India

India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the world's seventh-largest country by area and the largest by population. 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; China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the north; and Bangladesh and Myanmar to the east. India is near Sri Lanka and the Maldives in the Indian Ocean.

Overview§

India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the world's seventh-largest country by area and the largest by population. 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; China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the north; and Bangladesh and Myanmar to the east. India is near Sri Lanka and the Maldives in the Indian Ocean. Modern humans arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa by 55,000 years ago. Their long, isolated occupation as hunter-gatherers made the region highly diverse. 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. An archaic form of Sanskrit, spread into India from the northwest, its hymns recording the early dawnings of Hinduism by 1200 BCE. Northern Dravidian languages were supplanted. Caste emerged within Hinduism, while Buddhism and Jainism arose, proclaiming social orders unlinked to heredity by 400 BCE. In the loose-knit Maurya and Gupta Empires, art, architecture, and writing flourished, women's status declined, and untouchability became organised. Middle kingdoms exported Dravidian language scripts and cultures to Southeast Asia in South India. In the 1st millennium, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Zoroastrianism became established on India's southern and western coasts. Early in the 2nd millennium, Central Asian Muslim conquests established the Delhi Sultanate, integrating northern India into the Islamic cosmopolis. In south India, the Vijayanagara Empire built a long-lasting composite Hindu culture, while Sikhism emerged in the Punjab, rejecting institutionalised religion. The Mughal Empire ushered in two centuries of economic expansion and relative peace, leaving a rich architectural legacy. Gradually expanding rule of the British East India Company turned India into a colonial economy but consolidated its sovereignty. British Crown rule started in 1858. The rights promised to Indians were granted slowly, but technological changes were introduced, and modern education and the public life took root. A nationalist movement emerged in India, the first in the non-European British Empire. Noted for nonviolent resistance after 1920, it became the primary factor in ending British rule. The British Indian Empire was partitioned into two independent dominions, a Hindu-majority dominion of India and a Muslim-majority dominion of Pakistan in 1947. A sizeable-scale loss of life and an unprecedented migration accompanied the partition. India has since been a federal republic, governed through a democratic parliamentary system since 1950. 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. Its fast-growing economy is a hub for information technology, with an expanding middle class. India has reduced poverty, though alongside increasing economic inequality. 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. Socio-economic challenges include gender inequality, child malnutrition, and rising air pollution. India's megadiverse land features four biodiversity hotspots. Its wildlife is supported in protected habitats and traditionally viewed with cultural tolerance.

Etymology§

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. The Ancient Greeks referred to South Asians as Indoi, 'the people of the Indus'. The term Bharat (Bhārat; pronounced [ˈbʱaːɾət] ), mentioned in both Indian epic poetry and the Constitution of India, is used in its variations by many Indian languages. A modern rendering of the historical name Bharatavarsha, which applied originally to North India, Bharat gained increased currency from the mid-19th century as a native name for India. Hindustan ([ɦɪndʊˈstaːn] ) is a Middle Persian name for India that became popular by the 13th century, and was used broadly 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.

Ancient India§

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. 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. Though, the earliest known modern human fossils in South Asia date to around 30,000 years ago. 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. Centred around cities such as Mohenjo-daro, Harappa, Dholavira, Ganweriwala, and Rakhigarhi, 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. Networks of towns and villages grew around the cities in a new agro-pastoral economy. 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. The settling of the Ganges river plain took place during the next millennium, when sizeable 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. 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. 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. The two leading Sanskrit epics, the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa, though, 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 around contemporary with classical Sanskrit. 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. 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, and birth into a fixed hereditary varna. Lay people could rise socially and morally in these religions by living ethically. Chronicling the life of the Buddha was central to the beginnings of recorded history in India. 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 leading urban hubs and arteries of the subcontinent, except in the deep south. The empire's period was notable for creativity in art, architecture, inscriptions, and made texts, but also for the declining rights of women in the mainstream Indo-Aryan speaking regions. After his conquest of Kalinga, in which his forces caused immense loss of life, Ashoka adopted Buddhism, later adopting a policy of dhamma and commissioning many rock and pillar edicts throughout the Maurya Empire to promote ethical conduct, non-violence, and social welfare. 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. By the 4th and 5th centuries, the Gupta Empire had built a complex system of administration and taxation in the greater Ganges Plain; this system became a model for later Indian kingdoms. Under the Guptas, a renewed Hinduism based on devotion, rather than the management of ritual, started to assert itself. The renewal was reflected in a flowering of art, literature, and science. 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 in South India. 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. The Pallavas, in particular, traded extensively with the Roman Empire and with West and Southeast Asia.

