Although
India
occupies only 2.4% of the world's land
area, it supports over 15% of the world's
population. Only China
has a larger population. Almost 40% of
Indians are younger than 15 years of age.
More than 70% of the people live in more
than 550,000 villages, and the remainder
in more than 200 towns and cities. Over
thousands of years of its history, India
has been invaded from the Iranian
plateau, Central
Asia, Arabia,
Afghanistan,
and the West; Indian people and culture
have absorbed and changed these influences
to produce a remarkable racial and cultural
synthesis.
Religion, caste, and language are major
determinants of social and political organization
in India today. The government has recognized
18 languages as official; Hindi
is the most widely spoken. |
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India’s
people inherited a civilization that began more than
4,500 years ago, one that has proven capable of absorbing
and transforming the peoples and cultures that over
the centuries have come to the subcontinent. India
has long supported a large population of great diversity.
The people in India’s intricate network of communities
speak literally thousands of languages, practice all
of the world’s great religions, and participate
in a complex social structure that incorporates the
caste system, a rigid system of social hierarchy.
India
is one of the world’s most populous countries.
In 2004 it had a population of 1,065,070,607, yielding
an average population density of 358 persons per sq
km (928 per sq mi). An estimated 72 percent of India’s
inhabitants live in rural areas. The population grew
by 21.3 percent between 1990 and 2000, down from 24
percent growth between 1981 and 1991. It is estimated
that the rate of growth will slow even further in
the coming decades, but India’s population nevertheless
is expected to continue to increase. The annual growth
rate in 2004 was 1.4 percent.
Principal
Cities
The
largest city of India as well as eastern India’s
chief commercial, financial, and manufacturing center
is Kolkata, which at the 2001 census had a population
of 13.2 million. Twenty-seven cities had populations
of more than 1 million in 2001. The largest metropolitan
areas of India are Mumbai (population, 11.9 million),
India’s premier port; Delhi (12.8 million),
a historical city as well as a major transportation,
commercial, and industrial center; and Chennai (6.42
million), one of India’s principal ports. Other
important cities with more than 1 million people are
Bangalore, rapidly growing as a center of high-technology
industry; Hyderabad, Nagpur, Lucknow, and Jaipur,
all centers of government and service industries;
and Kanpur, Ahmadabad, Pune, and Surat, which are
known for their industrial economies.
India’s
population is rich with diverse ethnic and cultural
groups. The
government identifies some groups of people in India
as tribal, meaning they belong to one of the more
than 300 officially designated “scheduled tribes.”
The tribal people are sometimes called hill tribes
or adivasis (“original inhabitants”) and
in 1991 made up about 8 percent (more than 65 million
people) of India’s population. For the purpose
of affirmative action, the Indian government publishes
“schedules” (lists) of the tribes, as
well as of some other disadvantaged groups, such as
the former Untouchables. Members of India’s
various hill tribes are thought to be indigenous and
tend to be ethnically distinct.
Major
tribes include the Gond and the Bhil. Most
tribal groups live in a belt of communities that stretches
across central India, from the eastern part of Gujarat
(the westernmost state); eastward along the Madhya
Pradesh-Maharashtra border; through Chhattisgarh,
parts of northern Andhra Pradesh, most of interior
Orissa, and Jharkhand; and to the western part of
West Bengal. The western tribes speak a dialect of
Hindi, the central tribes use a form of the Dravidian
language, and the eastern tribes speak Austro-Asiatic
languages.
The
other major concentration of tribal people is in the
northeastern hills. Tribe members make up the majority
of the population in the states of Mizoram, Nagaland,
Meghalaya, and Arunachal Pradesh. These people, many
of them Christian, speak languages of the Sino-Tibetan
family. Sino-Tibetan languages are also spoken by
the Buddhists who live along the Himalayan ridge,
including the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim,
Uttaranchal, and Jammu and Kashmir (specifically,
the region of Ladakh). In the Himalayas particularly,
isolation on the mountain flanks has led to languages
so distinct that ethnic groups living within sight
of each other may not understand each other. Other
tribes live in southern India and on India’s
island territories, but their numbers are not large.
Most
people in India practice Hinduism with Islam a distant
second. Other important religions include Christianity,
Sikhism, Buddhism, and Jainism.
