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Religion, caste, and language are major determinants of social and political organization in India today. The government has recognized 18 languages as official; Hindi is the most widely spoken.
Although 80% of the people are Hindu, India also is the home of more than 120 million Muslims--one of the world's largest Muslim populations. The population also includes Christians, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, and Parsis.
The caste system reflects Indian occupational and socio-religiously defined hierarchies. Traditionally, there are four broad categories of castes (varnas), including a category of outcastes, earlier called " untouchablesThere are several possible contexts of the word "Untouchables": For the untouchable caste, see untouchable. For the real and fictionalized memoirs of Eliot Ness, see The Untouchables. For the Korn album, see Untouchables (album)." but now commonly referred to as " dalits." Within these broad categories there are thousands of castes and subcastes , whose relative status varies from region to region. Despite economic modernization and laws countering discrimination against the lower end of the class structure, the caste system remains an important source of social identification for most Hindus and many non-Hindus as well, thus making it a potent factor in the political life of the country.
Population: 1,049,700,118 (Jul 2003 Est)
Age structure:
0-14 years:
32.2% (male 173,973,350; female 163,979,116)
15-64 years:
63% (male 342,620,712; female 319,259,867)
65 years and over:
4.8% (male 25,281,756; female 24,585,317) (2003 est.)
Population growth rate: 1.47% (2003 est.)
Birth rate: 23.28 births/1,000 population (2003 est.)
Death rate: 8.49 deaths/1,000 population (2003 est.)
Net migration rate: -0.07 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2003 est.)
Sex ratio:
at birth:
1.05 male(s)/female
under 15 years:
1.06 male(s)/female
15-64 years:
1.07 male(s)/female
65 years and over:
1.03 male(s)/female
total population:
1.07 male(s)/female (2000 est.)
Infant mortality rate: total: 59.59 deaths/1,000 live births female: 58.93 deaths/1,000 live births (2003 est.) male: 60.23 deaths/1,000 live births
Life expectancyIn demography, life expectancy is a statistical measure of the average, or mathematical expected value, of the remaining lifetime of an individual in the given group. For non-human organisms the term lifespan is often used to indicate the average length o at birth:
total population:
63.62 years
male:
62.92 years
female:
64.37 years (2003 est.)
Total fertility rate: 2.91 children born/woman (2003 est.)
Nationality:
noun:
Indian(s)
adjective:
Indian
Ethnic groups:
Indo-Aryan 72%, DravidianDravidian may refer to: in the spiritualistic interpretations: the people who serve the dark, anti-divine forces (as opposed to the Aryan people) in the materialistic interpretations: A large family of languages spoken especially in southern India and nor 25%, MongoloidThe term Mongoloid describes a proposed race of humans, most of whom live in Asia and the Pacific Rim. The grouping was one of the four major races recognized by Nineteenth Century racial theories. Epicanthal folds and oblique palpable fissures are common and other 3%Religions: Hindu 80%, Muslim 13.4%, Christian 2.3%, Sikh 1.9%, Others 2.5% (2001)
Languages:
EnglishThe English language is a West Germanic language, originating from England. It is the third most common "first" language (native speakers), with around 402 million people in 2002. English has lingua franca status in many parts of the world, due to the mil enjoys associate status but is the most important language for national, political, and commercial communication, Hindi is the primary Official language of the Indian government and primary tongue of 30% of the people. Among the other major languages, Telugu (second highest spoken language in India), Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi and Tamil all have about 50 million or more speakers within the boundaries of India (with more living in other countries). There are 22 languages recognised by the Indian Constitution - Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri , Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santhali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu.