Facts about India
Capital New Delhi · Asia
10 topics · about 20 minutes
India is the most populous country in the world and the largest democracy ever attempted. It holds a civilisation stretching back more than four thousand years, hundreds of living languages and the birthplaces of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism, all inside a single federal union.
India is a union of 28 states and eight union territories, and the states were drawn largely along linguistic lines, so crossing a state border often means crossing into a different script, cuisine and film industry. The Himalayas wall off the north, the Indo-Gangetic Plain below them is among the most densely populated farmland on Earth, and the southern peninsula is the older, drier Deccan Plateau, edged by the Western and Eastern Ghats and a long tropical coastline. The southwest monsoon arriving in June sets the rhythm of the year for hundreds of millions of people.
Delhi is the capital and Mumbai the financial and film center, while Bengaluru and Hyderabad built the technology industry and Kolkata and Chennai anchor the east and south. Rajasthan holds the desert forts and palaces, Kerala the backwaters, and Varanasi on the Ganges is among the oldest continuously inhabited cities anywhere. Visitors most often start with the Golden Triangle of Delhi, Agra and Jaipur, then choose between the Himalayan north, the beaches of Goa and the temple towns of the south.
- Population
- 1.45 billion
- Area
- 3,287,263 km²
- Currency
- Rupee (₹)
- Official languages
- Hindi and English
- States
- 28 states, 8 union territories
- Highest point
- Kangchenjunga, 8,586 m
The India course
Geography of India
Himalaya to tropics, and a monsoon that decides the year for hundreds of millions.
History of India
Indus cities, Ashoka, the Mughals, the British, and independence won largely without violence.
Language of India
Twenty-two scheduled languages, two unrelated families, and English as the common ground.
Culture of India
More films made than anywhere else, festivals at national scale, and caste that outlives its ban.
Economy of India
A services boom, a farming problem, and digital payments that banked a huge population in a decade.
Politics of India
The longest written constitution of any country, and the largest election ever staged.
Nature & Wildlife of India
Eight percent of the world’s species on two percent of its land, and most of its wild tigers.
Food & Cuisine of India
Not one cuisine but many, the highest rate of vegetarianism anywhere, and most of the world’s spices.
Landmarks of India
A marble tomb built by 20,000 workers, rock-cut cave temples, and the Golden Temple at Amritsar.
People & Society of India
The most populous country since 2023, median age 28, and fertility already below replacement.
Geography of India
India spans from the Himalayas in the north to tropical coastline near the equator, covering the bulk of the South Asian subcontinent. The Himalayas formed when the Indian plate collided with Asia and are still rising, walling the country off from Central Asia and forcing the monsoon to release its rain over the plains.
Below the mountains lies the Indo-Gangetic Plain, some of the most fertile and densely populated land anywhere, watered by the Ganges, Yamuna and Brahmaputra. The southern peninsula is the Deccan Plateau, older and drier, flanked by the Western and Eastern Ghats. The southwest monsoon arriving in June determines the agricultural year for hundreds of millions of people.
History of India
The Indus Valley Civilisation built planned cities with drainage systems around 2600 BC, long before the Vedic period gave rise to Hinduism and Sanskrit literature. The Maurya empire united most of the subcontinent in the 3rd century BC under Ashoka, who converted to Buddhism and spread it across Asia, and the Gupta period later produced advances in mathematics including the concept of zero as a number.
Muslim dynasties ruled Delhi from the 13th century, and the Mughal empire from 1526 left the Taj Mahal along with much of north Indian architecture and cuisine. British control expanded through the East India Company from the 1750s and passed to the Crown after the 1857 rebellion. Independence came in August 1947, won largely through the nonviolent campaign led by Mohandas Gandhi, alongside a partition with Pakistan that displaced some 15 million people.
Language of India
India recognizes 22 scheduled languages and counts over 120 major ones, with more than 1,600 mother tongues reported in the census. Hindi has the most speakers, around 44 percent of the population, but it is dominant mainly in the north and its promotion has met sustained resistance in the south.
