Parliament passes resolution on Lokpal Bill

Anna Hazare wins, Parliament passes resolution on Lokpal Bill

Both Houses of Parliament on Saturday passed a resolution conveying the sense of the House on the Lokpal Bill, paving the way for Anna Hazare to break his fast.
On a motion moved by Pranab Mukherjee, Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha passed a resolution conveying the sense of the House on the Lokpal Bill.
After the passage of the resolution, Speaker Meira Kumar adjourned the Lok Sabha till Monday.
There was some confusion over whether the resolution was passed by a voice vote or not. Apparently, no voice vote took place.
"Thumping of the desk is akin to passing a motion by voice vote," Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar told Times Now.
After the passage of the Lokpal resolution in Lok Sabha, Rajya Sabha also passed the resolution.
Team Anna welcomes the passage of the Lokpal resolution, Kiran Bedi said.
Some of the important points of the Lokpal resolution passed by Parliament are:
*An effective Lokpal at the Centre and Lokayuktas in states be set up.
*Employees of centre and state governments to be brought under purview of Lokpal and Lokayuktas respectively.
*All government departments to have citizen's charter with timeline.
With a copy of Lokpal resolution and a letter from PM Manmohan Singh, Union minister Vilasrao Deshmukh would now go to Ramlila Maidan to meet Anna Hazare.
Earlier, the team Anna said they have received a communication from the government that a resolution carrying their demands on Lokpal Bill will be put to a voice vote, a move which they termed as a "very happy" development.
Fresh trouble emerged this afternoon after government decided only to convey sense of House to Team Anna and not put the resolution for voting, the activists hardened their position saying it was "betrayal" and only a resolution which will be put to vote will be acceptable.
This forced the government to change its stand. The activist's camp said they have received the communication from the government about its decision to put the resolution to voice vote.
The 74-year-old Gandhian has been on fast for the last 12 days, demanding the passage of the Jan Lokpal Bill by Parliament.

India’s Foreign Reserves fell $621mn to $316.6 bn: report

The report stated that Foreign-currency assets declined $652 mn to $283.7 bn

Reserve Bank of India has reportedlysaid that India’s foreign-exchange reserves fell $621 mn to $316.6 bn in the week ended August 12.

The report stated that Foreign-currency assets declined $652 mn to $283.7 bn, while the nation’s gold reserves were unchanged at $253bn.

Independence day of india Google Doodle

national holiday in India celebrated annually on August 15. Independence Day marks the end of British rule in 1947 and the establishment of a free and independent Indian nation. It also marks the anniversary of the partition of the subcontinent into two countries, India and Pakistan.

British rule in India began in 1757 when, following the British victory at the Battle of Plassey, the English East India Company began exercising control over the country. The East India Company ruled India for 100 years, until it was replaced by the British crown in the wake of the Indian Mutiny in 1857–58. The Indian independence movement began during World War I and was led by Mohandas K. Gandhi, who advocated for a peaceful and nonviolent end to British rule.

Independence Day is marked throughout India with flag-raising ceremonies, drills, and the singing of the Indian national anthem. Additionally, various cultural programs are made available in the state capitals. After the prime minister participates in the flag-raising ceremony at the Red Fort historic monument in Old Delhi, a parade ensues with members of the armed forces and police. The prime minister then delivers a televised address to the country, recounting the major accomplishments of India during the previous year and outlining future challenges and goals. Kite flying has also become an Independence Day tradition, with kites of various sizes, shapes, and colours filling the sky. Also, to commemorate the day, government offices in New Delhi remain lit throughout the holiday, even though they are closed.

We are proud to be an Indian and we are happy that google cellebrated Independence day of india with a cool google doodle

Subhas Chandra Bose

byname  Netaji (Hindi: “Respected Leader”)

born , c. Jan. 23, 1897, Cuttack, Orissa, India

died Aug. 18, 1945, Taipei, Taiwan?

Indian revolutionary who led an Indian national force against the Western powers during World War II.