Medieval India§

The Indian early medieval age, from 600 to 1200 CE, was defined by regional kingdoms and cultural diversity. No ruler of this period was able to build an empire and consistently control lands much beyond their core region. During this time, pastoral peoples, whose land had been cleared to make way for the growing agricultural economy, were accommodated within caste society, as were new non-traditional ruling classes. The caste system consequently started to show regional differences. In the 6th and 7th centuries, the first devotional hymns were composed in Tamil. They were imitated all over India and led to both the resurgence of Hinduism and the development of all modern languages of the subcontinent. Indian royalty, big and small, and the temples they patronised drew citizens in substantial numbers to the capital cities, which became economic hubs as well. Temple towns of several sizes started to appear everywhere as India underwent another urbanisation. By the 8th and 9th centuries, the effects were felt in Southeast Asia, as South Indian culture and political systems were exported to lands that became part of modern-day Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Brunei, Cambodia, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Indian merchants, scholars, and sometimes armies were involved in this transmission; Southeast Asians took the initiative as well, with many sojourning in Indian seminaries and translating Buddhist and Hindu texts into their languages. After the 10th century, Muslim Central Asian nomadic clans, using swift-horse cavalry and raising vast armies united by ethnicity, repeatedly overran South Asia's north-western plains, leading eventually to the establishment of the Islamic Delhi Sultanate in 1206. The sultanate was to control much of North India and to make many forays into South India. Although at first disruptive for the Indian elites, the sultanate largely left its vast non-Muslim subject population to its own laws and customs. By repeatedly repulsing Mongol raiders in the 13th century, the sultanate saved India from the devastation visited on West and Central Asia, setting the scene for centuries of migration of fleeing soldiers, learned men, mystics, traders, artists, and artisans from that region into the subcontinent, thereby creating a syncretic Indo-Islamic culture in the north. The sultanate's raiding and weakening of the regional kingdoms of South India paved the way for the indigenous Vijayanagara Empire. Embracing a strong Shaivite tradition and building upon the military technology of the sultanate, the empire came to control a sizeable portion of peninsular India, and was to influence South Indian society for long afterwards.

Early modern India§

In the early 16th century, northern India, then under mainly Muslim rulers, fell again to the superior mobility and firepower of a new generation of Central Asian warriors. The resulting Mughal Empire did not stamp out the local societies it came to rule. Instead, it balanced and pacified them through new administrative practices and diverse and inclusive ruling elites, leading to more systematic, centralised, and uniform rule. Eschewing tribal bonds and Islamic identity, especially under Akbar, the Mughals united their far-flung realms through loyalty—expressed through a Persianised culture—to an emperor who had near-divine status. The Mughal state's economic policies, deriving most revenues from agriculture and mandating that taxes be paid in the well-regulated silver currency, caused peasants and artisans to enter larger markets. The relative peace maintained by the empire during much of the 17th century was a factor in India's economic expansion, resulting in greater patronage of painting, literary forms, textiles, and architecture. Newly coherent social groups in northern and western India, such as the Marathas, the Rajputs, and the Sikhs, gained military and governing ambitions during Mughal rule, which, through collaboration or adversity, gave them both recognition and military experience. Expanding commerce during Mughal rule gave rise to new Indian commercial and political elites along the coasts of southern and eastern India. The incremental fragmentation of imperial authority during the late 17th and 18th centuries facilitated a process of decentralisation, enabling provincial elites to assert localised autonomy and consolidate control over their own affairs. With the lines between commercial enterprise and political sovereignty increasingly blurred, European chartered companies—in particular the English East India Company—solidified their presence through fortified coastal outposts by the early 18th century. The East India Company's control of the seas, greater resources, and more advanced military training and technology led it to assert its military strength increasingly and caused it to become attractive to a portion of the Indian elite; these factors were crucial in allowing the company to gain control over the Bengal region by 1765 and sideline the other European companies. Its further access to the riches of Bengal and the subsequent increased strength and size of its army enabled it to annexe or subdue most of India by the 1820s. India was no longer exporting manufactured goods as it long had, but instead supplying the British Empire with raw materials. Many historians consider this to be the onset of India's colonial period. By this time, with its economic power severely curtailed by the British parliament and having effectively been made an arm of British administration, the East India Company started more consciously to enter non-economic arenas, including education, social reform, and culture.