The two great families are Indo-Aryan in the north, which includes Hindi, Bengali, Marathi and Punjabi, and Dravidian in the south, covering Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam. Tamil is among the oldest languages still in everyday use, with literature going back two thousand years. English remains an associate official language and functions as the common ground of higher education, courts and business.
Culture of India
Religion runs through daily life more visibly than in most countries. Roughly 80 percent of Indians are Hindu, with the world’s third largest Muslim population at around 200 million, plus significant Christian, Sikh, Buddhist and Jain communities. Festivals such as Diwali and Holi are observed at national scale.
India produces more films than any other country, with industries in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and several other languages rather than one national cinema. Classical traditions in music and dance developed over centuries and are still taught formally. Caste, though outlawed as a basis for discrimination in 1950, continues to shape marriage, social networks and political alignment.
Economy of India
India has one of the largest economies in the world and among the fastest growth rates of any major country. Liberalisation in 1991 dismantled much of the licensing system that had constrained private enterprise, and the decades since produced a services boom led by information technology firms in Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Pune.
Agriculture still employs a large share of the workforce while contributing a much smaller share of output, a gap that defines the country’s development problem. India is the largest producer of milk, the biggest exporter of generic medicines and a major textile manufacturer. Digital public infrastructure, notably the Aadhaar identity system and the UPI payments network, moved a huge population into formal banking within a decade.
Politics of India
India is a federal parliamentary republic operating under a constitution adopted in 1950 that remains the longest written constitution of any sovereign state. The president is head of state with largely ceremonial duties, while the prime minister leads the government from the Lok Sabha, the directly elected lower house.
General elections are the largest administrative exercise on Earth, with close to a billion eligible voters and polling staged over several weeks. Twenty-eight states and eight union territories hold their own legislatures and control much of health, education and policing. Language, caste and region shape voting patterns as much as national party programs.
Nature & Wildlife of India
India holds around eight percent of the world’s recorded species within about two percent of its land area, spread across habitats from Himalayan alpine meadows to the mangroves of the Sundarbans. More than a hundred national parks and 500 wildlife sanctuaries protect them.
The country is home to roughly 75 percent of the world’s wild tigers, a recovery driven by Project Tiger since 1973, along with the only surviving wild population of Asiatic lions in Gujarat’s Gir Forest. Asian elephants, one-horned rhinoceroses in Assam and snow leopards in the high Himalaya all have significant Indian populations. Air and river pollution remain severe pressures across the northern plains.
Food & Cuisine of India
Indian cooking differs so much by region that treating it as one cuisine is misleading. The north leans on wheat breads, dairy and slow-cooked meat from Mughal kitchens, while the south is built on rice, coconut, tamarind and fermented batters that produce dosa and idli.
Spice blending is the shared technique, with each household mixing its own masala rather than following one formula. India has the highest rate of vegetarianism in the world, tied to religious practice, and produces the majority of the world’s spices. Chai, brewed strong with milk and sugar, is drunk everywhere, and the country is a leading tea grower through Assam and Darjeeling.
Landmarks of India
The Taj Mahal was built at Agra between 1632 and 1653 as a tomb for Mumtaz Mahal, the wife of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, and its white marble symmetry is the most recognized building in Asia. Around 20,000 workers and a thousand elephants were involved in construction.
Other major sites include the rock-cut Buddhist and Hindu cave temples at Ajanta and Ellora, the Golden Temple at Amritsar as the holiest site in Sikhism, and the astronomical instruments of Jantar Mantar in Jaipur. Varanasi on the Ganges is among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world and the most important Hindu pilgrimage destination.
People & Society of India
India passed China to become the most populous country in 2023, with over 1.4 billion people. Fertility has fallen below replacement level at around 2.0 births per woman, so growth is now driven by population momentum rather than large families, and the total is expected to peak around the 2060s.
The median age of about 28 gives India one of the youngest workforces among large economies, though converting that into employment requires millions of new jobs a year. Roughly 36 percent of people live in cities, a low share that is rising steadily, and Delhi and Mumbai both rank among the largest urban areas in the world.
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