India is a poor country of over 1 billion people whose religion is almost totally Hindu. They worship thousands of idols.
India is a country that occupies the greater part of South Asia. It is a constitutional republic consisting of 25 states, each with a substantial degree of control over its own affairs, and 7 less fully empowered union territories. The capital is New Delhi. With more than one-sixth of the world's total population, India is the second most populous country, after China.
In area, India ranks as the seventh largest country in the world, covering 1,222,559 square miles, just slightly more than 2 percent of the Earth's total land surface.
India's frontier, bordered by six countries, is 9,425 miles long, of which 3,533 miles is coastline. Neighboring countries of particular concern to India are Pakistan to the northwest and China to the north, both of which have intractable border disputes with India, and Bangladesh, which is surrounded on three sides by Indian territory.
The Indus Civilization-dominated the northwestern part of the subcontinent from about 2600 to 2000 BC. From that period on, India functioned as a virtually self-contained political and cultural arena, which gave rise to a distinctive tradition that was associated primarily with Hinduism, the roots of which can largely be traced to the Indus Civilization. Other religions, notably Buddhism and Jainism, also originated in ancient India, but their presence in India is now quite small.
Throughout its history, India was intermittently disturbed by incursions from beyond its northern mountain wall. Especially important was the coming of Islam, brought from the northwest by Arab, Turkish, Persian, and other invaders beginning early in the 8th century AD. By the 13th century much of the subcontinent had fallen under Muslims domination, and it largely remained so untill the mid-18th century. In the intervening period the number of Muslims steadily increased, and by the early 20th century they formed almost one-fourth of India's population. Only after the arrival of the Portuguese navigator Vasco Da Gama in 1498 and the subsequent establishment of European maritime supremacy did India become exposed to major external influences arriving by sea, a process that culminated in the absorption of the subcontinent within the British Empire.
Direct administration by the British which began in 1858, effected a political and economic unification of the subcontinent the legacy of which is found in many aspects of the current Indian state, including its parliamentary system of government. When British rule came to an end in 1947, the subcontinent was partitioned along religious lines into two seperate countries-India with a majority of Hindus, and Pakistan with a majority of Muslims.
India remains one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the world. Apart from its many religions and sects, India is home to innumerable castes and tribes, as well as to more than a dozen major and hundreds of minor linguistic groups from several totally different language families. Religious minorities still account for one-sixth of the population, and Muslims alone for more than one-ninth.
A Few Statistics: 1. India passed the 1 Billion mark in 2000
Bangalor passed 5 million in 2001
2. 4% Christian
3. 84% Hinduism
4. 11% Muslim
5. Average pay $50 per year for 1/2 of the people
6. Only 33% are literate--1 in 3 can read
