India - WikiHQ

India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia.  It is the seventh-largest country by area; the most populous country in the world and, since its independence in 1947, the world's most populous democracy. 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; China, Nepal and Bhutan to the north; Bangladesh and Myanmar to the east. In the Indian Ocean, India is near Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Its Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Myanmar, Thailand and Indonesia.

Modern humans arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa no later than 55,000 years ago. India's pre-existing Dravidian languages were supplanted in the northern regions. By , caste had emerged within Hinduism, Early political consolidations gave rise to the loose-knit Maurya and Gupta Empires. During this era, there was a flourishing of creativity in art, architecture, and writing, the status of women declined, and untouchability became an organised belief. In South India, the Middle kingdoms exported Dravidian language scripts and religious cultures to the kingdoms of Southeast Asia.

In the 1st millennium Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism became established on India's southern and western coasts. Early in the 2nd millennium Muslim armies from Central Asia intermittently overran India's northern plains. The resulting Delhi Sultanate drew northern India into the cosmopolitan networks of medieval Islam. In south India, the Vijayanagara Empire created a long-lasting composite Hindu culture. In the Punjab, Sikhism emerged, rejecting institutionalised religion. The Mughal Empire ushered in two centuries of economic expansion and relative peace, and left a rich architectural legacy. Gradually expanding rule of the British East India Company turned India into a colonial economy but consolidated its sovereignty. British Crown rule began in 1858. The rights promised to Indians were granted slowly, but technological changes were introduced, and modern ideas of education and the public life took root. A nationalist movement emerged in India, the first in the non-European British Empire and an influence on other nationalist movements. Noted for nonviolent resistance after 1920, it became the primary factor in ending British rule. In 1947, the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two independent dominions, a Hindu-majority dominion of India and a Muslim-majority dominion of Pakistan. A large-scale loss of life and an unprecedented migration accompanied the partition.

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 over 1.4 billion in 2023. During this time, its nominal per capita income increased from US$64 annually to US$2,601, and its literacy rate from 16.6% to 74%. The Indian economy has since become a fast-growing major economy and a hub for information technology, with an expanding middle class. India has reduced its poverty rate, though at the cost of increasing economic inequality. It is a nuclear-weapon state that ranks high in military expenditure. It has disputes over Kashmir with its neighbours, Pakistan and China, unresolved since the mid-20th century. Among the socio-economic challenges India faces are gender inequality, child malnutrition, and rising levels of air pollution. India's land is megadiverse with four biodiversity hotspots. India's wildlife, which has traditionally been viewed with tolerance in its culture, is supported in protected habitats.

Etymology

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the English proper noun "India" derives most immediately from the Classical Latin India, a reference to a loosely-defined historical region of Asia stretching from South Asia to the borders of China. Further etymons are: Hellenistic Greek (); Ancient Greek (), or the River Indus; Achaemenian Old Persian (an eastern province of the Achaemenid Empire); and Sanskrit , or "river," but specifically the Indus river, and by extension its well-settled basin. The Ancient Greeks referred to South Asians as , 'the people of the Indus'.

The term Bharat (; ), mentioned in both Indian epic poetry and the Constitution of India, is used in its variations by many Indian languages. A modern rendering of the historical name , which applied originally to North India, Bharat gained increased currency from the mid-19th century as a native name for India.

Hindustan () is a Middle Persian name for India that became popular by the 13th century, and was used widely since the era of the Mughal Empire. The meaning of Hindustan has varied, referring to a region encompassing the northern Indian subcontinent (present-day northern India and Pakistan) or to India in its near entirety.

History

Ancient India

Based on coalescence of Mitochondrial DNA and Y Chromosome data, it is thought that the earliest extant lineages of anatomically modern humans or Homo 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. 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. However, the earliest known modern human fossils in South Asia date to about 30,000 years ago. Centred around cities such as Mohenjo-daro, Harappa, Dholavira, Ganweriwala, and Rakhigarhi, its characteristic features included standardised weights, steatite seals, a written script, urban planning, public works, and arts and crafts including pottery styles, terracotta human figures and animal statuettes. Networks of towns and villages grew around the cities in a new agro-pastoral economy.