The son of a wealthy and prominent Bengali lawyer, Bose studied at Presidency College, Calcutta (Kolkata), from which he was expelled in 1916 for nationalist activities, and the Scottish Churches College (graduating in 1919). He then was sent by his parents to the University of Cambridge in England to prepare for the Indian Civil Service. In 1920 he passed the civil service examination, but in April 1921, after hearing of the nationalist turmoils in India, he resigned his candidacy and hurried back to India. Throughout his career, especially in its early stages, he was supported financially and emotionally by an elder brother, Sarat Chandra Bose (1889–1950), a wealthy Calcutta lawyer and Congress Party politician.

Bose joined the noncooperation movement started by Mohandas K. Gandhi, who had made the Indian National Congress a powerful nonviolent organization. Bose was advised by Gandhi to work under Chitta Ranjan Das, a politician in Bengal. There Bose became a youth educator, journalist, and commandant of the Bengal Congress volunteers. His activities led to his imprisonment in December 1921. In 1924 he was appointed chief executive officer of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation, with Das as mayor. Bose was soon after deported to Burma (Myanmar) because he was suspected of connections with secret revolutionary movements. Released in 1927, he returned to find Bengal Congress affairs in disarray after the death of Das, and shortly thereafter, Bose was elected president of the Bengal Congress.

By this time Gandhi had resumed his leadership role in the Congress Party. When the civil disobedience movement was started in 1930, Bose was already in detention for his associations with an underground revolutionary group, the Bengal Volunteers. Released and then rearrested several times for his suspected role in violent acts, Bose was finally allowed to proceed to Europe after a year's detention. In enforced exile, he wrote The Indian Struggle, 1920–1934 and pleaded India's cause with European leaders. He returned from Europe in 1936, was again taken into custody, and was released after a year. In 1938 he was elected president of the Indian National Congress and formed a national planning committee, which formulated a policy of broad industrialization. However, this did not harmonize with Gandhian economic thought, which clung to the notion of cottage industries and benefiting from the use of the country's own resources. Bose's vindication came in 1939, when he defeated a Gandhian rival for reelection. Nonetheless, the “rebel president” felt bound to resign because of the lack of Gandhi's support. He founded the Forward Bloc, hoping to rally radical elements, but was again incarcerated in July 1940. His refusal to remain in prison at this critical period of India's history was expressed in a determination to fast to death, which frightened the British government into releasing him. On Jan. 26, 1941, though closely watched, he escaped from his Calcutta residence in disguise and, traveling via Kabul and Moscow, eventually reached Germany in April.

In Nazi Germany Bose came under the tutelage of a newly created Special Bureau for India, guided by Adam von Trott zu Solz. He and other Indians who had gathered in Berlin made regular broadcasts from the German-sponsored Azad Hind Radio beginning in January 1942, speaking in English, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, and Pashto.

A little more than a year after the Japanese invasion of Southeast Asia, Bose left Germany, traveling by German and Japanese submarines and by plane, and arrived in May 1943 in Tokyo. On July 4 he assumed leadership of the Indian Independence Movement in East Asia and proceeded, with Japanese aid and influence, to form a trained army of about 40,000 troops in Japanese-occupied Southeast Asia. On Oct. 21, 1943, Bose proclaimed the establishment of a provisional independent Indian government, and his so-called Indian National Army (Azad Hind Fauj), alongside Japanese troops, advanced to Rangoon (Yangôn) and thence overland into India, reaching Indian soil on March 18, 1944, and moving into Kohima and the plains of Imphal. In a stubborn battle, the mixed Indian and Japanese forces, lacking Japanese air support, were defeated and forced to retreat; the Indian National Army nevertheless for some time succeeded in maintaining its identity as a liberation army, based in Burma and then Indochina. With the defeat of Japan, however, Bose's fortunes ended.

A few days after Japan's announced surrender in August 1945, Bose, fleeing Southeast Asia, reportedly died in a Japanese hospital in Taiwan as a result of burn injuries from a plane crash.

Flag Of India

horizontally striped orange-white-green national flag with a 24-spoked blue chakra(wheel) in the centre. The flag's width-to-length ratio is 2 to 3.

