7 Facts About India You Have to Know

Since I’m in the habit of summarizing massive, ancient countries in a meager 7 facts, I figured I’d do the same for India. (And I didn’t want to be accused of favoritism by focusing excessively on the subcontinent.) But trying to condense this behemoth into a limited amount of space is a bit of a challenge. So I’ll focus on the key take-home points. Here are 7 facts about India you have to know.

 

1

The population of India is in the range of 1.4 billion people, making it the world’s most-populated country and far and away the world’s largest democracy. Looked at another way, 17.5% of the world lives in India. As far as land area goes, India comes in at number seven.

 

2

A prominent part of India’s narrative includes the fact that it spent many years under British rule. Officially, Crown rule began in 1858, though the seeds of that rule were planted many years earlier by the British East India Company. While 1757 is a commonly used starting point, the company’s presence in the country dates back to 1608. India ultimately gained independence in 1947. During the same process, the country of Pakistan was formed. (East Pakistan later became Bangladesh.) It’s safe to say that this partition has not gone very well.

 

3

India has 121 languages that are spoken by 10,000 or more people. Of these, 22 are recognized by the Indian constitution as scheduled languages (i.e. prominent regional languages). While no language is declared as the national language, Hindi and English are considered official languages with regards to parliamentary affairs. And sorry, Indian is not a language.

 

4

According to many scholars, Hinduism is the world’s oldest religion (or way of life), dating back over 4,000 years. While approximately 95% of the world’s Hindus live in India and 79.8% of Indians are Hindu, other religions are well-represented. As an example, India has the third largest Muslim population in the world after Indonesia and Pakistan. India also has more Christians (perhaps 27 million) than Australia.

 

5

While India and poverty have previously been viewed as synonymous, India actually has the fifth largest economy in the world by nominal GDP. Taking into account purchasing power parity, India moves to number three. Of course, when this latter number is expressed per capita, India falls precipitously to number 127.

 

6

As a result of British influence, cricket found its way to India. In modern times, cricket is by far the most popular sport in the country. Obsessed would be a reasonable term to describe India’s relationship with the game. It’s domestic cricket league (IPL) boasts the second highest average annual player salary ($5.3 million) in the world behind only the NBA. India has won the Cricket World Cup twice, and its 2019 World Cup match against Pakistan attracted about 233 million television viewers in India alone.

 

7

The obsession with cricket is matched by only one thing: an infatuation with cinema. While the Hindi-language film industry, also known as Bollywood, is the most recognized worldwide, films in other languages comprise a significant part of the country’s output. The Indian film industry is typically number one in the world in terms of feature length films produced and tickets sold annually, though revenue pales in comparison to Hollywood.

 

Leaving aside facts for a minute, a trip to India should be added to your calendar. Think of it as a one-stop shop for understanding humanity. The highs, the lows, and everything else in between. Plus they have good movies.