About
75 percent of Indians are Hindus. Hindus come from
all parts of the country to visit pilgrimage sites.
Four of the most sacred are at the four corners of
India: Badrinath in the Himalayas; Rameswaram in Tamil
Nadu state; Dwarka on the Gujarat coast; and Puri
in Orissa. Varanasi is also a significant holy city
for Hindus.
About
12 percent of the Indian population practices Islam,
which also is divided into several different communities.
The major division in the Muslim population is between
Sunni and Shia branches. The Shia community has a
significant presence in several areas, most notably
in the cities of Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh and Hyderabad
in Andhra Pradesh.
Muslim
communities in India are generally more urban than
rural. In many towns and cities in northern India,
Muslims are one-third or more of the population. In
addition to Jammu and Kashmir and the Lakshadweep
islands, where more than two-thirds of the population
is Muslim, major concentrations of Muslims live in
Assam, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, and Kerala states.
About one-quarter of all Muslims living in India live
in the state of Uttar Pradesh.
India’s
other major religious groups include Christians (6
percent of the population), Sikhs (2 percent), Buddhists
(0.7 percent), Jains (0.4 percent), a small number
of Zoroastrians (or Parsis), and a few thousand Jews.
Christians live primarily in urban areas throughout
India, with major concentrations in the states of
Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Goa. Christians are a majority
in three small states in the northeast: Nagaland,
Mizoram, and Meghalaya. Most Sikhs live in Punjab,
generally in rural areas.
Buddhists
live in small numbers in the Himalayas from Ladakh
to Arunachal Pradesh; many converts also live in Maharashtra.
The Jains live mainly in the belt of western states,
from Rajasthan through Gujarat and Maharashtra to
Karnataka. This region has many magnificent Jain temples,
supported substantially by prosperous Jain traders.
Parsis live mainly in Mumbai and in cities in Gujarat,
and Jews have small communities in Mumbai, Kolkata,
and Cochin.
There
are two great language families on the Indian subcontinent:
the Indo-Iranian (or Indo-Aryan) branch of the Indo-European
language family, most of which are spoken in the north,
and the Dravidian languages, most of which are spoken
in the south. The other major language groups are
the Sino-Tibetan languages along the Himalayan ridge,
with many languages spoken by few people, and the
Austro-Asiatic languages of some tribal peoples. All
these language families stretch far back in history
and have influenced one another over centuries.
Indo-European
languages stem originally from Sanskrit. Present-day
languages in this family formed in the 14th and 15th
centuries. These include Hindi and Urdu, which are
similar as spoken languages. Hindi, spoken mainly
by Hindus, is written in script called Devanagari
and draws on Sanskrit vocabulary. Urdu is spoken mostly
by Muslims and uses Persian Arabic script. Tamil is
the oldest of the four main Dravidian languages, with
a literary history that begins in the 1st century
AD.
According
to the national census of India, 114 languages and
216 dialects are spoken in the country. Eighteen Indian
languages, plus English, have been given official
status by the federal or state governments. Hindi
is the main language of more than 40 percent of the
population. No single language other than Hindi can
claim speakers among even 10 percent of the total
population. Hindi was therefore made India’s
official language in 1965. English, which was associated
with British rule, was retained as an option for official
use because some non-Hindi speakers, particularly
in Tamil Nadu, opposed the official use of Hindi.
English is spoken by as many as 5 percent of Indians,
and various Dravidian languages are spoken by about
25 percent. Many Indians speak more than one language,
especially those who live in cities or near state
borders, which were redrawn in 1956 in part to conform
to linguistic boundaries. Because the languages of
both northern and southern families are internally
related, much like the Romance and Germanic languages
of Europe, learning a second language is not difficult.
India’s
official goal for education since independence in
1947 has been to ensure free and compulsory education
for all children up to age 14. A lack of money and
effort put into primary education, however, has hampered
the achievement of that goal. At independence 25 percent
of males and 8 percent of females were literate. In
2004 those figures had been raised to 69 percent of
males and 42 percent of females—56 percent of
the overall population. The government invests comparatively
more in secondary schools and institutions of higher
education. There was no serious political demand for
primary education until the 1990s, when a grassroots
movement arose to organize volunteers and conduct
campaigns for universal adult literacy.
Education
for the elite has been a tradition in India since
the beginnings of its civilization. Great Buddhist
universities at Nalanda and Taxila were famous far
beyond India’s borders. Withholding education
from the nonelite, including women, has also been
a tradition. The lowest caste members, including the
Harijans and non-Hindu tribal groups, were denied
the right even to hear the Vedas, sacred Hindu texts,
recited.
In
1998–1999 elementary and middle level schools
enrolled about 135 million pupils, and secondary schools
51 million. Total yearly enrollment in institutions
of higher education was 9.4 million. India has some
581,300 primary and upper primary schools, many of
them one-room (or even open-air) operations with poorly
paid teachers. There are approximately 117,000 secondary
schools, 11,400 colleges, and 230 universities and
institutions with university status. The universities
of Kolkata, Madras, and Bombay, founded in 1857, are
the oldest still operating in India, although colleges
existed in those cities before that date. Other major
universities in India include Banaras Hindu University,
in Varanasi; Aligarh Muslim University and Jawaharlal
Nehru University, in New Delhi; Agra University; the
University of Bihar; the University of Delhi; Gauhati
University; Gorakhpur University; Gujarat University;
Kanpur University; the University of Kerala, in Thiruvananthapuram
(also known as Trivandrum); the University of Mysore;
the University of Pune; and the University of Rajasthan,
in Jaipur.
The
life of Indians is centered in the family. Extended
families often live together, with two or more adult
generations, or brothers, sharing a house. In much
of the countryside, neighboring houses share a wall,
so from the street one sees a continuous wall pierced
by doorways. In other areas, in the south for example,
the main house will have a veranda on the street,
with an open courtyard behind. As farmers prosper,
they change from adobe construction to brick plastered
with cement, and from a tile or thatch roof to a flat
concrete or corrugated metal one. Most home activity
is outside in the compound courtyard or on the verandas
of the house.
Only
in a few parts of India, such as Kerala and Bengal,
do people live on their farmland. The village is thus
a settlement area, or a set of settlement areas, surrounded
by unbroken fields, with farms frequently made up
of separated plots. A large village will have a primary
school, perhaps a temple or mosque, and a small shop
or two. Some artisans have workshops in their houses.
Most villages and settlement areas are fairly small,
with about 100 to 200 families and a land area of
about 250 hectares (about 620 acres) in regions where
the land is irrigated, or three or four times that
in dry areas. Paved roads and electricity have been
extended to the majority of villages, making them
less isolated. Many villagers now work for part of
the day or part of the year in nearby towns or cities,
while continuing to farm or to work as day laborers
in agriculture or construction.
Men
work mainly in the fields, although where rice is
grown, women transplant the seedlings. The entire
family will pitch in at harvest time because most
agricultural work is still done by hand. Women fetch
water, prepare meals, clean, and care for milking
animals that are stabled in or near the house compound.
Among Hindus particularly, most worship is done in
the home, where a room or an alcove is devoted to
images of a god or gods. Young girls are expected
to help with the women’s work, and girls care
for their younger siblings. Boys have fewer responsibilities,
although they often herd goats and bring cattle to
and from the fields.
In
most cases a woman who marries moves to her husband’s
village from her home village. Visits to her birth
family, who may live a day’s journey or more
away, are generally rare, especially as the woman
grows older. Senior men (and their wives) exercise
power in the family. Disputes within the family, which
can be common, may result in partitioning of land
or even of the house compound.
In
the cities families still remain the center of social
life. Different families (of the same or similar caste)
may occupy different floors of the same house. Newer
housing is in the form of apartment blocks for the
poor and lower middle class, and separate two- and
three-story houses on very small plots for the rich
and upper middle class. Most women in cities work
in the home, although some may supplement the family
income through craft work such as embroidery. Poor
women may work as house servants, laborers on construction
sites, or street vendors. Increasingly among the educated,
however, women have their own jobs as teachers, clerks
or secretaries, or professionals.
