India's people inherited a civilization that began more than 4,500 years ago, one that has proven capable of absorbing and transforming the peoples and cultures that over the centuries have come to the subcontinent. India has long supported a large population of great diversity. The people in India’s intricate network of communities speak literally thousands of languages, practice all of the world's great religions, and participate in a complex social structure that incorporates the caste system, a rigid system of social hierarchy.
India is one of the world's most populous countries, with a population (1998 estimate) of 984,003,683, and an average population density of 311 persons per sq km (805 per sq mi) in 1998. An estimated 73 percent of India's inhabitants live in rural areas. The population grew by nearly 24 percent between 1981 and 1991, down slightly from 25 percent growth between 1971 and 1981. It is estimated that the rate of growth will slow even further in the coming decades, but India’s population nevertheless is expected to continue to increase. The annual growth rate in 1997 was 1.6 percent.
A Principal Cities
The largest city of India as well as its premier port is Mumbai, which at the 1991 census had a population of 9.9 million in the city itself and 12.6 million in the metropolitan area. Eighteen cities had populations of more than 1 million in 1991. These include, in descending order of size, the largest metropolitan areas of India: Calcutta (11 million), eastern India’s chief commercial, financial, and manufacturing center; Delhi (8.4 million), a historical city as well as a major transportation, commercial, and industrial center; and Chennai (5.4 million) one of India’s principal ports. Other important cities with more than 1 million people are Bangalore, rapidly growing as a center of high-technology industry; Hyderâbâd, Nâgpur, Lucknow, and Jaipur, all centers of government and service industries; and Kânpur, Ahmadâbâd, Pune, and Surat, which are known for their industrial economies.
B Ethnic and Cultural Groups India’s population is rich with diverse ethnic and cultural groups. Ethnic groups are those based on a sense of common ancestry, while cultural groups can be either made up of people of different ethnic origins who share a common language, or of ethnic groups with some customs and beliefs in common, such as castes of a particular locality. The diverse ethnic and cultural origins of the people of India are shared by the other peoples of the Indian subcontinent, including the inhabitants of Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka.
The overwhelming majority of India's population share essentially the same physical characteristics. There is no concrete scientific evidence of racial differences within this majority, although there are ethnic and cultural differences, such as language and religion. In physical appearance, Indians have brown skin of many shades, mainly straight black hair, and, with few exceptions, brown eyes. Other physical characteristics, such as nose shape, in most cases do not clearly differentiate one group from another. People of different regions are, on average, different from others in skin shade and height, but the overlap is great.
There are also groups of people in India that have been identified by the government as tribal, meaning they belong to one of the more than 300 officially designated "scheduled tribes." The tribal people are sometimes called hill tribes or adivasis ("original inhabitants"), and in 1991 made up about 8 percent (more than 65 million people) of India’s population. For the purpose of affirmative action, the Indian government publishes "schedules" (lists) of the tribes, as well as of some other disadvantaged groups, such as the former Untouchables (see section below on Caste). Members of India’s various hill tribes are thought to be indigenous and tend to be ethnically distinct. These groups typically marry within their community and often live in large, adjoining areas, which are preserved by government policies restricting the sale of land to tribe members.
Major tribes include the Gond and the Bhil. Each has millions of members and encompasses a number of subtribes. Most other tribes are much smaller, with tens of thousands of members. Very few tribal communities now support themselves with traditional methods of hunting and gathering or with shifting cultivation (also known as slash-and-burn agriculture) because of government restrictions aimed at protecting the environment. Instead, they generally practice settled agriculture. Tribal groups tend to live in rural areas, mainly in hilly and less fertile regions of the country. Less than 5 percent practice traditional tribal religious beliefs and customs exclusively; most now combine traditional religions and customs with Hinduism or Christianity. Eighty-seven percent identify themselves as Hindus, and 7 percent, mainly in the northeast, as Christians.
Most tribal groups live in a belt of communities that stretches from eastern Gujarât to western West Bengal along the Madhya Pradesh-Mahârâshtra border and includes southern Bihâr, most of interior Orissa, and parts of northern Andhra Pradesh. The western tribes speak a dialect of Hindi, the central tribes use a form of the Dravidian language, and the eastern tribes speak Austro-Asiatic languages.
