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India (Devanagari: भारत Bhārat), officially the Republic
of India (Bhārat Gaṇarājya), is a country in South Asia. It is the
seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second most populous
country, and the most populous liberal democracy in the world. India has a
coastline of over seven thousand kilometres, bounded by the Indian Ocean on
the south, the Arabian Sea on the west, and the Bay of Bengal on the east.
India borders Pakistan[1] to the west; China, Nepal and Bhutan to the
north-east; and Bangladesh and Myanmar to the east. In the Indian Ocean,
India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka, Maldives and Indonesia.
Home to the Indus Valley Civilization and a region of ancient trade routes
and vast empires, the Indian subcontinent has a heritage that includes the
decimal number system, the Buddhist art of Ajanta, and the Taj Mahal. Four
major world religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism originated
here, while Islam, Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism, arrived in the
first millennium CE and shaped India's variegated culture. Colonised by the
British East India Company in the 18th century and directly administered by
Great Britain starting the mid-19th century, India became a modern
nation-state in 1947 after a struggle for independence marked by widespread
use of nonviolent resistance as a means of social protest. |
