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India
India, officially the Republic of India (ISO: Bhārat Gaṇarājya),[21] is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area; the most populous country from June 2023[22][23] and from the time of its independence in 1947, the world’s most populous democracy.[24][25][26] 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;[j] 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, Myanmar, and Indonesia.
Modern humans arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa no later than 55,000 years ago.[28][29][30] 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.[31] 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.[32] By 1200 BCE, an archaic form of Sanskrit, an Indo-European language, had diffused into India from the northwest.[33][34] Its evidence today is found in the hymns of the Rigveda.
Preserved by an oral tradition that was resolutely vigilant, the Rigveda records the dawning of Hinduism in India.[35] The Dravidian languages of India were supplanted in the northern and western regions.[36] By 400 BCE, stratification and exclusion by caste had emerged within Hinduism,[37] and Buddhism and Jainism had arisen, proclaiming social orders unlinked to heredity.[38] Early political consolidations gave rise to the loose-knit Maurya and Gupta Empires based in the Ganges Basin.[39] Their collective era was suffused with wide-ranging creativity,[40] but also marked by the declining status of women,[41] and the incorporation of untouchability into an organised system of belief.[k][42] In South India, the Middle kingdoms exported Dravidian-languages scripts and religious cultures to the kingdoms of Southeast Asia.[43]
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. In turn the name “India” 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”, specifically the Indus River and, by implication, its well-settled southern basin.[73][74] The ancient Greeks referred to the Indians as Indoi (Ἰνδοί), which translates as “The people of the Indus”.[75]
The term Bharat (Bhārat; pronounced [ˈbʱaːɾət] ⓘ), mentioned in both Indian epic poetry and the Constitution of India,[76][77] is used in its variations by many Indian languages. A modern rendering of the historical name Bharatavarsha, which applied originally to North India,[78][79] Bharat gained increased currency from the mid-19th century as a native name for India.[76][80]
Hindustan ([ɦɪndʊˈstaːn] ⓘ) is a Middle Persian name for India that became popular by the 13th century,[81] and was used widely 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.[76][80][82]
Politics and government
A parliamentary republic with a multi-party system,[227] India has six recognised national parties, including the Indian National Congress (INC) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and more than 50 regional parties.[228] The Congress is considered center in Indian political culture,[229] and the BJP right-wing.[230][231][232] For most of the period between 1950—when India first became a republic—and the late 1980s, the Congress held a majority in the Parliament. Since then, however, it has increasingly shared the political stage with the BJP,[233] as well as with powerful regional parties which have often forced the creation of multi-party coalition governments at the center. [234]
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