History Of India Facts, Timelines, Events, Personalities & Culture

Indian pilots associations and Sabharwal’s family have criticised what they see as an attempt to pin the blame; and have called for more scrutiny on the aircraft maker, the airline and other factors too. The news report said the Indian investigators are preparing to state in their final probe report that Air India Flight 171 crashed because one of the pilots turned off the aircraft’s fuel switches in an act that was “almost certainly” intentional. It came days after Trump wished PM Modi on his birthday on September 17, as India-US ties slowly came back on track. Trump, being Trump, boasted even though India denied any such concrete assurance. The eccentric US President made the remarks on October 15, 2025, as he lavished praise on PM Modi after he claimed that India assured the US on halting oil purchases from Russia.

As a rising economic powerhouse and nuclear-armed state, India has emerged as an important regional power. The new mountains—together with vast amounts of sediment eroded from them—were so heavy that the Indian-Australian Plate just south of the range was forced downward, creating a zone of crustal subsidence. When the two finally collided (approximately 50 million years ago), the northern edge of the Indian-Australian Plate was thrust under the Eurasian Plate at a low angle. Apart from its many religions and sects, India is home to innumerable castes and tribes, as well as to more than a dozen major and hundreds of minor linguistic groups from several language families unrelated to one another.

Because of some of India’s deserts, the entire country gets rain for four months of the year. The BET 365 Himalayas block cold Central Asian winds from blowing into the Indian subcontinent. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a union territory of India, is near Thailand, Indonesia and Myanmar. It is the main part of the Indian subcontinent.

Government clears procurement of 114 Rafale jets

According to an Indian government study, an additional 21 million girls are unwanted and do not receive adequate care. With an estimated 1,428,627,663 residents in 2023, India is the world’s most populous country. The country’s usage of coal is a major cause of India’s greenhouse gas emissions, but its renewable energy is growing. In 2022, India became the world’s third-largest vehicle market after China and the United States, surpassing Japan.

In the early 1900s, millions of people peacefully started to protest against British rule. British Colonial exploitation resulted in the deaths of millions of Indians due to starvation and famine. In the 1600s, India came under European colonization, and by 1856 the British controlled most of India. As Mughal rule weakened other empires like the Maratha empire and Sikh empire replaced it. The influence of Cholas are still noticeable in Southeast Asia.

Hindi language protagonists wanted Hindi in the Devanagari script to be the sole “national language” of India whereas delegates from South India preferred English to have a place in the Constitution. The official language of India’s federal government was chosen by the Constituent Assembly of India in September 1949 after three years of debate between two opposing camps. Female infanticide in India, and lately female foeticide, have created lop-sided gender ratios; the number of missing women in the country quadrupled from 15 million to 63 million during the period 1964–2014, faster than the population growth during the same period.

Mechuka is often referred to as the ‘Last Shangri-La’ of India due to its remote location and pristine natural beauty. Standing as the highest waterfall in Mizoram and the 13th highest in India, Vantawng Waterfalls captivates visitors with its magnificence. The Neermahal is one of the only two water palaces in India. The Kachari Ruins are mysterious mushroom-domed pillars built by the Dimasa Kachari Kingdoms before the Ahom invasion in the 13th century. The Cochin International Airport is the first in the world to operate solely on solar energy. Hampi Bazar was a street market that served as a ‘mall’ for the Vijayanagar empire.

In terms of PPP, the economy is 3rd largest (worth US$8.720 trillion). It is the 7th largest in the world with a nominal GDP of $2,250 billion (USD). India’s economy is among the world’s fastest growing. Neither mainland China nor Taiwan recognize that Arunachal Pradesh belongs to India.

Among them Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad, in decreasing order by population. In the 2011 census, there were 53 million-plus urban agglomerations in India. The slowing down of the overall population growth rate was due to the sharp decline in the growth rate in rural areas since 1991.

• The Indian subcontinent is the second most diverse region after Africa.
• Over one quarter of the population (27.5%) was living in poverty in 2004–2005.
• The Mughal state’s economic policies, deriving most revenues from agriculture and mandating that taxes be paid in the well-regulated silver currency, caused peasants and artisans to enter larger markets.
• In the 16th century India came under Mughal rule.

This risked damaging the image of a country investing heavily in air transport, tourism and trade, it quoted sources as saying. On a day when the Supreme Court of India sought a progress report on the probe into an Air India plane’s June 2025 crash in Ahmedabad — 260 people were killed — an Italian newspaper came out with new claims citing sources in aviation agencies. Cut back to February 2026, India and the US have now agreed to a trade deal, and ties are firmly on an upswing.