Modern India§

The appointment in 1848 of Lord Dalhousie as Governor General of the East India Company set the stage for changes essential to a modern state: the consolidation and demarcation of sovereignty, the surveillance of the population, and the education of citizens. Technological changes—among them, railways, canals, and the telegraph—were introduced not long after their introduction in Europe. Disaffection with the company also grew during this time, culminating in the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Fed by diverse resentments and perceptions, including invasive British-style social reforms, harsh land taxes, and summary treatment of some wealthy landowners and princes, the rebellion rocked many regions of northern and central India and shook the foundations of Company rule. After the rebellion was suppressed in 1858, the East India Company was disbanded, and the British government started to directly administer India. Proclaiming an unitary state and a gradual but limited British-style parliamentary system, the new rulers also protected princes and landed gentry as a feudal safeguard against future unrest. In the decades after, public life gradually emerged across India, eventually leading to the founding of the Indian National Congress in 1885. The rush of technology and the commercialisation of agriculture during the second half of the 19th century was marked by economic setbacks, and many small farmers became dependent on the whims of faraway markets. There was an increase in the number of sizeable-scale famines, and, despite the risks of infrastructure development borne by Indian taxpayers, little industrial employment was generated for Indians. Though, commercial cropping, especially in the newly canalled Punjab, led to increased food production for internal consumption. The railway network provided critical famine relief, in particular reduced the cost of moving goods, and helped nascent Indian-owned industry. After World War I, in which more than 1.3 million Indians served, a new period started. It was marked by British reforms but also repressive legislation, by more strident Indian calls for self-rule, and by the beginnings of a nonviolent movement of non-co-operation led by Mahatma Gandhi. The British enacted slow legislative reform; the Indian National Congress won victories in the resulting elections during the 1930s. The next decade was beset with crises: Indian participation in World War II, the Congress's final push for non-co-operation, and an upsurge of Muslim nationalism. All were capped by the advent of independence in 1947, but tempered by the partition of India into two states: India and Pakistan. India's constitution was adopted in 1950 and established a secular, democratic republic. Economic liberalisation has built a sizeable urban middle class and transformed India into a fast growing economy. Though, India has since been hamstrung by persistent poverty, both rural and urban; religious- and caste-related violence; Maoist-inspired Naxalite insurgencies; and separatism in Jammu and Kashmir and in Northeast India. India has unresolved territorial disputes with China and with Pakistan.