Between and , an archaic form of Sanskrit, an Indo-European language, diffused into India from the northwest. Its evidence today is found in the Rig Veda—the oldest scripture associated with what later became Hinduism—which was composed by Indo-Aryan-speaking tribes migrating east from what is today northern Afghanistan and across the Punjab region. The settling of the Ganges river 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. The Dravidian languages of India were supplanted in the north, creating a broad language family-divide, with the Indo-Aryan languages being spoken mainly in the north and west, and the Dravidian in some parts of east India and most of the south. The two major Sanskrit epics, the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa, however, were composed in a range of oral storytelling registers called Epic Sanskrit which was used in northern India between 400 BCE and 300 CE, and roughly contemporary with classical Sanskrit.

A second urbanisation had taken place in South Asia by , this time on the Ganges plain. In fortified cities, social differentiation by caste, or varna, had emerged. By the mid-millennium two new ethical and social systems had arisen: Jainism based on the teachings of Mahavira and Buddhism on those of the Buddha. Both religions stressed non-violence and abjured animal sacrifices conducted in Brahmanism, and birth into a fixed hereditary varna. By living ethically, lay people could rise socially and morally in these religions.

By the 4th and 5th centuries, the Gupta Empire had created a complex system of administration and taxation in the greater Ganges Plain; this system became a model for later Indian kingdoms. Under the Guptas, a renewed Hinduism based on devotion, rather than the management of ritual, began to assert itself. The renewal was reflected in a flowering of art, literature, and science. In South India, the Sangam literature of the Tamil language reveals that, between and , the southern peninsula was ruled by the Cheras and the Cholas, along the western and eastern plains, respectively, of the Kaveri river valley, and the Pandyas farther south along the Vaigai river valley. By the sixth century, the Pallavas had grown into a regional power. Simultaneously, Buddhism and Jainism, which had favoured a conservative transactionalism, were replaced by kingly devotion to the gods of particular places, which became a characteristic of the Bhakti movement. The Pallavas, in particular, traded extensively with the Roman Empire and with West and Southeast Asia.

File:Battle at Lanka, Ramayana, Udaipur, 1649-53.jpg|Manuscript illustration, , of the Sanskrit epic Ramayana, composed in story-telling fashion

File:Popular print, album (BM 2003,1022,0.18).jpg|Colour lithograph, 1895, British Museum. Draupadi, the wife of all five Pandava brothers in the Mahabharata, is presented at a parcheesi game where Yudhishthira, the king of Hastinapura, had gambled away all material wealth, one of several instigating factors in the Mahabharata war.

File:Cave 26, Ajanta.jpg|Cave 26, a Buddhist shrine, of the rock-cut Ajanta Caves

</gallery>

Medieval India

The Indian early medieval age, from , was defined by regional kingdoms and cultural diversity. No ruler of this period was able to create an empire and consistently control lands much beyond their core region. 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. The caste system consequently began to show regional differences.

In the 6th and 7th centuries, the first devotional hymns were composed in Tamil. They were imitated all over India and led to both the resurgence of Hinduism and the development of all modern languages of the subcontinent. 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. Temple towns of various sizes began to appear everywhere as India underwent another urbanisation. 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-day Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Brunei, Cambodia, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia. 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.

After the 10th century, Muslim Central Asian nomadic clans, using swift-horse cavalry and raising vast armies united by ethnicity, repeatedly overran South Asia's north-western plains, leading eventually to the establishment of the Islamic Delhi Sultanate in 1206. 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.

By repeatedly repulsing Mongol raiders in the 13th century, the sultanate saved India from the devastation visited on West and Central Asia, setting the scene for centuries of migration 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. The sultanate's raiding and weakening of the regional kingdoms of South India paved the way for the indigenous Vijayanagara Empire. Embracing a strong Shaivite tradition and building upon the military technology of the sultanate, the empire came to control much of peninsular India, and was to influence South Indian society for long afterwards.