Meals
in village India consist mainly of the staple grain—rice,
or wheat in the form of unleavened bread baked on
a griddle—with stir-fried vegetables, cooked
lentils, and yogurt. Each part of the country has
its own cuisine, with differences in the kinds and
mix of spices, in the cooking oil used (mustard oil
in the north, coconut oil in the south), and in favored
vegetables or meats. In seasons of scarcity, such
as the months before the harvest, the poor may be
reduced to having just a chili pepper or salt to flavor
their rice or bread. Vegetables are those in season,
and cooked food is generally not stored. Food at weddings
or other celebrations can be very elaborate.
In
urban areas meals are still organized around a staple
grain, but the variety and amount of vegetables and
meat are greater. Food is bought and consumed on the
same day, and even those families with refrigerators
typically use them only to keep water, soft drinks,
or milk cool. Social visiting in cities is also mainly
with relatives or among students with their classmates.
The upper classes will entertain friends or business
acquaintances at home, but men of other classes will
more often meet at restaurants or tea stalls to socialize.
The
basic traditional clothing for most Indians, men and
women, is a simple draped cloth. For women this is
the sari, which is wrapped as an ankle-length skirt
and draped over one shoulder, with a fitted shirt
underneath. Styles of tying the sari vary among regions
and communities. Except for widows, who wear plain
white, saris are generally colorful and can be made
of cotton or the finest embroidered silks. Village
men and men in some urban areas such as Kerala wear
a cloth called a dhoti in its full-length form. In
north India it is typically tied with one or both
ends brought between the legs and tucked in, to form
loose “pant” legs. In the south, the full
cloth or a half-sized one is wrapped as a cylinder,
an ankle-length skirt that can be pulled up and tucked
in itself to form a short skirt when work requiring
movement is done. Muslims tend to wear the half-cloth
in colored cottons rather than the white with thin
colored border favored by Hindus.
In
Punjab, women, especially Sikh women, wear a baggy
pants-and-shirt outfit known as the salwar-kameez.
In Rajasthan and elsewhere long skirts and bodices
are worn. This is also a common dress among young
girls throughout the country. Men in northern India
may also wear a pants-and-shirt outfit called the
pajama-kurta. The pajama, which originated in India,
is made of white cloth and can be loose or form-fitting.
The tight-fitting style is often worn with a long
closed-collar coat (the sherwani) made famous in the
West when India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal
Nehru, wore it. Also called the Nehru jacket, it is
the most formal dress for men. Turbans are worn by
a broad range of men, especially Sikhs and Hindus.
Muslims can often be identified by their embroidered
caps.
Western-style
clothing has virtually replaced traditional dress
for men, especially in northern India. Most women
continue to wear the sari or other Indian dress. In
major urban areas such as Mumbai, Western-style clothing
is increasingly popular among the emerging middle
class. Many Indians are familiar with images of Western
popular culture, including styles of dress, from television,
magazines, and other mass media. The younger urban
generation tends to emulate Western styles. Fashionable
Indian clothing often incorporates some elements of
Western wear with traditional textiles and forms.
Cricket
and soccer have been popular sports in India since
the colonial period. India’s national cricket
team competes at the highest international level.
Soccer is popular in eastern India. In central India
men play a traditional Indian team sport, kabaddi,
that requires quickness and strength. The oldest sport,
one that goes back to the time of the Hindu epics,
is freestyle wrestling. Wrestling clubs, presided
over by a guru, feature a regimen of Hindu religious
ritual and practice.
There
are a number of traditional games played mainly by
men. These include chess, which originated in India,
and pachisi, which literally means “twenty-five,”
after the number of spaces moved in one throw of the
dice in the original Indian game. Card games also
are common as is gambling.
Indians
with leisure time and money, such as the middle class,
go to the cinema, or increasingly watch television.
During school holidays families may visit relatives
or go briefly to hill resorts where it is cooler.
In rural areas, slack times in the agricultural cycle
allow families to go on pilgrimage or attend weddings,
which include much feasting. India has many religious
festivals, which provide occasions for even more feasting
and conversation, perhaps accompanied by music or
a dance or folk theater performance.
Social Issues
Social
problems in India center on the connected issues of
poverty and inequality. Particularly in rural areas
lower castes and marginal social groups, such as tribal
people and Muslims, are generally poor. India’s
poor face disease, scarce educational opportunities,
and often physical abuse by those who control their
livelihood. It is difficult or impossible for the
poor to escape and enter the modernizing sector of
society, where discrimination on the basis of caste
or community is less prevalent. In all classes and
in urban as well as rural areas, discrimination and
at times violence against women is almost taken for
granted.