For decades the All-India Congress under the leadership of Mohandas K. Gandhi struggled to rally the millions of British-ruled peoples in the Indian subcontinent. Like similar movements in other countries, it early felt the need for a distinctive symbol that could represent its nationalist objectives. In 1921 a student named Pinglay Venkayya presented a flag design to Gandhi that consisted of the colours associated with the two principal religions, red for the Hindus and green for the Muslims. To the centre of the horizontally divided flag, Lala Hans Raj Sondhi suggested the addition of the traditional spinning wheel, which was associated with Gandhi's crusade to make Indians self-reliant by fabricating their own clothing from local fibres.

Gandhi modified the flag by adding a white stripe in the centre for the other religious communities in India, thus also providing a clearly visible background for the spinning wheel. In May 1923 at Nagpur, during peaceful protests against British rule, the flag was carried by thousands of people, hundreds of whom were arrested. The Congress flag came to be associated with nationhood for India, and it was officially recognized at the annual meeting of the party in August 1931. At the same time, the current arrangement of stripes and the use of orange instead of red were approved.

To avoid the sectarian associations of the original proposal, new attributions were associated with the orange, white, and green stripes. They were said to stand, respectively, for courage and sacrifice, peace and truth, and faith and chivalry. During World War II Subhas Chandra Bose used this flag (without the spinning wheel) in territories his Japanese-aided army had captured.

After the war Britain agreed to consider freedom for India, although the country was divided and a Muslim-dominated Pakistan was given separate statehood. On July 22, 1947, the Indian national flag was officially hoisted. Its stripes remained the same orange-white-green, but the spinning wheel was replaced by a blue chakra—the Dharma Chakra(“Wheel of the Law”). The Dharma Chakra, which was associated with Emperor Ashokain the 3rd century BCE, appeared on pillars erected throughout the Mauryan empire during the first serious attempt to unite all of India under a single government. The 1947 flag continues to be used by India, although special versions have been developed for ships registered in the country.

Languages of India

There are probably hundreds of major and minor languages and many hundreds of recognized dialects in India, whose languages belong to four different language families: Indo-Iranian (a subfamily of the Indo-European language family), Dravidian, Austroasiatic, and Tibeto-Burman (a subfamily of Sino-Tibetan). There are also several isolate languages, such as Nahali, which is spoken in a small area of Madhya Pradesh state. The overwhelming majority of Indians speak Indo-Iranian or Dravidian languages.

The difference between language and dialect in India is often arbitrary, however, and official designations vary notably from one census to another. This is complicated by the fact that, owing to their long-standing contact with one another, India's languages have come to converge and to form an amalgamated linguistic area—a sprachbund—comparable, for example, to that found in the Balkans. Languages within India have adopted words and grammatical forms from one another, and vernacular dialects within languages often diverge widely. Over much of India, and especially the Indo-Gangetic Plain, there are no clear boundaries between one vernacular and another (although ordinary villagers are sensitive to nuances of dialect that differentiate nearby localities). In the mountain fringes of the country, especially in the northeast, spoken dialects are often sufficiently different from one valley to the next to merit classifying each as a truly distinct language. There were at one time, for example, no fewer than 25 languages classified within the Naga group, not one of which was spoken by more than 60,000 people.

Lending order to this linguistic mix are a number of written, or literary, languages used on the subcontinent, each of which often differs markedly from the vernacular with which it is associated. Many people are bilingual or multilingual, knowing their local vernacular dialect (“mother tongue”), its associated written variant, and, perhaps, one or more other languages. The official national language is Hindi, but there are 22 (originally 14) so-called “scheduled languages” recognized in the Indian constitution that may be used by states in official correspondence. Of these, 15 are Indo-European (Assamese, Bengali, Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, and Urdu), 4 are Dravidian (Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu), 2 are Sino-Tibetan (Bodo and Manipuri), and 1 is Austroasiatic (Santhali). These languages have become increasingly standardized since independence because of improved education and the influence of mass media. English is an “associate” official language and is widely spoken.

Most Indian languages are written using some variety of Devanagari script, but other scripts are used. Sindhi, for instance, is written in a Persianized form of Arabic script, but it also is sometimes written in the Devanagari or Gurmukhi scripts.