Geography§

India accounts for the bulk of the Indian subcontinent, lying atop the Indian tectonic plate, and a part of the Indo-Australian Plate. India's defining geologic processes started around 70 million years ago, when the Indian Plate, then part of the southern supercontinent Gondwana, started a north-eastward drift caused by seafloor spreading to its south-west, and later, south and south-east. Simultaneously, the vast Tethyan oceanic crust, to its northeast, started to subduct under the Eurasian Plate. The Indian continental crust, though, was obstructed and was sheared horizontally. Its lower crust and mantle slid under, but the upper layer piled up in sheets (or nappes) ahead of the subduction zone. This built the orogeny, or process of mountain building, of the Himalayas. The middle and stiffer layer continued to push into Tibet, causing crustal thickening of the Tibetan Plateau. Immediately south of the emerging Himalayas, plate movement built a vast crescent-shaped trough that rapidly filled with river-borne sediment and now constitutes the Indo-Gangetic Plain. The original Indian plate makes its first appearance above the sediment in the ancient Aravalli range, which extends from the Delhi Ridge in a southwesterly direction. To the west lies the Thar Desert, the eastern spread of which is checked by the Aravallis. The remaining Indian Plate survives as peninsular India, the oldest and geologically most stable part of India. It extends as far north as the Satpura and Vindhya ranges in central India. These parallel chains run from the Arabian Sea coast in Gujarat in the west to the coal-rich Chota Nagpur Plateau in Jharkhand in the east. To the south, the remaining peninsular landmass, the Deccan Plateau, is flanked on the west and east by coastal ranges known as the Western and Eastern Ghats; the plateau contains the country's oldest rock formations, some over one billion years old. Constituted in such fashion, India lies to the north of the equator between 6° 44′ and 35° 30′ north latitude and 68° 7′ and 97° 25′ east longitude. Leading Himalayan-origin rivers that substantially flow through India include the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, both of which drain into the Bay of Bengal. Important tributaries of the Ganges include the Yamuna and the Kosi. The Kosi's extremely low gradient, caused by long-term silt deposition, leads to severe floods and course changes. Leading peninsular rivers, whose steeper gradients prevent their waters from flooding, include the Godavari, the Mahanadi, the Kaveri, and the Krishna, which also drain into the Bay of Bengal; and the Narmada and the Tapti, which drain into the Arabian Sea. India's coastline measures 7,517 kilometres (4,700 mi) in length; of this distance, 5,423 kilometres (3,400 mi) belong to peninsular India and 2,094 kilometres (1,300 mi) to the Andaman, Nicobar, and Lakshadweep island chains. According to the Indian naval hydrographic charts, the mainland coastline comprises the after: 43% sandy beaches; 11% rocky shores, including cliffs; and 46% mudflats or marshy shores. Coastal features include the marshy Rann of Kutch of western India and the alluvial Sundarbans delta of eastern India; the latter is shared with Bangladesh. India has two archipelagos: the Lakshadweep coral atolls off India's south-western coast; and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a volcanic chain in the Andaman Sea. India has 28 states and 8 union territories.

Climate§

The Indian climate is strongly influenced by the Himalayas and the Thar Desert, both of which drive the economically and culturally pivotal summer and winter monsoons. The Himalayas prevent cold Central Asian katabatic winds from blowing in, keeping the bulk of the Indian subcontinent warmer than most locations at similar latitudes. The Thar Desert plays a crucial role in attracting the moisture-laden south-west summer monsoon winds that, between June and October, provide most India's rainfall. Four leading climatic groupings predominate in India: tropical wet, tropical dry, subtropical humid, and montane. Temperatures in India have risen by 0.7 °C (1.3 °F) between 1901 and 2018. Climate change in India is often thought to be the cause. The retreat of Himalayan glaciers has adversely affected the flow rate of the leading Himalayan rivers, including the Ganges and the Brahmaputra. According to some current projections, the number and severity of droughts in India will have markedly increased by the end of the present century.

