India to get additional 114 Rafale jets as DAC clears proposals for 3 60 lakh crore India News

Chronicling the life of the Buddha was central to the beginnings of recorded history in India. A second urbanisation had Bet 365 India taken place in South Asia by 400 BCE, this time on the Ganges plain. The settling of the Ganges river plain took place during the next millennium, when large swathes of the river system’s adjoining regions were deforested, at times by setting fires, or later by employing iron implements, and prepared for agriculture. Between 1500 BCE and 1200 BCE, an archaic form of Sanskrit, an Indo-European language, diffused into India from the northwest. Evidence for the neolithic period in the western margins of the Indus river basin, at Mehrgarh in Balochistan, Pakistan, dates to after 7000 BCE.

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. 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. In the decades following, public life gradually emerged all over India, leading eventually to the founding of the Indian National Congress in 1885.

In spite of this complex mixture of religious traditions, generally, the prevailing artistic style at any time and place has been shared by the major religious groups, and sculptors probably usually served all communities. Over the following centuries a distinctly Indian style of sculpting the human figure developed, with less interest in articulating precise anatomy than ancient Greek sculpture but showing smoothly flowing forms expressing prana (“breath” or life-force). Almost all surviving ancient Indian art thereafter is in various forms of religious sculpture in durable materials, or coins. Many women marry before reaching 18, which is their legal marriageable age; child marriages are not uncommon, especially in rural areas. A very large majority of Indians have their marriages arranged by their parents or family elders. Multi-generational patrilineal joint families have been the norm in India, though nuclear families are becoming common in urban areas.

India maintains a “no first use” nuclear policy and is developing a nuclear triad capability as a part of its “Minimum Credible Deterrence” doctrine. India has signed neither the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty nor the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, considering both to be flawed and discriminatory. India conducted its first nuclear weapons test in 1974 and carried out additional underground testing in 1998. China’s nuclear test of 1964 and threats to intervene in support of Pakistan in the 1965 war caused India to produce nuclear weapons.

What countries border India?

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. 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.

• Still later, mammals entered India from Asia through two zoogeographic passes flanking the Himalayas.
• India was the world’s second-largest textile exporter after China in the 2013 calendar year.
• It is designed, developed, and maintained by the National Informatics Centre (NIC), under the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, Government of India.
• According to the International Monetary Fund, the Indian economy in 2024 was nominally worth $3.94 trillion; it is the fifth-largest economy by market exchange rates and, at around $15.0 trillion, the third-largest by purchasing power parity (PPP).
• Now, as per the latest pact, India has already offered duty concessions for imports of US extra-long staple cotton.

This came soon after Mustafizur Rahman was removed from the IPL 2026 without any reason, which further strained India-Bangladesh relations. The current situation started after Bangladesh refused to travel to India for their World Cup matches, citing security concerns. At the moment, there are positive hints regarding Pakistan playing their group-stage match against India in Colombo on February 15. India is one of the oldest civilizations in the world with a kaleidoscopic variety and rich cultural heritage. India and Pakistan go to war over East Pakistan, leading to the creation of Bangladesh. India is split into two nations at independence – Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan.

The relative peace maintained by the empire during much of the 17th century was a factor in India’s economic expansion, resulting in greater patronage of painting, literary forms, textiles, and architecture. Indian merchants, scholars, and sometimes armies were involved in this transmission; Southeast Asians took the initiative as well, with many sojourning in Indian seminaries and translating Buddhist and Hindu texts into their languages. The Dravidian languages of India were supplanted in the north, creating a broad language familiy-divide, with the Indo-Aryan languages being spoken mainly in the north and west, and the Dravidian in some parts of east India and most of the south. In the 1st millennium, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism became established on India’s southern and western coasts. This era was noted for creativity in art, architecture, and writing, but the status of women declined, and untouchability became an organised belief.l In South India, the Middle kingdoms exported Dravidian language scripts and religious cultures to the kingdoms of Southeast Asia.

What are the oldest known civilizations of India?

Indian mathematicians made early contributions to the study of the concept of zero as a number, negative numbers, arithmetic, and algebra. The decimal number system in use today was first recorded in Indian mathematics. In the classical period of Indian mathematics (400 CE to 1200 CE), important contributions were made by Aryabhata, Brahmagupta, Bhaskara II, Varāhamihira, and Madhava.

The Himalayas prevent cold Central Asian katabatic winds from blowing in, keeping the bulk of the Indian subcontinent warmer than most locations at similar latitudes. 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. 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.

The promulgation of the Indian constitution transformed India into a republic within the Commonwealth. An Indian institution recommended by the constitution is the panchayat or village committees. The federal structure was conspicuous for the strength of the central government, which exclusively exercised control of defence, foreign affairs, railways, ports, and currency.

Throughout India’s history, religion has been an important part of its culture. Religion in India is characterised by a diversity of beliefs and practices. This list includes major regional languages, but also others—such as Sanskrit, which no longer has first language speakers in India, and Urdu, which is not region-specific—because of their value to India’s cultural heritage. In 1965, when the 15 years were up, the Government of India announced that English would continue to be the “de facto formal language of India”.

In 2008, India’s share of world trade was 1.7%; in 2021, India was the world’s ninth-largest importer and the sixteenth-largest exporter. Until 1991, all Indian governments followed protectionist policies that were influenced by socialist economics. Since the end of the Cold War, India has increased its economic, strategic, and military cooperation with the United States and the European Union. The executive of the Indian government consists of the president, the vice-president, and the Union Council of Ministers—with the cabinet being its executive committee—headed by the prime minister.

Languages

Much of India’s territory lies within a large peninsula, surrounded by the Arabian Sea to the west and the Bay of Bengal to the east; Cape Comorin (Kanniyakumari), the southernmost point of the Indian mainland, marks the dividing line between those two bodies of water. The land of India—together with Bangladesh and most of Pakistan—forms a well-defined subcontinent, set off from the rest of Asia by the imposing northern mountain rampart of the Himalayas and by adjoining mountain ranges to the west and east. Though the country’s population remains largely rural, India has three of the most populous and cosmopolitan cities in the world—Mumbai (Bombay), Kolkata (Calcutta), and Delhi.

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. In its modern form, it is combined with an underskirt, or Indian petticoat, and tucked in along the waist band for more secure fastening. For women it took the form of a sari, a single piece of cloth many yards long.