Indo-European languages

The Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family is the largest language group in the subcontinent, with nearly three-fourths of the population speaking a language of this family as a mother tongue. It can be further split into three subfamilies: Indo-Aryan, Dardic, and Iranian. The numerous languages of this family all derive from Sanskrit, the language of the ancient Aryans. Sanskrit, the classic language of India, underwent a process of systematization and grammatical refinement at an early date, rendering it unique among Indo-Aryan languages in its degree of linguistic cultivation. Subsequently, the Prakrit languages developed from local vernaculars but later were refined into literary tongues. The modern Indian languages were derived from the Prakrit languages.

By far the most widely spoken Indo-Iranian language is Hindi, which is used in one form or another by some three-fifths of the population. Hindi has a large number of dialects, generally divided into Eastern and Western Hindi, some of which are mutually unintelligible. Apart from its nationally preeminent position, Hindi has been adopted as the official language by each of a large contiguous bloc of northern states—Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttaranchal, and Uttar Pradesh—as well as by the national capital territory of Delhi.

Other Indo-European languages with official status in individual states are Assamese, in Assam; Bengali, in West Bengal and Tripura; Gujarati, in Gujarat; Kashmiri, in Jammu and Kashmir; Konkani, in Goa; Marathi, in Maharashtra; Nepali, in portions of northern West Bengal; Oriya, in Orissa; and Punjabi, in Punjab. Urdu, the official language of Pakistan, is also the language of most Muslims of northern and peninsular India as far south as Chennai (Madras). Sindhi is spoken mainly by inhabitants of the Kachchh district of Gujarat, which borders the Pakistani province of Sind, as well as in other areas by immigrants (and their descendants) who fled Sind after the 1947 partition.

Dravidian and other languages

 

• Distribution of Dravidian languages.

Dravidian languages are spoken by about one-fourth of all Indians, overwhelmingly in southern India. Dravidian speakers among tribal peoples (e.g., Gonds) in central India, in eastern Bihar, and in the Brahui-speaking region of the distant Pakistani province of Balochistan suggest a much wider distribution in ancient times. The four constitutionally recognized Dravidian languages also enjoy official state status: Kannada, in Karnataka; Malayalam, in Kerala; Tamil (the oldest of the main Dravidian tongues), in Tamil Nadu; and Telugu, in Andhra Pradesh. Manipuri and other Sino-Tibetan languages are spoken by small numbers of people in northeastern India.

Lingua francas

The two major lingua francas in India are Hindustani and English. Hindustani is based on an early dialect of Hindi, known by linguists as Khari Boli, which originated in Delhi and an adjacent region within the Ganges-Yamuna Doab (interfluve). During the Mughal period (early 16th to mid-18th century), when political power became centred on Delhi, Khari Boli absorbed numerous Persian words and came to be used as a lingua franca throughout the empire, especially by merchants who needed a common commercial language. Hindustani was promoted by the British during the colonial period.

In the 19th century two literary languages arose from this colloquial tongue: among Hindus, the modern form of Hindi, which derives its vocabulary and script (Devanagari) mainly from Sanskrit; and among Muslims, Urdu, which, though grammatically identical with Hindi, draws much of its vocabulary from Persian and Arabic and is written in the Perso-Arabic script. Despite this rift, Hindi and Urdu remain mutually intelligible, while their Hindustani progenitor still serves as a lingua franca in many parts of the subcontinent, particularly in the north.

English, a remnant of British colonial rule, is the most widely used lingua franca. The great size of India's population makes it one of the largest English-speaking communities in the world, although English is claimed as the mother tongue by only a small number of Indians and is spoken fluently by less than 5 percent of the population. English serves as the language linking the central government with the states, especially with those in which Hindi is not widely understood. English is also the principal language of commerce and the language of instruction in almost all of the country's prestigious universities and private schools. The English-language press remains highly influential; scholarly publication is predominantly in English (almost exclusively so in science); and many Indians are devotees of literature in English (much of it written by Indians), as well as of English-language film, radio, television, popular music, and theatre.

