HISTORY

India's history and culture is dynamic, spanning back to the beginning of human civilization. It begins with a mysterious culture along the Indus River and in farming communities in the southern lands of India. The history of India is punctuated by constant integration of migrating people with the diverse cultures that surround India. Available evidence suggests that the use of iron, copper and other metals was widely prevalent in the Indian sub-continent at a fairly early period, which is indicative of the progress that this part of the world had made. By the end of the fourth millennium BC, India had emerged as a region of highly developed civilization.

The History of India begins with the birth of the Indus Valley Civilization, more precisely known as Harappan Civilization. It flourished around 2,500 BC, in the western part of South Asia, what today is Pakistan and Western India. The Indus Valley was home to the largest of the four ancient urban civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China. Nothing was known about this civilization till 1920s when the Archaeological Department of India carried out excavations in the Indus valley wherein the ruins of the two old cities, viz. Mohenjodaro and Harappa were unearthed. The ruins of buildings and other things like household articles, weapons of war, gold and silver ornaments, seals, toys, pottery wares, etc., show that some four to five thousand years ago a highly developed Civilization flourished in this region.

PROFILE

India is one of the oldest civilizations in the world with a kaleidoscopic variety and rich cultural heritage. It has achieved all-round socio-economic progress since its Independence. India has become self-sufficient in agricultural production and is now one of the top industrialised countries in the world and one of the few nations to have gone into outer space to conquer nature for the benefit of the people. It covers an area of 32,87,263 sq. km (1,269,346 sq mi), extending from the snow-covered Himalayan heights to the tropical rain forests of the south. As the 7th largest country in the world, India stands apart from the rest of Asia, marked off as it is by mountains and the sea, which give the country a distinct geographical entity. Bounded by the Great Himalayas in the north, it stretches southwards and at the Tropic of Cancer, tapers off into the Indian Ocean between the Bay of Bengal on the east and the Arabian Sea on the west.

Lying entirely in the northern hemisphere, the mainland extends between latitudes 8° 4' and 37° 6' north, longitudes 68° 7' and 97° 25' east and measures about 3,214 km from north to south between the extreme latitudes and about 2,933 km from east to west between the extreme longitudes. It has a land frontier of about 15,200 km. The total length of the coastline of the mainland, Lakshadweep Islands and Andaman & Nicobar Islands is 7,516.6 km.

ABOUT INDIA

INDIA:

Hooghly River at Kolkata, the river is traditionally called 'Ganga' (Ganges), it is one of many distributary arms of the Ganges River. Vidyasagar Setu, also known as Second Hooghly Bridge in the background, the bridge links the cities of Kolkata (previously known as Calcutta) and Howrah.

Destination India, the vast country in South-Central Asia that occupies the greater part of the Indian subcontinent. It borders the Himalayas in the north, the Arabian Sea in the west, the Bay of Bengal in the east, and the Laccadive Sea in the south. India shares borders with Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar (Burma), China (Xizang - Tibet Autonomous Region), Nepal, and Pakistan, and it shares maritime borders with Indonesia, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, and Thailand.


India is the second-most populous country in the world (after China), with an estimated population of 1.36 billion people (in 2019). The country is subdivided into 29 states and seven Union Territories.

With an area of 3,287,263 km², India is the 7th largest country in the world, about one-third the size of the USA.

Capital and largest urban area of India is (New) Delhi; the second largest city is Mumbai. The official languages are Hindi-Urdu and English (the Indian Constitution lists 22 recognized languages).

What is country ?

INTRODUCTION :

The term country refers to a political state or nation or its territory. It is often referred to as the land of a individual's birth, residence, or citizenship.

A country may be an independent sovereign state or part of a larger state,[1] as a non-sovereign or formerly sovereign political division, a physical territory with a government, or a geographic region associated with sets of previously independent or differently associated people with distinct political characteristics. It is not inherently sovereign.

Countries can refer both to sovereign states and to other political entities,[2] while other times it can refer only to states.[3] For example, the CIA World Factbook uses the word in its "Country name" field to refer to "a wide variety of dependencies, areas of special sovereignty, uninhabited islands, and other entities in addition to the traditional countries or independent states".[4][Note 1]

The largest country in the world is Russia, while the most populated is China. The newest country is South Sudan.

Political Map of the World :