The Republic of India is a country in south Asia. It has a total area of 3,287,590 km2. The climate varies from tropical monsoon in the south to temperate in the north. The terrain is upland plains in the south, flat to rolling plains along the Ganges, deserts in the west and the Himalayas in the north. Natural resources are coal, iron ore, manganese, mica, bauxite, titaniumore, comite, natural gas, diamonds, crude oil and limestone. The religion is 82.6% Hindu, 11.4% Muslim, 2.4% Christian, 2.0% Sikh, 0.7% Buddhist, 0.5% Jains, 0.4% other. The language is Hindi, English, and 14 other official languages: Bengali, Telgu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Assamese, Kashmiri, Sindhi, and Sanskrit; 24 languages spoken by a million or more people and over 1000 other languages and dialects are spoken. Hindi is the national language and primary tongue of 30% of the people; English is the most important language for national, political, and commercial communication; Hindustani is spoken widely
throughout northern India. From 1858 to 1947 India was ruled by Britain, becoming independent in 1947. Research India
Abbreviations
Gazetteer
Research India