Fact Sheet: The United States and India Announce Historic Trade Deal

Yet social legislation has done much to alleviate the disabilities previously suffered by formerly “untouchable” castes, tribal populations, women, and other traditionally disadvantaged segments of society. Earnest attempts have been made to instill a spirit of nationhood in so varied a population, but tensions between neighboring groups have remained and at times have resulted in outbreaks of violence. Religious minorities, including Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jains, still account for a significant proportion of the population. As a result of the Indian Independence Movement, British rule came to an end on August 14-15, 1947, celebrated annually as Independence Day. Especially important was the coming of Islam, brought from the northwest by Arab, Turkish, Persian, and other raiders beginning early in the 8th century ce.

After losing the majority in the 2024 general election, the BJP formed a coalition government with its NDA partners. Singh became the first prime minister to be re-elected after Jawaharlal Nehru in 1962. Congress emerged as the largest single party and formed a coalition, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA). United Front coalition governments followed, which relied on external political support, H. In 1996, the BJP briefly formed a government after winning the general election.

Sri Venkateswara Swamy Vaari Temple

Several modern religions are linked to India, namely modern Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism. Cave paintings from the Stone Age are found across India. In the north, many people speak Punjabi, Bengali, Gujarati, and Marathi, Odia, and Maithili. There may be as many as 1,652 different dialects in India. It has the status of a ‘subsidiary official language’. About Bet 365 65% of Indians live in rural areas, or land set aside for farming.

In 2022, India became the world’s third-largest vehicle market after China and the United States, surpassing Japan. India’s nominal GDP per capita increased steadily from US$308 in 1991, when economic liberalisation began, to US$1,380 in 2010, to an estimated US$2,731 in 2024. India was the world’s second-largest textile exporter after China in the 2013 calendar year. In 2006, the share of external trade in India’s GDP stood at 24%, up from 6% in 1985.

• It is now generally accepted that India’s geographic position, continental outline, and basic geologic structure resulted from a process of plate tectonics—the shifting of enormous, rigid crustal plates over the Earth’s underlying layer of molten material.
• In the 2011 census, there were 53 million-plus urban agglomerations in India.
• It has the power to both strike down union or state laws which contravene the constitution and invalidate any government action it deems unconstitutional.
• In the early 1900s, millions of people peacefully started to protest against British rule.

Jammu and Kashmir

The sultanate’s raiding and weakening of the regional kingdoms of South India paved the way for the indigenous Vijayanagara Empire. The sultanate was to control much of North India and to make many forays into South India. After the 10th century, Muslim Central Asian nomadic clans, using swift-horse cavalry and raising vast armies united by ethnicity, repeatedly overran South Asia’s north-western plains,r leading eventually to the establishment of the Islamic Delhi Sultanate in 1206. Temple towns of various sizes began to appear everywhere as India underwent another urbanisation.

The Indian early medieval age, from 600 to 1200 CE, was defined by regional kingdoms and cultural diversity. By the 4th and 5th centuries, the Gupta Empire had created a complex system of administration and taxation in the greater Ganges Plain; this system became a model for later Indian kingdoms. Chronicling the life of the Buddha was central to the beginnings of recorded history in India. By living ethically, lay people could rise socially and morally in these religions. The settlement may have involved driving the preexisting people out or enslaving them.

Hindi became the official language (and a number of other local languages achieved official status), while a vibrant English-language intelligentsia thrived. Many British institutions stayed in place (such as the parliamentary system of government); English continued to be a widely used lingua franca; and India remained within the Commonwealth. Direct administration by the British, which began in 1858, effected a political and economic unification of the subcontinent. Eventually, some of those raiders stayed; by the 13th century much of the subcontinent was under Muslim rule, and the number of Muslims steadily increased.

Simultaneously, the vast Tethyan oceanic crust, to its northeast, began to subduct under the Eurasian Plate. India accounts for the bulk of the Indian subcontinent, lying atop the Indian tectonic plate, and a part of the Indo-Australian Plate. The rush of technology and the commercialisation of agriculture in the second half of the 19th century was marked by economic setbacks, and many small farmers became dependent on the whims of faraway markets. After the rebellion was suppressed in 1858, the East India Company was disbanded, and the British government began to directly administer India. By this time, with its economic power severely curtailed by the British parliament and having effectively been made an arm of British administration, the East India Company began more consciously to enter non-economic arenas, including education, social reform, and culture.

The 522-million-worker Indian labour force is the world’s second largest, as of 2017update. Since the end of the Cold War, India has increased its economic, strategic, and military cooperation with the United States and the European Union. After the 1965 war, India began to pursue close military and economic ties with the Soviet Union. The remaining five union territories are directly ruled by the central government through appointed administrators. All states, as well as the union territories of Jammu and Kashmir, Puducherry and the National Capital Territory of Delhi, have elected legislatures and governments following the Westminster system.