Poverty
has been reduced in India since independence, although
in 2000, 28.60 percent of the population still lived
below the poverty line. Industrialization has created
jobs in the cities, and rural workers have been able
to diversify their sources of income. Urban workers
at entry level, however, are usually forced to live
in appalling conditions in slums.
Modern
water supply and sanitation arrangements are rare
in the poor areas of most towns and cities and are
lacking entirely in most villages. As a result, many
Indians suffer and even die from diarrhea, malaria,
typhoid, and cholera. India has succeeded in eradicating
smallpox and has brought down the overall death rate,
in significant part by investing in a health-care
system that includes hospitals, clinics, and drug
manufacture and distribution. By the mid-1990s acquired
immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) emerged as a serious
problem. To combat the disease, the Indian government,
with help from volunteer groups, established a vigorous
AIDS-awareness program.
Part
of the problem of disease and poverty in villages
is that poor people cannot afford the money and time
it takes to provide treatment for their children,
many of whom are already weakened by an inadequate
diet. Girls of all classes are given less medical
care than their brothers and so die in greater numbers.
Many parents prefer sons, who remain with them and
provide security for them in old age. Because daughters
often require a dowry at marriage and are unlikely
to earn an income that could raise a family’s
economic position, they are seen as a liability. The
spread of family planning facilities and the increase
in confidence that children would survive to adulthood
has helped reduce the preferred family size to just
three children: two sons and a daughter. Second- and
third-born daughters, especially in families without
sons, continue to die at rates greater than average.
Discrimination
against women does not end with childhood, nor is
it confined to the countryside. Although India has
had a woman as prime minister, the percentage of women
serving in political or administrative office still
remains very low. Some women are major leaders of
grassroots movements, and women play an active role
in India’s vigorous press. Yet women are rare
in senior business positions and in the legal and
medical professions. Women’s movements to combat
violence against women have had considerable success
in raising awareness of the issue and stimulating
government action.
Discrimination
against lower caste members, including the Harijans
or former Untouchables, is still a problem in India.
As a result violence between castes sometimes breaks
out. Since independence, many lower caste groups have
mobilized politically and have achieved positions
of power or leverage in several states. More than
50 percent of the positions in the national civil
service are reserved for members of lower castes.
Efforts to organize the landless and the homeless,
however, have not enjoyed the same success. In rural
areas, men of lower caste traditionally serve those
of higher caste. This situation has aggravated caste
conflict and has helped to keep the poor politically
and socially weak.
Relations
between Hindus and Muslims have also been problematic.
After the partition of British India into India and
Pakistan, Muslims of the northern provinces who stayed
in India—where they were a minority—became
vulnerable. Riots between Hindus and Muslims have
occurred on occasion since the mid-1960s. Muslims
in rural areas remain largely untouched by the conflict.
Riots tend not to occur in areas where there are structures
of mutual social or economic advantage—for example,
in towns with a large industry owned by Hindus and
employing Muslims. Also, at the personal level, there
are many examples of friendships and mutual respect.
Muslim leaders have served as presidents of India,
and Muslims have held positions of great prominence
in all fields, including the military.
Music
and dance are performed in temples, at festivals,
and at ceremonial functions at home.
Modern
literature in north Indian languages, as they developed
from Prakrits (medieval dialects of Sanskrit), dates
from around ad 1200. Themes and characters of Indian
literature from this period are based on Hindu religious
texts, although the texts contain secular content.
The work of recent centuries has brought in more secular
subjects, influenced first by Persian and Urdu literature
and then British literature, especially of the 19th
century. In 1913 poet Rabindrinath Tagore became the
first Indian to win a Nobel Prize for literature.
Some present-day Indian authors write in English.
Over
many centuries, Indian architecture, sculpture, and
painting developed many distinct styles based on religious,
cultural, and regional influences.