The other major concentration of tribal people is in the northeastern hills. Tribe members make up the majority of the population in the states of Mizoram, Nagaland, Meghalaya, and Arunâchal Pradesh. These people, many of them Christian, speak languages of the Sino-Tibetan family. Sino-Tibetan languages are also spoken by the Buddhists who live along the Himalayan ridge, from Arunâchal Pradesh in the east, through Sikkim, northern Uttar Pradesh, and Ladakh (in Jammu and Kashmîr state). In the Himalayas particularly, isolation on the mountain flanks has led to languages so distinct that ethnic groups living within sight of each other may not understand each other. Other tribes live in southern India and on India's island territories, but their numbers are not large.
C Religion
Religion is very important in India, with deep historical roots; Hinduism and Buddhism both originated here. Most people in India practice Hinduism with Islam a distant second. Other important religions include Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism, and Jainism.
In 1991, 82 percent of Indians were Hindus. Significant differences exist within this Hindu majority, arising not only out of divisions of caste, but also out of differing religious beliefs. One great divide is between devotees of the god Vishnu and devotees of the god Shiva. There are also Hindus who are members of reform movements that began in the 19th century. The most significant of these is perhaps the Arya Samaj, which rejects divisions of caste and idol worship. Hindus may come together also as devotees of a guru, such as Sai Baba. Despite its differences, the Hindu community shares many things in common. All Hindus who go to Brahman priests for the rituals connected with birth, marriage, and death will hear the same Sanskrit verses that have been memorized and repeated for hundreds of generations. Hindus also come from all parts of the country to visit pilgrimage sites. Four of the most sacred are at the four corners of India: Badrinath in the Himalayas; Rameswaram in Tamil Nâdu; Dwarka on the Gujarât coast, and Puri in Orissa. Vârânasi is also a significant holy city for Hindus.
In 1991, 12 percent of the Indian population practiced Islam, which also is divided into several different communities. The major division in the Muslim population is between Sunni and Shia branches. The Shiite community has a significant presence in several areas, most notably in the city of Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, and Hyderâbâd in Andhra Pradesh.
Muslims are a more urban community than Hindus: Muslims were 17 percent of India’s urban population and 11 percent of the rural population in 1991. There are many towns and cities in northern India where Muslims are one-third or more of the population. In addition to Jammu and Kashmîr and the Lakshadweep islands, where more than two-thirds of the population is Muslim, major concentrations of Muslims live in Assam, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, and Kerala states. About one-quarter of all Muslims living in India live in the state of Uttar Pradesh.
India’s other major religious groups include Christians (2.3 percent of the population in 1991), Sikhs (2 percent), Buddhists (0.7 percent), Jains (0.4 percent), a small number of Zoroastrians (or Parsis), and a few thousand Jews. Christians live primarily in urban areas throughout India, with major concentrations in Kerala, Tamil Nâdu, and Goa. Christians are a majority in three small states in the northeast: Nagaland, Mizoram, and Meghalaya. Most Sikhs live in Punjab, generally in rural areas.
Buddhists live in small numbers in the Himalayas from Ladakh to Arunâchal Pradesh; many converts also live in Mahârâshtra. The Jains live mainly in the belt of western states, from Râjasthân through Gujarât and Mahârâshtra to Karnâtaka. This region has many magnificent Jain temples, supported substantially by prosperous Jain traders. Parsis live mainly in Mumbai and in cities in Gujarât, and Jews have small communities in Mumbai, Calcutta, and Cochin.
Local communities of all these religions maintain institutions such as places of worship, schools, clubs, and charitable trusts that bring them together. Larger associations of religious groups also exist, including political parties. Such groups sometimes lobby the government in regard to legislation touching religious or social issues, such as the inheritance rights of women.
D Castes
The caste system is pervasive in India. Although it is entwined in Hindu beliefs, it encompasses non-Hindus as well. A caste (jati in Sanskrit) is a social class to which a person belongs at birth and which is ranked against other castes, typically on a continuum of perceived purity and pollution. People generally marry within their own caste. In rural areas, caste may also govern where people live or what occupations they engage in. The particular features of the caste system vary considerably from community to community and across regions. Small geographical areas have their own group-specific caste hierarchies. There are thus thousands of castes in India. In traditional Hindu law texts, all castes are loosely grouped into four varnas, or classes. In order of hierarchy, these varnas are: the Brahmans (priests and scholars), the Kshatriyas (warriors and rulers), the Vaisyas (merchants, farmers, and traders), and the Sudras (laborers, including artisans, servants, and serfs). The varnas no longer strictly correspond to traditional professions. For example, most Brahmans today are not priests, but farmers, cooks, or other professionals.
