The name of the India is derived from the Indus River, which
is derived from the ancient Persian word Hindu, Sanskrit Sindhu,
the local historic designation for the river Indus. The ancient
Greeks referred to the ancient Indians as Indoi, the people
of the Indus. The Constitution of India and common usage in
various Indian languages Bharat also recognize as an official
name of equal status. Hindustan which is the Persian word
for Land of Hindus and historically referred to in the north
of India is also sometimes used as a synonym for all of India.
India is a sovereign country in South Asia. It is the seventh
largest country by area, the second most populated country
and the most populous democracy in the world. Delimited by
the Indian Ocean to the south, the Arabian Sea to the west
and the Bay of Bengal to the east, India has a coastline of
7517 km. It is bordered to the west of Pakistan, 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, the Maldives and Indonesia.
Home of the Indus valley civilization and the history of a region
of trade routes and vast empires, the Indian subcontinent was
identified by its rich culture and trade for much of its long
history. Four major world religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism
and Sikhism originated here, as Islam, Christianity, Judaism
and Zoroastrianism arrived in the first millennium CE and the
region a diverse culture. Gradually annexed by the British East
India Company in the early eighteenth century and colonized
by the United Kingdom since the mid-nineteenth century, India
has become a modern state in 1947, after a struggle for independence
was marked by extensive use of nonviolent resistance as a means
of social protest. Although India is the world's fourth largest
economy in purchasing power and the twelfth largest economy
at market exchange rates, it suffers from high levels of poverty
and illiteracy, the persistence of malnutrition , the degradation
of the environment. A pluralistic, multi-lingual, multi-ethnic
and society, India is also home to a diversity of wildlife in
a variety of habitats protected..
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