India is about 1/3 the size of the United States, yet it is the second most populous country in the world, with a population of 1,166,079,217. India is the seventh largest country in the world, at 1.27 million square miles.g

India is the largest democracy in the world.i

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.c

Many Indians find toilet paper repellent and consider it cleaner to splash water with the left hand in the appropriate direction. Consequently, the left hand is considered unclean and is never used for eating.f

To avoid polluting the elements (fire, earth, water, air), followers of Zoroastrianism in India don’t bury their dead, but instead leave bodies in buildings called “Towers of Silence” for the vultures to pick clean. After the bones dry, they are swept into a central well.f

It is illegal to take Indian currency (rupees) out of India.f

It is illegal for foreigners to import or export Indian currency

(rupees)

India leads the world with the most murders (32,719), with Russia taking second at 28,904 murders per year.j

India has one of the world’s highest rates of abortion.e

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.l

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.k

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.f

Rabies is endemic in India. Additionally, “Delhi Belly” or diarrhea is commonplace due to contaminated drinking water.f

Many Indian wives will never say their husband’s name aloud, as it is a sign of disrespect. When addressing him, the wife will use several indirect references, such as “ji” or “look here” or “hello,” or even refer to him as the father of her child.f

A widow is considered bad luck—otherwise, her husband wouldn’t have died. Elderly women in the village might call a widow “the one who ate her husband.” In

some orthodox families, widows are not allowed near newlyweds or welcomed at social gatherings.b

India is the birthplace of chess.l The original word for “chess” is the Sanskrit chaturanga, meaning “four members of an army”—which were mostly likely elephants, horses, chariots, and foot soldiers.d

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.m

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.a

The earliest cotton in the world was spun and woven in India. Roman emperors would wear delicate cotton from India that they would call “woven winds.” Mogul emperors called the fabrics “morning dew” and “cloth of running water.”i

In ancient and medieval India, suttees, in which a recently widowed woman would immolate herself on her husband’s funeral pyre, were common.b

Khajuraho’s exotic art may suggest that sex was a step

for attaining ultimate liberation or moksha

The Himalayas—from the Sanskrit hima, meaning “snow,” and alaya, meaning “abode”—are found in the north of India. They extend 1,500 miles and are slowly growing taller, by almost an inch (2.5 cm) a year. Several ancient Indian monasteries are found nestled in the grandeur of these mountains.m

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.l

In India, the fold and color of clothing are viewed as important markers of social classification. Additionally, a woman will be viewed as either a prostitute or a holy person depending on the manner in which she parts her hair.k

With 150,000 post offices, India has the largest postal network in the world. However, it is not unusual for a letter to take two weeks to travel just 30 miles.f

In India, grasping one’s ears signifies repentance or sincerity.f

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.m

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.h

Alexander the Great of Macedon (356-323 B.C.) was one of the first important figures to bring India into contact with the West. After his death, a link between Europe and the East would not be restored until Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama (1460-1524) landed in Calicut, India, in 1498.l

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.i

Every major world religion is represented in India. Additionally, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism all originated in India.f

About 80% of Indians are Hindu. Muslims are the largest minority in India and form approximately 13% of the country’s population. In fact, India has the third largest population of Muslims in the world, after Indonesia and Pakistan.i

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.l

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.l

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.m

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.i

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.m

Marigold flowers are used as decoration for Hindu marriages and are a symbol of good fortune and happiness.i

The official name of India is the Republic of India. The name “India” derives from the River Indus, which most likely is derived from the Sanskrit sindhu, meaning

The Lotus temple is one of the most visited temples in the world, with over 50 million

visitors per year

“river.” The official Sanskrit name of India is Bharat, after the legendary king in the epic Mahabharata.m

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.i

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.m

The national fruit of India is the mango. The national bird is the peacock, which was initially bred for food.m

Most historians agree that the first recorded account of plastic surgery is found in ancient Indian Sanskrit texts.b

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.l

India’s pastoral communities are largely dependent on dairy and have made India the largest milk-producing country in the world.l

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.f

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.f

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.b

Most Indians rinse their hands, legs, and face before eating a meal. It is considered polite to eat with the right hand, and women eat after everyone is finished. Wasting food is considered a sin.i

During the Vedic era in India, horse sacrifice sanctioned the sovereignty of the king.a

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.k

All of India is under a single time zone.g

Though the Ganges is one of the dirtiest rivers in the world,

bathing in the river is thought to wash away

one’s sins

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.g

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).i

India experiences six seasons: summer, autumn, winter, spring, summer monsoon, and winter monsoon.m

India is the world’s largest tea producer, and tea (chai) is its most popular beverage.f

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.m

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.l

According to legend, to prevent the builders from ever replicating the beauty of the Taj Mahal, their hands

were cut off

After the great Indus Civilization collapsed in 2000 B.C., groups of Indo-Europeans called Aryans (“noble ones”) traveled to northwest India and reigned during what is called the Vedic age. The mingling of ideas from the Aryan and Indus Valley religions formed the basis of Hinduism, and the gods Shiva, Kali, and Brahma all have their roots in Aryan civilization. The Aryans also recorded the Vedas, the first Hindu scriptures, and introduced a caste system based on ethnicity and occupation.l

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.m

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.m

Chandragupta Maurya (340-290 B.C.), a leader in India who established the Mauryan Empire (321-185 B.C.), was guarded by a band of women on horseback.a

When the first independent prime minister of India, pacifist Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964), was featured in Vogue, his distinctive close fitting, single-breasted jacket briefly became an important fashion statement for the Mod movement in the West. Named the Nehru jacket, the

prime minister’s coat was popularized by the Beatles and worn by such famous people as Johnny Carson (1925-2005) and Sammy Davis Jr. (1925-1990)

1. Navi Mumbai, a planned satellite township of Mumbai, was developed in 1972 and is the largest planned township on the planet.