Union territories

Rice was partially cooked and layered alternately with sauteed meat, the pot sealed tightly, and slow cooked according to another Persian cooking technique, to produce biryani, a feature of festive dining in many parts of India. The most significant import of cooking techniques into India during the last millennium occurred during the Mughal Empire, spreading into northern India from regions to its northwest, along with dishes such as pilaf. India has distinctive vegetarian cuisines, each a feature of the geographical and cultural histories of its adherents. The foundation of a typical Indian meal is a cereal cooked plainly and complemented with savoury dishes. Increasingly, in urban northern India, the sari is no longer the apparel of everyday wear, though they remain popular on formal occasions. It is also commonly worn with an Indian blouse, or choli, which serves as the primary upper-body garment, the sari’s end—passing over the shoulder—covering the midriff and obscuring the upper body’s contours.

The Indian climate is strongly influenced by the Himalayas and the Thar Desert, both of which drive the economically and culturally pivotal summer and winter monsoons. Coastal features include the marshy Rann of Kutch of western India and the alluvial Sundarbans delta of eastern India; the latter is shared with Bangladesh. Constituted in such fashion, India lies to the north of the equator between 6° 44′ and 35° 30′ north latitudes and 68° 7′ and 97° 25′ east longitude. The original Indian plate makes its first appearance above the sediment in the ancient Aravalli range, which extends from the Delhi Ridge in a southwesterly direction.

India is the world’s fourth-largest economy with the world’s largest population, yet EU exports to India remain relatively low, compared to our exports elsewhere. The agreement will give EU companies privileged access to the world’s most populous country (nearly 1.5 billion people) and the fourth largest economy. Together, the EU and India represent around a quarter of the world’s population, with two billion people, and about 25% of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP). The British administered India for a period of about two centuries and brought about revolutionary changes in the social, political and the economic life of the country. Mr Modi is only the second Indian leader to win a third consecutive term after the country’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. India is the world’s largest democracy and, according to UN estimates, its population is expected to overtake China’s in 2028 to become the world’s most populous nation.

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. These cultures gradually evolved into the Indus Valley Civilisation, which flourished during 2500–1900 BCE in Pakistan and western India.

The railway network provided critical famine relief, notably reduced the cost of moving goods, and helped nascent Indian-owned industry. There was an increase in the number of large-scale famines, and, despite the risks of infrastructure development borne by Indian taxpayers, little industrial employment was generated for Indians. In the decades following, public life gradually emerged all over India, leading eventually to the founding of the Indian National Congress in 1885. Fed by diverse resentments and perceptions, including invasive British-style social reforms, harsh land taxes, and summary treatment of some wealthy landowners and princes, the rebellion rocked many regions of northern and central India and shook the foundations of Company rule. Disaffection with the company also grew during this time and set off the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

Hindi and English are official languages of India. In the west is the Arabian Sea, in the south is the Indian Ocean, and in the east is the Bay of Bengal. One of the oldest languages in the world, Tamil, developed in South India more than 3000 years ago. It is used in different Indian languages in different forms.

India contains 172 IUCN-designated threatened animal species, or 2.9% of endangered forms. This lowered endemism among India’s mammals, which stands at 12.6%, contrasting with 45.8% among reptiles and 55.8% among amphibians. Still later, mammals entered India from Asia through two zoogeographic passes flanking the Himalayas. However, volcanism and climatic changes later caused the extinction of many endemic Indian forms. Moderately dense forest, whose canopy density is between 40% and 70%, occupies 9.39% of India’s land area. India also contains four of the world’s 34 biodiversity hotspots, or regions that display significant habitat loss in the presence of high endemism.t

The number of people living in urban areas grew by 31.2% between 1991 and 2001. Migration from rural to urban areas has been an important dynamic in India’s recent history. Despite a government ban on sex-selective foeticide, the practice has far from stopped. The under-five mortality rate for the country was 113 per 1,000 live births in 1994 whereas in 2018 it reduced to 41.1 per 1,000 live births. The first post-colonial census, conducted in 1951, counted 361 million people. Increasing access to electricity and clean cooking with liquefied petroleum gas have been priorities for energy in India.

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. V. Narasimha Rao, formed a minority government which served a full five-year term.