India (official name: the
Republic of India;
[19] Hindi:
Bhārat Gaṇarājya) is a country in
South Asia. It is the
seventh-largest country by area, the
second-most populous country, and the most populous
democracy in the world. 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;
[d] 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 and
Indonesia.
Modern humans arrived on the
Indian subcontinent from Africa no later than 55,000 years ago.
[20] 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.
[21] 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.
[22] By 1200 BCE, an
archaic form of
Sanskrit, an
Indo-European language, had
diffused into India from the northwest,
unfolding as the language of the
Rigveda, and recording the dawning of
Hinduism in India.
[23] The
Dravidian languages of India were supplanted in the northern regions.
[24] By 400 BCE,
stratification and
exclusion by
caste had emerged within Hinduism,
[25] and
Buddhism and
Jainism had arisen, proclaiming
social orders unlinked to heredity.
[26] Early political consolidations gave rise to the loose-knit
Maurya and
Gupta Empires based in the
Ganges Basin.
[27] Their collective
era was suffused with wide-ranging creativity,
[28] but also marked by the declining
status of women,
[29] and the incorporation of
untouchability into an organized system of belief.
[e] In south India, the
Middle kingdoms exported Dravidian-languages scripts and religious cultures to the kingdoms of
southeast Asia.
[31]
In the early medieval era,
Christianity,
Islam,
Judaism and
Zoroastrianism put down roots on India’s southern and western coasts.
[32] Armies from
Central Asia intermittently overran India’s plains,
[33] eventually establishing the
Delhi sultanate, and drawing northern India into the cosmopolitan
networks of medieval Islam.
[34] In the 15th century, the
Vijayanagara Empire created a long-lasting composite Hindu culture in south India.
[35] In the
Punjab,
Sikhism emerged, rejecting institutionalized religion.
[36] The
Mughal empire, in 1526, ushered in two centuries of relative peace,
[37] leaving a legacy of luminous architecture.
[f][38] Gradually expanding
rule of the British East India Company followed, turning India into a colonial economy, but also consolidating its
sovereignty.
[39] British Crown rule began in 1858. The rights promised to Indians were granted slowly,
[40] but
technological changes were introduced, and ideas of education, modernity and the public life took root.
[41] A pioneering and influential
nationalist movement emerged,
[42] which was noted for
nonviolent resistance and led India to its independence in 1947.
India is a
secular federal republic governed in a democratic
parliamentary system. It is a
pluralistic, multilingual and multi-ethnic society. India’s population grew from 361 million in 1951 to 1,211 million in 2011.
[43] During the same time, its nominal
per capita income increased from US$64 annually to US$2,041, and its literacy rate from 16.6% to 74%. From being a comparatively destitute country in 1951,
[44] India has become a
fast-growing major economy, a hub for
information technology services, with an expanding middle class.
[45] It has
a space programme which includes several planned or completed
lunar missions. Indian movies, music, and spiritual teachings play an increasing role in global culture.
[46] India has substantially reduced its rate of poverty, though at the cost of increasing economic inequality.
[47] India is a
nuclear weapons state, which ranks high in
military expenditure. It has disputes over
Kashmir with its neighbours,
Pakistan and
China, unresolved since the mid-20th century.
[48] Among the socio-economic challenges India faces are
gender inequality,
child malnutrition,
[49] and rising levels of
air pollution.
[50] India’s land is
megadiverse, with four
biodiversity hotspots.
[51] Its forest cover comprises 21.4% of its area.
[52] India’s wildlife, which has traditionally been viewed with tolerance in
India’s culture,
[53] is supported among these forests, and elsewhere, in
protected habitats.
Etymology
According to the
Oxford English Dictionary (Third Edition 2009), the name “India” is derived from the
Classical Latin India, a reference to
South Asia and an uncertain region to its east; and in turn derived successively from:
Hellenistic Greek India (
Ἰνδία);
ancient Greek Indos (
Ἰνδός);
Old Persian Hindush, an eastern province of the
Achaemenid empire; and ultimately its
cognate, the
Sanskrit Sindhu, or “river,” but especially the
Indus river and, by implication, its well-settled southern basin.
[54][55] The
ancient Greeks referred to the Indians as
Indoi (
Ἰνδοί), which translates as “The people of the Indus”.
The term
Bharat (
Bhārat;
pronounced [ˈbʱaːɾət] (
listen)), mentioned in both
Indian epic poetry and the
Constitution of India,
[57][58] is used in its variations by
many Indian languages. A modern rendering of the historical name
Bharatavarsha, which applied originally to a region of the
Gangetic Valley,
[59][60] Bharat gained increased currency from the mid-19th century as a native name for India.
[57][61]
Hindustan (
[ɦɪndʊˈstaːn] (listen)) is a
Middle Persian name for India, introduced during the
Mughal Empire and used widely since. Its meaning has varied, referring to a region encompassing present-day northern India and
Pakistan or to India in its near entirety.
[57][61]
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