Minor languages and dialects

Although many tribal communities are gradually abandoning their tribal languages, scores of such languages survive. Few, however, are still spoken by more than a million persons, with the exception of Bhili (Indo-European) and Santhali (of the Munda branch of the Austroasiatic family), which are both estimated as having more than five million speakers. Others include Gondi (Dravidian), Kurukh, or Oraon (Dravidian), Ho (Munda), Manipuri (Sino-Tibetan), and Mundari (Munda). Generally, tribal languages lack a written tradition, though many are now written in the Roman script or, less often, in scripts adapted from those of neighbouring nontribal regions.

Soils of India

There is a wide range of soil types in India. As products of natural environmental processes, these can be broadly divided into two groups: in situ soils and transported soils. The in situ soils get their distinguishing features from the parent rocks, which are sieved by flowing water, sliding glaciers, and drifting wind and are deposited on landforms such as river valleys and coastal plains. The process of sieving such soils has led to deposition of materials in layers without any marked pedologic horizons, though it has altered the original chemical composition of the in situ soils.

Among the in situ soils are the red-to-yellow (including laterite) and black soils known locally as regur. After these the alluvial soil is the third most common type. Also significant are the desert soils of Rajasthan, the saline soils in Gujarat, southern Rajasthan, and some coastal areas, and the mountain soils of the Himalayas. The type of soil is determined by numerous factors, including climate, relief, elevation, and drainage, as well as by the composition of the underlying rock material.

 

In situ soils

Red-to-yellow soils

These soils are encountered over extensive nonalluvial tracts of peninsular India and are made up of such acidic rocks as granite, gneiss, and schist. They develop in areas in which rainfall leaches soluble minerals out of the ground and results in a loss of chemically basic constituents; a corresponding proportional increase in oxidized iron imparts a reddish hue to many such soils. Hence these are commonly described as ferralitic soils. In extreme cases, the concentration of oxides of iron leads to formation of a hard crust, in which case they are described as lateritic (for later, the Latin term meaning “brick”) soils. The heavily leached red-to-yellow soils are concentrated in the high-rainfall areas of the Western Ghats, the western Kathiawar Peninsula, eastern Rajasthan, the Eastern Ghats, the Chota Nagpur Plateau, and other upland tracts of northeastern India. Less-leached red-to-yellow soils occur in areas of low rainfall immediately east of the Western Ghats in the dry interior of the Deccan. Red-to-yellow soils are usually infertile, but this problem is partly ameliorated in forested tracts, where humus concentration and the recycling of nutrients help restore fertility in the topsoil.

Black soils

Among the in situ soils of India, the black soils found in the lava-covered areas are the most conspicuous. These soils are often referred to as regur but are popularly known as “black cotton soils,” since cotton has been the most common traditional crop in areas where they are found. Black soils are derivatives of trap lava and are spread mostly across interior Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Madhya Pradesh on the Deccan lava plateau and the Malwa Plateau, where there is both moderate rainfall and underlying basaltic rock. Because of their high clay content, black soils develop wide cracks during the dry season, but their iron-rich granular structure makes them resistant to wind and water erosion. They are poor in humus yet highly moisture-retentive, thus responding well to irrigation. These soils are also found on many peripheral tracts where the underlying basalt has been shifted from its original location by fluvial processes. The sifting has only led to an increased concentration of clastic contents.

Alluvial soils

Alluvial soils are widespread. They occur throughout the Indo-Gangetic Plain and along the lower courses of virtually all the country's major rivers (especially the deltas along the east coast). The nondeltaic plains along India's coasts are also marked by narrow ribbons of alluvium.

New alluvium found on much of the Indo-Gangetic floodplain is called khadar and is extremely fertile and uniform in texture; conversely, the old alluvium on the slightly elevated terraces, termed bhangar, carries patches of alkaline efflorescences, called usar, rendering some areas infertile. In the Ganges basin, sandy aquifers holding an enormous reserve of groundwater ensure irrigation and help make the plain the most agriculturally productive region of the country.

