India
POPULATION 1,045,845,226
HINDU 80 percent
MUSLIM 14 percent
CHRISTIAN 2.4 percent
SIKH 2 percent
BUDDHIST 0.7 percent
JAIN 0.5 percent
OTHER 0.4 percent
Country Overview
Introduction
The Republic of India is situated in the Indian subcontinent in South Asia. It is bordered to the north and northeast by China, Nepal, and Bhutan; to the west by Pakistan and the Arabian Sea; to the east by Bangladesh, Myanmar, and the Bay of Bengal; and to the south by the Indian Ocean. The Indo-Gangetic plain and the Himalayas are the birthplace of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. With well over 800 million adherents Hinduism is by far the most widely practiced religion in India. Buddhism and Jainism arose in the sixth century B.C.E. in North India. Buddhism spread first to Sri Lanka and then by various routes to Southeast Asia, China, and Japan, and today the majority of Buddhists live outside of India. Sikhism originated in northwestern India in the late fifteenth century.
Islam, with more than 100 million followers in contemporary India, arrived in waves from the Arabian Peninsula, Central Asia, and Afghanistan, beginning in the eighth century. The earliest Muslims to arrive in India came via the Arabian Sea. From the tenth to the eighteenth centuries Islamic peoples crossed the Himalayas from the northwest (primarily through the Khyber Pass) into North India.
This is a free page. This page contains 201 words. This
article contains 8,013 words (approx. 27 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Article with our India Access Pass.
