India

• Article
• Talk
• Read
• View source
• View history

•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

•
•

•
•
•
•
•
•
Appearance
hide
Text

Small

Standard

Large
Width

Standard

Wide
Color
 •

Automatic

Light

Dark
Coordinates: 21°N 78°E

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the country. For other uses, see India (disambiguation).

Republic of India
Bhārat Gaṇarājya

Flag

State emblem

Motto: Satyameva Jayate (Sanskrit)

"Truth Alone Triumphs"[1]

Anthem: Jana Gana Mana (Hindi)[a][2][3]

"Thou Art the Ruler of the Minds of All People"[4][2]
Duration: 1 minute and 4 seconds.1:04

National song: Vande Mataram (Sanskrit)[b]

"I Bow to Thee, Mother"[c][1][2]
Duration: 2 minutes and 26 seconds.2:26
 Territory controlled by India
Territory claimed but not controlled

Capital New Delhi

28°36′50″N 77°12′30″E
Largest Mumbai
city by city proper
population
Largest city by Delhi
metropolitan area
population

Official languages • Hindi

• English[d][8]
Recognised State level and Eighth Schedule[9]
regional languages •
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
 •
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Native languages 424 languages[g]

Religion • 79.8% Hinduism

(2011)[11] • 14.2% Islam
• 2.3% Christianity
• 1.7% Sikhism
• 0.7% Buddhism
• 0.4% Jainism
• 0.23% unaffiliated
• 0.65% other

Demonyms • Indian
• others

Government Federal parliamentary republic

• President Droupadi Murmu
• Vice President C. P. Radhakrishnan
• Prime Minister Narendra Modi

Legislature Parliament
 • Upper house Rajya Sabha
• Lower house Lok Sabha

Independence
from the United Kingdom
• Dominion 15 August 1947
• Republic 26 January 1950

Area
• Total 3,287,263 km2 (1,269,219 sq mi)[7][h] (7th)
• Water (%) 9.6

Population
• 2026 estimate 1.48 billion[13] (1st)
• 2011 census 1,210,854,977[14][15] (2nd)
• Density 435.3/km2 (1,127.4/sq mi) (30th)

GDP (PPP) 2026 estimate

• Total $18.902 trillion[16] (3rd)
• Per capita $12,801[16] (121st)

GDP (nominal) 2026 estimate

• Total $4.153 trillion[16] (6th)
• Per capita $2,813[16] (148th)

Gini (2022) 25.5[17]

low inequality

HDI (2023) 0.685[18]

medium (130th)

Currency Indian rupee (₹) (INR)

Time zone UTC+05:30 (IST)

Date format • dd-mm-yyyy[i]

Calling code +91

ISO 3166 code IN

Internet TLD .in (others)

India, officially the Republic of India,[j][19] is a country in South Asia. It is the

world's seventh-largest country by area and the largest by population.[20] 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;[k] China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the north; and Bangladesh and Myanmar to the
east. In the Indian Ocean, India is near Sri Lanka and the Maldives.[l]

Modern humans arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa by 55,000 years
ago.[22][23][24] Their long, isolated occupation as hunter-gatherers made the region highly
diverse.[25] Settled life emerged on the western margins of the Indus basin 9,000 years
ago, evolving into the Indus Valley Civilisation by the third millennium
BCE.[26] By 1200 BCE, an archaic form of Sanskrit, spread into India from the
northwest,[27][28] its hymns recording the early
dawnings of Hinduism.[29] Northern Dravidian languages were
supplanted.[30] By 400 BCE, caste emerged within
Hinduism,[31] while Buddhism and Jainism arose, proclaiming social orders unlinked
to heredity.[32] In the loose-knit Maurya and Gupta Empires,[33] art, architecture, and
writing flourished,[34] women's status declined,[35] and untouchability became
organised.[m][36] In South India, Middle kingdoms exported Dravidian language scripts and
cultures to Southeast Asia.[37] In the 1st
millennium, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Zoroastrianism became established on
India's southern and western coasts.[38]

Early in the 2nd millennium Central Asian Muslim conquests[39] established the Delhi
Sultanate, integrating northern India into the Islamic cosmopolis.[40] In south India,
the Vijayanagara Empire created a long-lasting composite Hindu
culture,[41] while Sikhism emerged in the Punjab, rejecting institutionalised
religion.[42] The Mughal Empire ushered in two centuries of economic expansion and
relative peace,[43] leaving a rich architectural legacy.[44][45] Gradually expanding rule of the
British East India Company turned India into a colonial economy but consolidated
its sovereignty.[46] British Crown rule began in 1858. The rights promised to Indians were
granted slowly,[47][48] but technological changes were introduced, and modern education
and the public life took root.[49] A nationalist movement emerged in India, the first in the
non-European British Empire.[50][51] Noted for nonviolent resistance after 1920,[52] it
became the primary factor in ending British rule.[53] 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.[54]