File:Brihadisvara Temple during Maha Shivaratri-WUS03611 (edit).jpg| Brihadisvara Temple, built by Chola emperor Rajaraja I between 1003 and 1010 CE

File:Qutb Minar with Neem Tree.jpg|Calligraphy on the Qutb Minar, built in the Delhi sultanate from 1199 CE to 1220 CE

File:Hampi - King's Palace - Throne Platform - Relief - 15.jpg|Relief on Vijayanagara King's palace throne platform, Hampi, Karnataka, 14th and 15th centuries CE

</gallery>

Early modern India

The [[dargah, or mausoleum of Sufi saint Salim Chisti, built by Mughal emperor, Akbar, in the early 17th century|thumb|right]]

A two-[[mohur East India Company rule gold coin, issued in 1835, the obverse inscribed "William IIII, King"|thumb|right]]

In the early 16th century, northern India, then under mainly Muslim rulers, fell again to the superior mobility and firepower of a new generation of Central Asian warriors. The resulting Mughal Empire did not stamp out the local societies it came to rule. Instead, it balanced and pacified them through new administrative practices and diverse and inclusive ruling elites, leading to more systematic, centralised, and uniform rule. Eschewing tribal bonds and Islamic identity, especially under Akbar, the Mughals united their far-flung realms through loyalty—expressed through a Persianised culture—to an emperor who had near-divine status.

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. 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. 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. Expanding commerce during Mughal rule gave rise to new Indian commercial and political elites along the coasts of southern and eastern India. The incremental fragmentation of imperial authority during the late 17th and 18th centuries facilitated a process of decentralisation, enabling provincial elites to assert localised autonomy and consolidate control over their own affairs.

By the early 18th century, with the lines between commercial enterprise and political sovereignty increasingly blurred, European chartered companies—notably the English East India Company—solidified their presence through fortified coastal outposts. 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 the Bengal region by 1765 and sideline the other European companies. 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. India was no longer exporting manufactured goods as it long had, but instead supplying the British Empire with raw materials. Many historians consider this to be the onset of India's colonial period. 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.

Modern India

Mahatma Gandhi leaves the Presidency Jail in [[Calcutta in April 1938, after interviewing political prisoners there.|thumb|right]]

thumb|The [[Chandigarh Capitol Complex|Capitol Complex in Chandigarh. Commissioned by Jawaharlal Nehru, the city was built in the aftermath of India's 1947 partition and independence.]]

The appointment in 1848 of Lord 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 in Europe. Disaffection with the company also grew during this time and set off the Indian 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. After the rebellion was suppressed in 1858, the East India Company was disbanded, and the British government began to directly administer India. Proclaiming a unitary state and a gradual but limited British-style parliamentary system, the new rulers also protected princes and landed gentry as a feudal safeguard against future unrest. In the decades following, public life gradually emerged across India, eventually leading to the founding of the Indian National Congress in 1885.

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. There was an increase in the number of large-scale famines, and, despite the risks of infrastructure development borne by Indian taxpayers, little industrial employment was generated for Indians. However, commercial cropping, especially in the newly canalled Punjab, led to increased food production for internal consumption. The railway network provided critical famine relief, notably reduced the cost of moving goods, and helped nascent Indian-owned industry.

After World War I, in which more than 1.3 million Indians served, the Gandhian era began. It was marked by British reforms but also repressive legislation, by more strident Indian calls for self-rule, and by the beginnings of a nonviolent movement of non-co-operation led by Mahatma Gandhi. During the 1930s, the British enacted slow legislative reform; the Indian National Congress won victories in the resulting elections. The next decade was beset with crises: Indian participation in World War II, the Congress's final push for non-co-operation, and an upsurge of Muslim nationalism. All were capped by the advent of independence in 1947, but tempered by the partition of India into two states: India and Pakistan.

India's constitution was adopted in 1950 and established a secular, democratic republic. Economic liberalisation has created a large urban middle class and transformed India into a fast growing economy.

The remaining Indian Plate survives as peninsular India, the oldest and geologically most stable part of India. It extends as far north as the Satpura and Vindhya ranges in central India. These parallel chains run from the Arabian Sea coast in Gujarat in the west to the coal-rich Chota Nagpur Plateau in Jharkhand in the east. To the south, the remaining peninsular landmass, the Deccan Plateau, is flanked on the west and east by coastal ranges known as the Western and Eastern Ghats; 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 and 68° 7′ and 97° 25′ east longitude.