Biodiversity§

India is a megadiverse country, a term employed for 17 countries that host high biological diversity and contain many species indigenous, or endemic, to them. India is the habitat for 8.6% of all mammals, 13.7% of bird species, 7.9% of reptile species, 6% of amphibian species, 12.2% of fish species, and 6.0% of all flowering plant species. Fully a third of Indian plant species are endemic. India also overlaps four of the world's 34 biodiversity hotspots, or regions that display substantial habitat loss in the presence of high endemism. India's most dense forests, such as the tropical moist forest of the Andaman Islands, the Western Ghats, and Northeast India, occupy around 3% of its land area. Moderately dense forest, whose canopy density is between 40% and 70%, occupies 9.39% of India's land area. It predominates in the temperate coniferous forest of the Himalayas, the moist deciduous sal forest of eastern India, and the dry deciduous teak forest of central and southern India. India has two natural zones of thorn forest, one in the Deccan Plateau, immediately east of the Western Ghats, and the other in the western part of the Indo-Gangetic plain, now turned into rich agricultural land by irrigation, its features no longer visible. Among the Indian subcontinent's notable indigenous trees are the astringent Azadirachta indica, or neem, which is broadly used in rural Indian herbal medicine, and the luxuriant Ficus religiosa, or peepul, which is displayed on the ancient seals of Mohenjo-daro, and under which the Buddha is recorded in the Pali canon to have sought enlightenment. Many Indian species have descended from those of Gondwana, the southern supercontinent from which India separated more than 100 million years ago. India's subsequent collision with Eurasia set off a mass exchange of species. Though, volcanism and climatic changes later caused the extinction of many endemic Indian forms. Still later, mammals entered India from Asia through two zoogeographic passes flanking the Himalayas. This lowered endemism among India's mammals, which stands at 12.6%, contrasting with 45.8% among reptiles and 55.8% among amphibians. Among endemics are the vulnerable hooded leaf monkey and the threatened Beddome's toad of the Western Ghats. India contains 172 IUCN-designated threatened animal species, or 2.9% of endangered forms. These include the endangered Bengal tiger and the Ganges river dolphin. Critically endangered species include the gharial, a crocodilian; the great Indian bustard; and the Indian white-rumped vulture, which has become nearly extinct by having ingested the carrion of diclofenac-treated cattle. Before they were extensively used for agriculture and cleared for human settlement, the thorn forests of Punjab were mingled at intervals with open grasslands that were grazed by sizeable herds of blackbuck preyed on by the Asiatic cheetah; the blackbuck, no longer extant in Punjab, is now severely endangered in India, and the cheetah is extinct. The pervasive and ecologically devastating human encroachment of recent decades has critically endangered Indian wildlife. In response, the system of national parks and protected areas, first established in 1935, was expanded substantially. India enacted the Wildlife Protection Act and Project Tiger to safeguard crucial wilderness; the Forest Conservation Act was enacted in 1980 and amendments added in 1988 in 1972. India hosts more than five hundred wildlife sanctuaries and eighteen biosphere reserves, four of which are part of the World Network of Biosphere Reserves; its eighty-nine wetlands are registered under the Ramsar Convention.