Since 1950, India has been a federal republic, 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. [55] Its fast-
growing economy is a hub for information technology, with an expanding middle
class.[56] India has reduced poverty, though alongside increasing economic
inequality.[57] It is a nuclear-weapon state, with high military expenditure, and holds
unresolved mid-20th-century disputes over Kashmir with its neighbours, Pakistan and
China.[58] Socio-economic challenges include gender inequality, child malnutrition,[59] and
rising air pollution.[60] India's megadiverse land features four biodiversity hotspots.
Its wildlife is supported in protected habitats and traditionally viewed
with cultural tolerance.[61]
Etymology
Main article: Names for India
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 India (Ἰνδία); Ancient Greek Indos (Ἰνδός), or the
River Indus; Achaemenian Old Persian Hindu (an eastern province of the Achaemenid
Empire); and Sanskrit Sindhu, or "river," but specifically the Indus river, and by
extension its well-settled basin.[62] The Ancient Greeks referred to South Asians as Indoi,
'the people of the Indus'.[63]

The term Bharat (Bhārat; pronounced [ˈbʱaːɾət] ⓘ), mentioned in both Indian epic
poetry and the Constitution of India,[64][65] is used in its variations by many Indian
languages. A modern rendering of the historical name Bharatavarsha, which applied
originally to North India,[66][67] Bharat gained increased currency from the mid-19th
century as a native name for India.[64][68]
Hindustan ([ɦɪndʊˈstaːn] ⓘ) is a Middle Persian name for India that became popular by
the 13th century,[69] 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.[64][68][70]
History
Main article: History of India
Ancient India

Manuscript illustration, c. 1650, of the Sanskrit

epic Ramayana, composed in story-telling fashion c. 400 BCE – c. 300 CE[71]

Cave 26, a Buddhist shrine, of the rock-cut Ajanta

Caves
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.[22][23][24][72] 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.[25] However, the earliest known modern
human fossils in South Asia date to about 30,000 years ago. [23] Evidence for the neolithic
period in the western margins of the Indus river basin, at Mehrgarh in Balochistan,
Pakistan, dates to after 7000 BCE. Domestication of grain-producing plants
(including barley) and animals (including humped zebu cattle) occurred here. These
cultures gradually evolved into the Indus Valley Civilisation, which flourished
during 2500–1900 BCE in Pakistan and western India.[73][26] Centred around cities such
as Mohenjo-daro, Harappa, Dholavira, Ganweriwala, and Rakhigarhi,[74] 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.[74] Networks of towns and villages grew around the cities in a
new agro-pastoral economy.[75]

Between 1500 BCE and 1200 BCE, 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.[27][28] 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.[76] 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.[30] Classical Sanskrit, a refined and standardised
grammatical form would emerge in the mid-1st millennium BCE and was codified in
the Aṣṭādhyāyī ('Eight chapters') of Pāṇini.[n] 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.[78]

A second urbanisation had taken place in South Asia by 400 BCE, this time on the
Ganges plain. In fortified cities, social differentiation by caste, or varna, had
emerged.[31] 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,[o] and birth into a fixed hereditary varna. By living ethically, lay people
could rise socially and morally in these religions.[32] Chronicling the life of the Buddha
was central to the beginnings of recorded history in India.[79] The rise of the two religions
was a backdrop to the emergence of the first loose-knit geographically extensive power
in South Asia, the Maurya 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. [80][p][q] The empire's
period was notable for creativity in art, architecture, inscriptions, and produced
texts,[83] but also for the declining rights of women in the mainstream Indo-Aryan
speaking regions.[84] Following his conquest of Kalinga, in which his forces caused
immense loss of life, Ashoka adopted Buddhism, subsequently adopting a policy
of dhamma and commissioning numerous rock and pillar edicts throughout the Maurya
Empire to promote ethical conduct, non-violence, and social welfare.[85] 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. [86][87]

By the 4th and 5th centuries, the Gupta Empire had created a complex system of
administration and taxation in the greater Ganges Plain;[88] this system became a model
for later Indian kingdoms.[89] Under the Guptas, a renewed Hinduism based on devotion,
rather than the management of ritual, began to assert itself.[90] The renewal was
reflected in a flowering of art, literature, and science.[91][36] In South India, the Sangam
literature of the Tamil language reveals that, between 200 BCE and 200 CE, 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.[92] 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.[93] The Pallavas, in
particular, traded extensively with the Roman Empire and with West and Southeast
Asia.[94]