History Of India

The Indian subcontinent, the great landmass of South Asia, is the home of one of the world's oldest and most influential civilizations. In this article, the subcontinent, which for historical purposes is usually called simply “India,” is understood to comprise the areas of not only the present-day Republic of India but also the republics of Pakistan (partitioned from India in 1947) and Bangladesh (which formed the eastern part of Pakistan until its independence in 1971). For the histories of these latter two countries since their creation, 

Since early times the Indian subcontinent appears to have provided an attractive habitat for human occupation. Toward the south it is effectively sheltered by wide expanses of ocean, which tended to isolate it culturally in ancient times, while to the north it is protected by the massive ranges of the Himalayas, which also sheltered it from the Arctic winds and the air currents of Central Asia. Only in the northwest and northeast is there easier access by land, and it was through those two sectors that most of the early contacts with the outside world took place.

Within the framework of hills and mountains represented by the Indo-Iranian borderlands on the west, the Indo-Myanmar borderlands in the east, and the Himalayas to the north, the subcontinent may in broadest terms be divided into two major divisions: in the north, the basins of the Indus and Ganges (Ganga) rivers (the Indo-Gangetic Plain) and, to the south, the block of Archean rocks that forms the Deccan plateau region. The expansive alluvial plain of the river basins provided the environment and focus for the rise of two great phases of city life: the civilization of the Indus valley, known as the Indus civilization, during the 3rd millennium BCE; and, during the 1st millennium BCE, that of the Ganges. To the south of this zone, and separating it from the peninsula proper, is a belt of hills and forests, running generally from west to east and to this day largely inhabited by tribal people. This belt has played mainly a negative role throughout Indian history in that it remained relatively thinly populated and did not form the focal point of any of the principal regional cultural developments of South Asia. However, it is traversed by various routes linking the more-attractive areas north and south of it. The Narmada (Narbada) River flows through this belt toward the west, mostly along the Vindhya Range, which has long been regarded as the symbolic boundary between northern and southern India.

The northern parts of India represent a series of contrasting regions, each with its own distinctive cultural history and its own distinctive population. In the northwest the valleys of the Baluchistan uplands (now largely in Balochistan, Pak.) are a low-rainfall area, producing mainly wheat and barley and having a low density of population. Its residents, mainly tribal people, are in many respects closely akin to their Iranian neighbours. The adjacent Indus plains are also an area of extremely low rainfall, but the annual flooding of the river in ancient times and the exploitation of its waters by canal irrigation in the modern period have enhanced agricultural productivity, and the population is correspondingly denser than that of Baluchistan. The Indus valley may be divided into three parts: in the north are the plains of the five tributary rivers of the Punjab (Persian: Panjāb, “Five Waters”); in the centre the consolidated waters of the Indus and its tributaries flow through the alluvial plains of Sind; and in the south the waters pass naturally into the Indus delta. East of the latter is the Great Indian, or Thar, Desert, which is in turn bounded on the east by a hill system known as the Aravali Range, the northernmost extent of the Deccan plateau region. Beyond them is the hilly region of Rajasthan and the Malwa Plateau. To the south is the Kathiawar Peninsula, forming both geographically and culturally an extension of Rajasthan. All of these regions have a relatively denser population than the preceding group, but for topographical reasons they have tended to be somewhat isolated, at least during historical times.

East of the Punjab and Rajasthan, northern India develops into a series of belts running broadly west to east and following the line of the foothills of the Himalayan ranges in the north. The southern belt consists of a hilly, forested area broken by the numerous escarpments in close association with the Vindhya Range, including the Bhander, Rewa, and Kaimur plateaus. Between the hills of central India and the Himalayas lies the Ganges River valley proper, constituting an area of high-density population, moderate rainfall, and high agricultural productivity. Archaeology suggests that, from the beginning of the 1st millennium BCE, rice cultivation has played a large part in supporting this population. The Ganges valley divides into three major parts: to the west is the Ganges-Yamuna Doab (the land area that is formed by the confluence of the two rivers); east of the confluence lies the middle Ganges valley, in which population tends to increase and cultivation of rice predominates; and to the southeast lies the extensive delta of the combined Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers. The Brahmaputra flows from the northeast, rising from the Tibetan Himalayas and emerging from the mountains into the Assam valley, being bounded on the east by the Patkai Bum Range and the Naga Hills and on the south by the Mikir, Khasi, Jaintia, and Garo hills. There is plenty of evidence that influences reached India from the northeast in ancient times, even if they are less prominent than those that arrived from the northwest.