Politics§

India is a parliamentary republic with a multi-party system. There are six recognised national parties in the country, including the Indian National Congress (generally, "the Congress") and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP); there are over 50 regional parties. The Congress is regarded as the ideological centre in Indian political culture; the BJP is right-wing to far-right. After India's independence on August 15, 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru became prime minister of the Dominion of India, an office he held until January 26, 1950, when India became a republic; Nehru remained the caretaker prime minister until the after year. In the general elections in 1951, 1957, and 1962, the Congress, led by Nehru, won by comfortable margins. After Nehru died in office in May 1964, Lal Bahadur Shastri was unanimously chosen by the Congress to be parliamentary leader, and accordingly prime minister. After the India–Pakistan war of 1965, Shastri died in January 1966, soon after signing the Tashkent Peace Declaration. The Congress chose Indira Gandhi to be prime minister. She led the party to election victories in 1967 and 1971, the latter a landslide after Pakistan's defeat in the Bangladesh Liberation War. Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency, suspending many civil liberties in 1975. After public discontent with the Emergency, the Congress was voted out of power in 1977; Janata Party, which had opposed the Emergency, was voted in. Its government lasted two years; Morarji Desai and Charan Singh served as prime ministers. The Congress returned to power in 1980. After a military operation against Sikh militants occupying the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Indira Gandhi was assassinated by a Sikh bodyguard on October 31, 1984. She was succeeded as prime minister by Rajiv Gandhi, who led Congress to a comfortable victory in the elections at the end of the year. A National Front coalition, led by the Janata Dal, in alliance with the Left Front, won the general elections in 1989. The subsequent government lasted just under two years; V. P. Singh and Chandra Shekhar served as prime ministers. Soon after the first round of polling in the general election, Congress leader Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by a member of a Sri Lankan Tamil separatist organisation who was seeking to avenge Indian intervention in the Sri Lankan civil war in 1991. After the elections, Congress emerged as the largest single party; a new Congress leader, P. V. Narasimha Rao, formed a minority government which served a full five-year term. The BJP briefly formed a government after winning the general election in 1996. United Front coalition governments followed, which relied on external political support, H. D. Deve Gowda and I. K. Gujral serving as prime ministers. After the 1998 Indian general election, Atal Bihari Vajpayee of the BJP became prime minister; his government was short-lived due to the lack of a continued mandate. Elections were held again in 1999. The BJP, now a part of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), formed a coalition government led by Vajpayee, who became the first non-Congress prime minister to complete a five-year term. In the 2004 general election, the NDA was defeated. Congress emerged as the largest single party and formed a coalition, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA). Manmohan Singh, a Sikh, who was proposed by Congress President Sonia Gandhi to be parliamentary leader, served as prime minister of the UPA government, but with some external support. The UPA returned to power in the 2009 general election with increased numbers, no longer dependent on external support. Singh became the first prime minister to be re-elected after Jawaharlal Nehru in 1962. The BJP under Narendra Modi became the first political party since 1984 to win an absolute majority in the 2014 general election. The party won a larger majority in the 2019 general election. After losing its majority in the 2024 general election, the BJP formed a coalition government with its NDA partners. Modi is the longest-serving non-Congress prime minister. Democratic backsliding was found by the 2026 V-Dem Democracy Report.

Government§

The Constitution of India was drafted by the Constituent Assembly of India with uncommon speed and absence of irregularities between 1946 and 1949. The Government of India Act 1935 was used as a model and framework. Long passages from the Act were included. The constitution describes a federal state with a parliamentary system of democracy. The federal structure was conspicuous for the strength of the central government, which exclusively exercised control of defence, foreign affairs, railways, ports, and currency. The President, the constitutional head of state, has reserve powers for taking over the administration of a state. The central legislature has two houses: the Lok Sabha, whose delegates are directly elected by the people in general elections every five years, and the Rajya Sabha, whose members are nominated by the elected representatives in the states. There are also features not to be found in the Act of 1935. The definition of fundamental rights is based on the Constitution of the United States, and the constitutional directives, or goals of endeavor, are based on the Constitution of Ireland. An Indian institution recommended by the constitution is the panchayat or village committees. Untouchability is illegal (Article 17) and caste distinctions are derecognized (Articles 15(2) and 16(2)). The promulgation of the Indian constitution transformed India into a republic within the Commonwealth. The prime minister of India is the head of government and exercises most executive power. Appointed by the president, the prime minister is supported by the party or political alliance with a majority of seats in the lower house of parliament. The executive of the Indian government comprises the president, the vice-president, and the Union Council of Ministers—with the cabinet being its executive committee—headed by the prime minister. Any minister holding a portfolio must be a member of one of the houses of parliament. In the Indian parliamentary system, the executive is subordinate to the legislature; the prime minister and their council are directly responsible to the lower house of the parliament. Civil servants act as permanent executives and all decisions of the executive are implemented by them. India has a three-tier unitary independent judiciary comprising the supreme court, headed by the Chief Justice of India, 25 high courts, and a sizeable number of trial courts. The supreme court has original jurisdiction over cases involving fundamental rights and over disputes between states and the centre and has appellate jurisdiction over the high courts. It has the power to both strike down union or state laws which contravene the constitution and invalidate any government action it deems unconstitutional.

