Indiaofficially Republic of India CountrySouth Asia. It fronts the Bay of Bengal on the southeast and the Arabian Sea on the southwest. Area: 1,269,219 sq mi (3,287,263 sq km). Population: (2025 est.) 1,398,885,000. Capital: New Delhi. The peoples of India comprise widely varying mixtures of ethnic strains drawn from peoples settled in the subcontinent before the dawn of history or from invaders. Languages: HindiEnglish (both official)and other Indo-European languagesincluding BengaliKashmiriMarathiand Urdu; Dravidian languages; hundreds from several other language families. Religions: Hinduism; also IslamChristianitySikhismBuddhismJainism. Currency: rupee. India has three major geographic regions: the Himalayasalong its northern border; the Indo-Gangetic Plainformed by the alluvial deposits of three great river systemsincluding the Ganges (Ganga); and the southern regionnoted for the Deccan plateau. Agricultural products include ricewheatcottonsugarcanecoconutspicesjutetobaccoteacoffeeand rubber. The manufacturing sector is highly diversified and includes both heavy and high-technology industries. India is a multiparty federal republic with two legislative houses; its head of state is the presidentand the head of government is the prime minister. India has been inhabited for thousands of years. Agriculture in India dates to the 7th millennium bceand an urban civilizationthat of the Indus valleywas established by 2600 bce. Buddhism and Jainism arose in the 6th century bce in reaction to the caste-based society created by the Vedic religion and its successorHinduism. The first Muslim contact with the subcontinent was in the 8th century ce. Muslim invasions began after c. 1000establishing the long-lived Delhi sultanate in 1206 and the Mughal dynasty in 1526. Vasco da Gama’s voyage to India in 1498 initiated several centuries of commercial rivalry between the PortugueseDutchEnglishand French. British conquests in the 18th and 19th centuries led to the rule of the British East India Co.and direct administration by the British Empire began in 1858. After Mohandas K. Gandhi helped end British rule in 1947Jawaharlal Nehru became India’s first prime ministerand Nehruhis daughter Indira Gandhiand his grandson Rajiv Gandhi retained that office for all but a few years during more than three succeeding decades. The subcontinent was partitioned into two countries—Indiawith a Hindu majorityand Pakistanwith a Muslim majority—in 1947. A later clash with Pakistan resulted in the creation of Bangladesh in 1971. In the 1980s and ’90s Sikhs sought to establish an independent state in Punjaband ethnic and religious conflicts took place in other parts of the country as well. In 2004 Manmohan Singha Sikhbecame the country’s first non-Hindu prime minister. The Kashmir region in the northwest has been a source of constant tension.