Major Himalayan-origin rivers that substantially flow through India include the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, both of which drain into the Bay of Bengal. Important tributaries of the Ganges include the Yamuna and the Kosi. The Kosi's extremely low gradient, caused by long-term silt deposition, leads to severe floods and course changes. Major peninsular rivers, whose steeper gradients prevent their waters from flooding, include the Godavari, the Mahanadi, the Kaveri, and the Krishna, which also drain into the Bay of Bengal; and the Narmada and the Tapti, which drain into the Arabian Sea.

India's coastline measures in length; of this distance, belong to peninsular India and to the Andaman, Nicobar, and Lakshadweep island chains. According to the Indian naval hydrographic charts, the mainland coastline consists of the following: 43% sandy beaches; 11% rocky shores, including cliffs; and 46% mudflats or marshy shores. Coastal features include the marshy Rann of Kutch of western India and the alluvial Sundarbans delta of eastern India; the latter is shared with Bangladesh. India has two archipelagos: the Lakshadweep coral atolls off India's south-western coast; and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a volcanic chain in the Andaman Sea.

File:Panorama of Himalayas from Ranikhet, Uttarakhand, India.jpg|A panoramic view of the Garhwal and Kumaon Himalayas. Peaks rising above their surroundings in this view are, among others, Trisul, Nanda Devi, the highest peak entirely within India's borders, and Nanda Kot. The Tibetan Plateau lies behind these mountains, as does the part of the Indus-Yarlung suture zone, the contour along which the Indian Plate has welded to the Eurasian plate. Mount Kailash and Lake Manasarovar in the Tibet Trans-Himalaya—sacred in Hindu and Buddhist mythology—lie immediately behind to the right. The Indus and Yarlung Tsangpo (the upper Brahmaputra river), which mark the western and eastern limits of the Himalaya range, rise in the vicinity of the lake.

File:Tungabhadra River and Coracle Boats.JPG|The Tungabhadra, with rocky outcrops, flows into the peninsular Krishna River.

File:Ganges Delta ESA22274217.jpeg|The Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta in a European Sentinel-3B image. The Ganges and the eastern Indo-Gangetic Plain lie to the left, the Brahmaputra to the right.

File:Havelock Island, Mangrove tree on the beach, Andaman Islands.jpg|A mangrove tree on a beach on Havelock Island, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands

</gallery>

Climate

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. 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 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.

Four major climatic groupings predominate in India: tropical wet, tropical dry, subtropical humid, and montane. Temperatures in India have risen by between 1901 and 2018. Climate change in India is often thought to be the cause. The retreat of Himalayan glaciers has adversely affected the flow rate of the major Himalayan rivers, including the Ganges and the Brahmaputra. According to some current projections, the number and severity of droughts in India will have markedly increased by the end of the present century.

File:Coral Tree Monsoon Mallalli Falls Hassan Jun24 A7CR 01575.jpg|Indian coral tree in bloom in the mist of the Southwest Monsoon, Mallalli Falls, Hassan, Karnataka

File:Dromedary in Thar desert.jpg|A dromedary in the Thar desert

File:Baspa Valley at Sangla, Himachal Pradesh, India.jpg|New snow in Baspa Valley, Sangla, Himachal Pradesh

</gallery>

Biodiversity

India is a megadiverse country, a term employed for 17 countries that host high biological diversity and contain many species indigenous, or endemic, to them. India is the habitat for 8.6% of all mammals, 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. Fully a third of Indian plant species are endemic. India also overlaps four of the world's 34 biodiversity hotspots, or regions that display significant habitat loss in the presence of high endemism.

-->

References

Bibliography

Overview

Robinson, Francis, ed. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and the Maldives (1989)

Etymology

History

Geography

Biodiversity

Politics

Foreign relations and military

Economy

Demographics

Culture

<!--*

<!--*

<!--*

External links

<!--

Please be cautious adding more external links.

Wikipedia is not a collection of links and should not be used for advertising.

Excessive or inappropriate links will be removed.

See Wikipedia:External links and Wikipedia:Spam for details.

If there are already suitable links, propose additions or replacements on

the article's talk page, or submit your link to the relevant category at

the "long dead (2017)" Open Directory Project (dmoz.org) and link there using .

-->

Government

Official website of the Government of India
Government of India Web Directory

General information

India . The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency.
India from BBC News
Key Development Forecasts for India from International Futures