Along the Deccan plateau there is a gradual eastward declivity, which dispenses its major river systems—the Mahanadi, Godavari, Krishna, and Kaveri (Cauvery)—into the Bay of Bengal. Rising some 3,000 feet (1,000 metres) or more along the western edge of the Deccan, the escarpment known as the Western Ghats traps the moisture of winds from the Arabian Sea, most notably during the southwest monsoon, creating a tropical monsoon climate along the narrow western littoral and depriving the Deccan of significant precipitation. The absence of snowpack in the south Indian uplands makes the region dependent entirely on rainfall for its streamflow. The arrival of the southwest monsoon in June is thus a pivotal annual event in peninsular culture.

Introduction to India

country that occupies the greater part of South Asia. It is a constitutional republic consisting of 28 states, each with a substantial degree of control over its own affairs; 6 less fully empowered union territories; and the Delhi national capital territory, which includes New Delhi, India's capital. With roughly one-sixth of the world's total population, India is the second most populous country, after China.

It is known from archaeological evidence that a highly sophisticated, urbanized culture—the Indus civilization—dominated the northwestern part of the subcontinent from about 2600 to 2000 BCE. 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, originated in India—though their presence there is now quite small—and throughout the centuries residents of the subcontinent developed a rich intellectual life in such fields as mathematics, astronomy, and architecture. Much of early Indian work in the sciences influenced ancient Egyptian and Greek culture.

Rajput fort overlooking (foreground) Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, India.

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 raiders beginning early in the 8th century CE. Eventually, some of these raiders stayed; by the 13th century much of the subcontinent was under Muslim rule, and the number of Muslims steadily increased. Only after the arrival of the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama in 1498 and the subsequent establishment of European maritime supremacy in the region did India become exposed to major external influences arriving by sea, a process that culminated in the decline of the ruling Muslim elite and 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. When British rule came to an end in 1947, the subcontinent was partitioned along religious lines into two separate countries—India, with a majority of Hindus, and Pakistan, with a majority of Muslims; the eastern portion of Pakistan later split off to form Bangladesh. Many British institutions stayed in place (such as the parliamentary system of government); English continued to be a widely used lingua franca; and India remained within the Commonwealth. Hindi became the official language (and a number of other local languages achieved official status), while a vibrant English-language intelligentsia thrived.

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 language families unrelated to one another. Religious minorities, including Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jains, still account for a significant proportion of the population; collectively, their numbers exceed the populations of all countries except China. Earnest attempts have been made to instill a spirit of nationhood in so varied a population, but tensions between neighbouring groups have remained and at times have resulted in outbreaks of violence. Yet social legislation has done much to alleviate the disabilities previously suffered by formerly “untouchable” castes, tribal populations, women, and other traditionally disadvantaged segments of society. At independence, India was blessed with several leaders of world stature, most notably Mohandas K. Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, who were able to galvanize the masses at home and bring prestige to India abroad. The country has played an increasing role in global affairs.

• Gateway to India monument near the entrance to Mumbai (Bombay) Harbour, western India, on the east …

Contemporary India's increasing physical prosperity and cultural dynamism—despite continued domestic challenges and economic inequality—are seen in its well-developed infrastructure and a highly diversified industrial base, in its pool of scientific and engineering personnel (one of the largest in the world), in the pace of its agricultural expansion, and in its rich and vibrant cultural exports of music, literature, and cinema. Though the country's population remains largely rural, India has three of the most populous and cosmopolitan cities in the world—Mumbai (Bombay), Kolkata (Calcutta), and Delhi. Three other Indian cities—Bangalore (Bengaluru), Chennai (Madras), and Hyderabad—are among the world's fastest-growing high-technology centres, and most of the world's major information technology and software companies now have offices in India.