Muslim
invaders from Central Asia and Persia brought new
artistic styles and techniques, among them the dome,
mosaic, and minaret. Many domed tombs and mosques
from the 12th century and later have been preserved,
as have some magnificent fortresses. Because Islam
forbids carved images, sculpture took the form of
gloriously elaborate geometric and floral designs
adorning the temples. One of the most famous examples
of Islamic architecture in India is the Taj Mahal
in Agra (started in 1632 and completed in 1648).
Beginning
in the 19th century, European influence affected all
of the arts. Twentieth-century artists of significance
include Amrita Sher Gill and M. F. Hussain. The best-known
architect, who works in the international modern style,
is Charles Correa.
The
basic structure of music and dance in India has been
fundamentally indigenous, laid out in a 2nd century
ad Sanskrit treatise on drama and music, the Natya
Shastra. There are two classical traditions of music:
the North Indian Hindustani style and the South Indian
Carnatic (Karnatak) style. Although both styles of
music were influenced by bhakti (devotional) traditions,
the Hindustani style was also influenced in its instruments,
styles, and schools of performance by Muslims invading
from the north. Modern classical musicians of note
include M. S. Subbalakshmi, a vocalist; Palghat Mani
Iyer, a drum performer; Ravi Shankar, a sitar (stringed
instrument) performer; Ali Akbar Khan, a sarod (plucked
string instrument) performer; Bismillah Khan, a shehnai
(reed instrument) performer; Amir Khan, who performs
khyal (a north Indian vocal style); and the Dagar
brothers, who perform dhrupad (another north Indian
vocal style).
Dance
is a highly developed art form in India and is important
as a pastime, in worship, and as part of Sanskrit
dramas. The major classical dance forms are bharata
natyam, kathak, manipuri, and kathakali. Bharata natyam,
which is based on the Natya Shastra, is probably the
most significant of these forms. It incorporates many
of the precise movements, hand gestures, and facial
expressions for which Indian dance is famous. Each
movement and gesture the dancer performs has its own
meaning. The kathak dance style originated in north
India and emphasizes rhythmic footwork (under the
weight of more than 100 ankle bells) and spectacular
spins. The manipuri dance form, which is named for
Manipur, where it originated, is known for its graceful
turning and swaying. The kathakali form is a dance
drama, characterized by mime and facial makeup resembling
masks.
Well-known
dancers of the postindependence era include Balasaraswati,
who performed the bharata natyam form of dance, and
Pandit Birju Maharaj, who performed the kathak form.
In India, European style has influenced only popular
music and dance, not classical.
India
has had a distinguished theatrical tradition for more
than a thousand years. Theater has been eclipsed by
the cinema and more recently by television.
India
produces more films annually than any other country.
Indian film is a significant cultural export to Central
Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.
Even
within the popular genre, there have been films with
political and humanistic messages. Perhaps best known
in this genre is Satyajit Ray, whose “Apu trilogy”—Pather
Panchali (1955, Song of the Road), Aparajito (1957,
The Unvanquished), and Apur Sansar (1959, The World
of Apu)—established him as one of the world’s
leading filmmakers. Recent alternative cinema, supported
largely by government subsidies, has only gathered
a small, elite audience. Television entertainment
in India includes situation comedies (sitcoms), domestic
melodramas, and occasionally multiepisode Hindu epics.
India
has more than 60,000 libraries, including more than
1,000 specialized ones attached to various government
departments, universities, and institutions. The National
Library in Kolkata receives all books and magazines
published in India. The National Archives and the
Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Library and Museum are located
in New Delhi. The Delhi Public Library is considered
one of the best in India.
India
has more than 460 museums. Some of them contain important
historical and archaeological collections, such as
the Indian Museum in Kolkata, the Government Museum
and National Art Gallery in Chennai, the Prince of
Wales Museum in Mumbai, and the National Museum in
New Delhi. Rich collections of sculptures, miniature
paintings, and other historical and archaeological
treasures are housed in museums in Mathura and Varanasi,
and in several locations associated with archaeological
sites. The Calico Museum of Textiles in Ahmadabad
and the Crafts Museum in New Delhi have outstanding
collections of Indian textiles. The Crafts Museum
also houses a spectacular collection of folk art from
all over the country. European art of the 19th century
is a special feature of the Victoria Memorial in Kolkata.
The National Gallery of Modern Art is in New Delhi.
