’s ninth-largest importer and the sixteenth-largest exporter. Until 1991, all Indian governments followed protectionist policies that were influenced by socialist economics. According to the International Monetary Fund, the Indian economy in 2024 was nominally worth $3.94 trillion; it is the fifth-largest economy by market exchange rates and, at around $15.0 trillion, the third-largest by purchasing power parity (PPP). The executive of the Indian government consists of the president, the vice-president, and the Union Council of Ministers—with the cabinet being its executive committee—headed by the prime minister. After the 1998 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. There are six recognised national parties in the country, including the Indian National Congress (generally, «the Congress») and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP); there and over 50 regional parties.

By the last quarter of the 18th Century the English had outdone all others and established themselves as the dominant power in India. During the late 16th and the 17th Centuries, the European trading companies in India competed with each other ferociously. The earliest literary source that sheds light on India’s past is the Rig Veda. The History of India begins with the Indus Valley Civilization and the coming of the Aryans.

The island country of Sri Lanka is situated some 40 miles (65 km) off the southeast coast of India across the Palk Strait and Gulf of Mannar. Its government is a constitutional republic that represents a highly diverse population consisting of thousands of ethnic groups and hundreds of languages. The island country of Sri Lanka is situated some 40 miles (65 km) off the southeast coast of India. India also has the largest population of people adhering to both Zoroastrianism (Parsis and Iranis) and the Bahá’í Faith. The Eighth Schedule of India’s Constitution also recognises 22 languages, including Hindi but not English, which the government is obligated to develop. The relative peace maintained by the empire during much of the 17th century was a factor in India’s economic expansion, resulting in greater patronage of painting, literary forms, textiles, and architecture.

Dance has been an essential aspect of Indian films from the first talkies of the 1930s. Among 20th-century directions is the modern dance of Uday Shankar in which classical styles were employed but not adhered to rigidly. A devdasi who went on to attain national and international prominence was Thanjavur Balasaraswati. Their sponsorship and promotion, however, has continued in secular, modern India.aa India also has local and modern dance traditions. Modern Indian pop takes influences from classical, folk, and western pop music. Filmi is music written for Indian cinema, generally composed by music directors and sung by playback singers.

Association football is also a popular sport in northeast India, West Bengal, Goa and Kerala. India has the largest movie industry in the world. Native speakers of Hindi represented about 41% of the Indian population in the 2001 Indian census. Around 5% of the people speak a Tibeto-Burman language. About 69% of Indians speak an Indo-Arayan language, and about 26% speak a Dravidian language. The largest cities in India are Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Ahmedabad.