2. In 2004, 200 women took law in their own hands and came to the court armed with vegetable knives and chilli powder and murdered on the court floor a serial rapist. Then every woman claimed responsibility for the murder.

3. Nearly 10,000 crore of rupees were spent and 800 soldiers died in the war mobilization effort after the parliament attack.  Reportedly, over 100 children died and many farmers lost their livelihoods due to heavy mining in the border areas.

4. War of 27 years fought between the Maratha Empire and the Mughal Empire from 1681 to 1707 was the longest recorded military engagement in the history of India.

5. In 1955, Jawaharlal Nehru rejected an offer to India for a permanent UN Security Council seat to avoid being embroiled in the cold war politics.

 

6. Viswanathan Anand is first player in chess history to have won the World Championship in three different formats: knockout, tournament, and match.

7. India is one of only 3 remaining countries in the world to have a horsed cavalry regiment.

8. Agni III is the most accurate missile in the world in its range category and BrahMos is the fastest operational cruise missile in the world.

9. The process of crystallization of sugar from sugarcane juice was discovered in India in the Gupta period (350 AD).

10. Many tribes in India worship Asura and Ravan and consider Vijaya Dashami and Dussehra to be black days.

 

11. In 1928, when the Indian Hockey team was on its way to Amsterdam, they played a series of exhibition matches in England. Seeing its calibre, England decided not to field a team for the Olympics as “they did not want to lose to a slave country.”

12. Lonar Lake, a saltwater lake in Maharashtra, was created by a meteor hitting the Earth and is one of its kind in India.

13. Raj Kapoor’s 1951 film Awaara was massively popular in Soviet Russia and China. The film and its title song were Mao Zedong’s (Founder of People’s Republic of China) favorite.

14. There were two US navy warships called USS Krishna and USS Indra that served during World War II.

15. Unlike in Border movie, only 2 Indians died in battle of Longewala.

 

16. English Actor Sir Ben Kingsley’s birth name is Krishna Pandit Bhanji and he is of Indian (Gujarati) descent.

17. Freddie Mercury, British musician was actually of Gujarati descent.

18. “John Doe” orders (restraint orders against unknown persons for breach of plaintiff’s rights) are called “Ashok Kumar” orders in India. Likewise, “unclaimed” or “unidentified” dead body found in a public place is called is Ashok Kumar.

19. The oldest building in Asia is in India, the Sanchi Stupa.

20. Bal Thackeray’s father changed his family name from Thakre to Thackeray after the British writer William Makepeace Thackeray.

 

21. There is a species of Shark known as the Ganges Shark that inhabits River Ganga and it is critically endangered

22. The first railroad was constructed by two Indians (Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy and Jaganath Shunkerseth) and not the British.

23. Tamil is an OVS (object-verb-subject) language, a characteristic it shares with Klingon (a fictional language spoken by a race in Start Trek Series).

24. Mount Kailash has never been climbed , in spite of Chinese government’s support to the climbers.

25. Security at Tihar jail is managed by Tamil Nadu special police force.

 

26. When going to battle Indian kings would make their horses wear trunks. The other side’s elephants would refuse to attack the horses thinking that the horses were baby elephants.

27. If Uttar Pradesh were to be a separate country, it would be world’s fifth most populous country.

28. There are more poor people in 8 Indian states alone than in the 26 poorest African countries

29. Bodhidharma, a prince of the Pallava dynasty went to China and began the physical training of the Shaolin monks that led to the creation of Kung Fu.

30. A sugar company in Andhra provides rocket fuel to ISRO.

 

31. Tipu Sultan used Rockets with Swords fixed in the front against the British in the Anglo-Mysore Wars.

32. There is a French electronic band named “Masala Dosa.”

33. Did you know India has a National Ice Hockey Team?

34. Govt hiked the payment for the hangman from RS 10 to 5,000 just days before for Kasab hanging.

35. Ajmal Amir Kasab had a case booked for entering CST station without a ticket.

 

36. Australia’s Cricketer Stuart Clark is of Indian origin. Both his parents, Bruce Clark and Mary Clark are Anglo-Indians.

37. A city name Jhumri Telaiya actually exists in Jharkhand.

38. There was a Great Hedge built by the British across India primarily to collect the salt tax. It was 4000 km long and 12 feet in height spanning from Punjab to Orissa. None of it remains today.

39. Kunal Nayyar (Rajesh Koothrappalli from Big Bang Theory) is married to a former Miss India, Neha Kapur.

40. There is a village called Delhi in New york , USA. There is a city called Madras in Oregon, USA.

 

41. India has three antarctic stations, Dakshin Gangotri, Maitri (pictured above) and Bharathi.

42. After United States, India has the largest number of English speakers.

43. During the battle of Rezang La in the 1962 India-Sino war a battalion called 13 Kumaon Regiment consisting of mere 120 soldiers held off 6000 Chinese with heavy artillery killing 1300 of their soldiers.

44. Bangalored‘ is a word in Oxford dictionary, which came up after heavy outsourcing to India took the world by storm.

45. One of the oldest College of Engineering in the world is in Chennai, College of Engineering (Guindy).

 

46. There is a village in Assam called Jatinga where over the last 100 years, thousands of birds have flown to their death over a small strip of land.

47. India has the world’s smallest prison population.

48. The average cost of census taking in India is $0.5 per person (US: $39, World Average: $4.6).

49. Frozen bank accounts of Ottavio Quattrocchi were unexpectedly released by India’s law ministry in 2006 apparently without the consent of the CBI which had asked for them to be frozen.

50. India Post allows you to order personalized stamps with your picture on them.