1. India is the largest democracy in the world.
2. India is the seventh largest country in the world, at 1.27 million square miles.
3. India is about 1/3 the size of the United States, yet it is the second most populous country in the world.
4. More than a million Indians are millionaires, yet most Indians live on less than two dollars a day. An estimated 35% of India’s population lives below the poverty line.
5. Cows can be found freely wandering the streets of India’s cities. They are considered sacred and will often wear a tilak, a Hindu symbol of good fortune. Cows are considered one of humankind’s seven mothers because they offer milk as does one’s natural mother.
6. India is the birthplace of chess.
7. The Indian flag has three horizontal bands of color: saffron for courage and sacrifice, white for truth and peace, and green for faith, fertility, and chivalry. An emblem of a wheel spinning used to be in the center of the white band, but when India gained independence, a Buddhist dharma chakra, or wheel of life, replaced the spinning wheel
8. Indians made significant contributions to calculus, trigonometry, and algebra. The decimal system was invented in India in 100 B.C. The concept of zero as a number is also attributed to India.
9. The Kumbh Mela (or Grand Pitcher Festival) is a huge Hindu religious festival that takes place in India every 12 years. In 2001, 60 million people attended, breaking the record for the world’s biggest gathering. The mass of people was photographed from space by a satellite.
10. India is the world’s largest producer of dried beans, such as kidney beans and chickpeas. It also leads the world in banana exports; Brazil is second
11. Indians hold prominent places both internationally and in the United States. For example, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems (Vinod Khosla), the creator of the Pentium chip (Vinod Dahm), the founder/creator of Hotmail (Sabeer Bhatia), and the GM of Hewlett-Packard (Rajiv Gupta) are all Indian.
12. Every major world religion is represented in India. Additionally, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism all originated in India.
13. Bengal tigers live in India and are sometimes called Indian tigers.
14. The Bengal tiger is India’s national animal. It was once ubiquitous throughout the country, but now there are fewer than 4,000 wild tigers left.
15. The British Raj, or British rule, lasted from 1858 to 1947 (although they had a strong presence in India since the 1700s). British influence is still seen in Indian architecture, education system, transportation, and politics. Many of India’s worst famines are associated with British rule in India.
16. India has the world’s largest movie industry, based in the city of Mumbai (known as the “City of Dreams”). The B in “Bollywood” comes from Bombay, the former name for Mumbai. Almost all Bollywood movies are musicals. The term "Bollywod" refers to just a part of the larger Indian film industry, which includes other film companies operating in other languages.
17. Mumbai (Bombay) is India’s largest city, with a population of 15 million. In 1661, British engineers built a causeway uniting all seven original islands of Bombay into a single landmass.
18. Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948) is known around the world as Mahatma, which is an honorific title meaning “Great Soul” in the ancient Indian language of Sanskrit. He devoted his life to free India from British rule peacefully and based his campaign on civil disobedience. His birthday, October 2, is a national holiday. He was assassinated in 1948.
19. The lotus is sacred to both Hindus and Buddhists. The Bahá’í house of worship in Delhi, known as the “Lotus Temple,” is shaped like a lotus flower with 27 gigantic “petals” that are covered in marble.
20. The banyan, or Indian fig tree, is considered a symbol of immortality and is mentioned in many Indian myths and legends. This self-renewing plant is India’s national tree.
21. Introduced by the British, cricket is India’s most popular sport. Hockey is considered the national sport, and the Indian field hockey team proudly won Olympic gold in 1928
22. Marigold flowers are used as decoration for Hindu marriages and are a symbol of good fortune and happiness
23. The official name of India is the Republic of India. The name "India" is the corruption of the word Sindhu. Because neighboring Persians and Arabs pronounced "s" as "h" they called the land Hindu. The Greeks called it Indus. Sindhu is the name of the Indus River, which was mentioned in the Rig-Veda, one of the oldest existing Indo-European texts.
24. The national fruit of India is the mango. The national bird is the peacock, which was initially bred for food.
25. Most historians agree that the first recorded account of plastic surgery is found in ancient Indian Sanskrit texts.
26. Hindi and English are the official languages of India. The government also recognizes 17 other languages (Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Nepali, Manipuri, Konkani, Kannada, Kashmiri, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu). Apart from these languages, about 1,652 dialects are spoken in the country.
27. Rivers have played a vital role in India’s popular culture and folklore—they have been worshipped as goddesses because they bring water to an otherwise dry land. Bathing in the Ganges in particular is thought to take away a person’s sins. It is not unusual to spread a loved one’s ashes in the Ganges.
28. India’s pastoral communities are largely dependent on dairy and have made India the largest milk-producing country in the world.
29. The carvings range from self-pleasuring acts to sexual orgies to bestiality
30. The temples of Khajuraho are famous for their erotic sculptures and are one of the most popular tourist attractions in India. Scholars still debate the purpose of such explicit portrayals of sexual intercourse, which sometimes involve animals.
31. India has the world’s third largest road network at 1.9 million miles. It also has the world’s second largest rail network, which is the world’s largest civilian employer with 16 million workers.
32. Raziya Sultana (1205-1240) was the first woman leader of India. She was considered a great leader, though she ruled for only three years before being murdered.
33. It is traditional to wear white, not black, to a funeral in India. Widows will often wear white in contrast to the colorful clothes of married or single women.
34. All of India is under a single time zone.
35. On India’s Independence Day, August 15, 1947, the country was split into India and Pakistan. The partition displaced 1.27 million people and resulted in the death of several hundred thousand to a million people
36. In recent years, Indian authors have made a mark on the world with such novels as Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses (1988), Vikram Seth’s Suitable Boy (1993), and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things (1997).
37. The Taj Mahal (“crown palace”) was built by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan (1592-1666) for his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal (1593-1631). This architectural beauty has been called “marbled embroidery” for its intricate workmanship. It took 22,000 workmen 22 years to complete it.
38. Dancing is one of India’s most highly developed arts and was an integral part of worship in the inner shrines of every temple. It is notable for its expressive hand movements.
39. The origins of dance in India go back into the ancient times
40. India experiences six seasons: summer, autumn, winter, spring, summer monsoon, and winter monsoon.
41. India is the world’s largest tea producer, and tea (chai) is its most popular beverage.
42. The first and greatest civilization in ancient India developed around the valley of the Indus River (now Pakistan) around 3000 B.C. Called the Indus Valley civilization, this early empire was larger than any other empire, including Egypt and Mesopotamia
43. Alexander the Great invaded India partly because he wanted to solve the mystery of the “ocean,” which he had been told was a huge, continuous sea that flowed in a circle around the land. When he reached the Indian Ocean, he sacrificed some bulls to Poseidon for leading him to his goal.
44. India produces 70% of the world's spices
45. Greek sculpture strongly influenced many portrayals of Indian gods and goddesses, particularly after the conquest of Alexander the Great around 330 B.C. In fact, early Indian gods had Greek features and only later did distinct Indian styles emerge.
46. London has more Indian restaurants than Mumbai or Delhi. Britain also has the largest Indian restaurant in the world, The Aakash, which can seat up to 750 people in one sitting.
47. It is illegal for foreigners to import or export Indian currency (rupees).
48. India is home to the world's biggest family. A man named Ziona Chana has 39 wives, 94 children, and 33 grandchildren. They all live together in a 100-room mansion.
49. India has the lowest meat consumption per person in the world; Luxembourg eats the most.
50. Hinduism grew out of cultural and religious changes in India
51. The Golden Temple in India feeds a vegetarian meal to over 100,000 people a day regardless of race, religion and class.