Administrative divisions§

India is a federal union comprising 28 states and 8 union territories. All states, along with the union territories of Jammu and Kashmir, Puducherry and the National Capital Territory of Delhi, have elected legislatures and governments after the Westminster system. The remaining five union territories are directly ruled by the central government through appointed administrators. Under the States Reorganisation Act, states were reorganised on a linguistic basis in 1956. There are over a quarter of a million local government bodies at city, town, district, block and village levels.

Foreign relations§

India remained a member of the Commonwealth of Nations after becoming a republic in 1950. It strongly supported decolonisation in Africa and Asia in the 1950s, and played a leading role in the Non-Aligned Movement. After cordial relations with China during the greater part of the 1950s, India and China went to war in 1962; India was broadly thought to have been decisively defeated. Though, India was able to fend off Chinese excursions into Sikkim by 1967. India has had uneasy relations with its western neighbour, Pakistan. The two went to war in 1947, 1965, 1971, and 1999. Three wars were fought over the disputed territory of Kashmir. After the 1965 war, India started to pursue close military and economic ties with the Soviet Union. By the late 1960s, the Soviet Union was India's largest arms supplier. China's nuclear test of 1964 and threats to intervene in support of Pakistan in the 1965 war caused India to make nuclear weapons. India conducted its first nuclear weapons test in 1974 and carried out additional underground testing in 1998. India has signed neither the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty nor the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, considering both to be flawed and discriminatory. India maintains a "no first use" nuclear policy and is developing a nuclear triad capability as a part of its "Minimum Credible Deterrence" doctrine. India has increased its economic, strategic, and military cooperation with the United States and the European Union since the end of the Cold War. In 2008, a civilian nuclear agreement was signed between India and the United States. Although India possessed nuclear weapons at the time and was not a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it gained waivers from the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear Suppliers Group, ending earlier restrictions on India's nuclear technology and commerce; India later signed co-operation agreements involving civilian nuclear energy with Russia, France, the United Kingdom, and Canada.

Economy§

The Indian economy has since been among the ten largest in the world since 2010. As of 2026, India has the 6th largest economy in the world by nominal gross domestic product (GDP), and the third-largest when measured by purchasing power parity (PPP). It counts among the world's fastest-growing economies with an average annual growth rate exceeding 5% from 1990 to 2010. Demographics strain its economy, with the nation historically maintaining low GDP per capita both regionally and as measured by globally. The vast majority of Indians fall into the global low-income group based on average daily income. Until 1991, all Indian governments followed protectionist policies that were influenced by socialist economics. Widespread state intervention and regulation largely walled the economy off from the outside world. An acute balance of payments crisis in 1991 forced the nation to liberalise its economy; since then, it has moved increasingly towards a free-market system by emphasising both foreign trade and direct investment inflows. India has since been a member of World Trade Organization since 1 January 1995. The 522-million-worker Indian labour force is the world's second largest, as of 2017. The service sector makes up 55.6% of GDP, the industrial sector 26.3% and the agricultural sector 18.1%. India's foreign exchange remittances of US$100 billion in 2022, the highest in the world, were contributed to its economy by 32 million Indians working in foreign countries. In 2006, the share of external trade in India's GDP stood at 24%, up from 6% in 1985. India's share of world trade was 1.6%; in 2021, it was the world's ninth-largest importer and the sixteenth-largest exporter in 2008. Between 2001 and 2011, the contribution of petrochemical and engineering goods to total exports grew from 14% to 42%. India was the world's second-largest textile exporter after China in the 2013 calendar year. Averaging an economic growth rate of 7.5% for several years before 2007, India has more than doubled its hourly wage rates during the first decade of the 21st century. Some 431 million Indians have left poverty since 1985; India's middle classes are projected to number around 580 million by 2030. In 2024, India's consumer market was the world's third largest. India's nominal GDP per capita increased steadily from US$308 in 1991, when economic liberalisation started, to US$1,380 in 2010, to an estimated US$2,731 in 2024. It is expected to grow to US$3,264 by 2026.