Ranked below the lowest caste were the people of no caste, the Untouchables or Harijans ("People of God," a term first used by Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi). Untouchables traditionally performed tasks considered "polluting," such as slaughtering animals or leatherworking. Physical contact with these people was viewed as defiling. The practice of labeling people Untouchable was outlawed by India’s constitution, though Harijans continue to face discrimination in getting work and housing. Today many former Untouchables prefer to be called "dalits" (Hindi for "oppressed ones").
Since independence the importance of caste has declined somewhat in India. Modern travel has brought people of every caste in contact with one another, since it is impossible to avoid physical contact with a former Untouchable in a crowded bus or train. Although caste is intimately linked with the giving and taking of food, no one can be certain of the caste of a person who cooks food in the restaurants and food stalls of towns and cities. There are no particular castes linked to the modern professions of bank clerk, postal worker, teacher, and lawyer. Many people have also been influenced by the nationalist movement's ideological commitment to the equality of men and women, and lower castes have increasingly used the power of their numbers and their right to vote to gain social status in their local community. Yet castes have shown no sign of disappearing altogether, mainly because of the system of marriage. Almost all Hindu marriages in India are arranged, and almost all arranged marriages occur between people of the same caste. Only a handful of young people make "love marriages" across caste lines, and many suffer socially when they do so.
Muslims are often treated as just another caste, particularly in India's villages. There are castelike categories among the Muslims as well. These are called "brotherhoods" in northern India, and they identify Muslims with their traditional occupations, such as butchers or leatherworkers. As with Hindus, Muslims marry within their "brotherhood." Among Christians as well, in the 19th century and to a much less significant extent more recently, converts and their descendants continued to be identified by their Hindu caste of origin.
E Language There are two great language families on the Indian subcontinent: the Indo-Iranian (or Indo-Aryan) branch of the Indo-European language family, most of which are spoken in the north, and the Dravidian languages, most of which are spoken in the south. The other major language groups are the Sino-Tibetan languages along the Himalayan ridge, with many languages spoken by few people, and the Austro-Asiatic languages of some tribal peoples. All these language families stretch far back in history and have influenced each other over centuries.
Indo-European languages stem originally from Sanskrit. Present-day languages in this family formed in the 14th and 15th centuries. These include Hindi and Urdu, which are similar as spoken languages. Hindi, spoken mainly by Hindus, is written in script called Devanagari and draws on Sanskrit vocabulary. Urdu is spoken mostly by Muslims and uses Persian Arabic script. Tamil is the oldest of the four main Dravidian languages, with a literary history that begins in the 1st century AD.
More than 1,500 "Indian mother tongues" were listed by the census in 1961; 110 of them were deemed to be languages, with the rest designated as dialects. Eighteen of these Indian languages, plus English, have been given official status in India by federal or state governments. Hindi is the main language of more than 40 percent of the population. It was therefore made India's official language in 1965. English, which was associated with British rule, was retained as an option for official use because some non-Hindi speakers, particularly in Tamil Nâdu, opposed the official use of Hindi. English is spoken by as many as 5 percent of Indians, and various Dravidian languages are spoken by about 25 percent. No single language other than Hindi, however, can claim speakers among even 10 percent of Indians. Many Indians speak more than one language, especially those who live in cities or near state borders, which were redrawn in 1956 in part to conform to linguistic boundaries. Because the languages of both northern and southern families are internally related, much like the Romance and Germanic languages of Europe, learning a second language is not difficult.
The many local languages and dialects in India are politically and socially significant. A politician, for example, may use the local dialect when campaigning in a village, switch to the official state language when speaking in a town, and then use Hindi or English to address parliament. The language one speaks can also limit one’s opportunities. People who use a local dialect are often identified as rustics or lower class, and they suffer discrimination. The spread of primary education, cinema, radio, and television, is likely to enhance the standing of the state languages. India’s growing number of links to the global community are also likely to preserve English as the preferred language of elite education.
F Education
India's official goal for education since independence in 1947 has been to ensure compulsory education for all up to age 14. A lack of money and effort put into primary education, however, has hampered the achievement of that goal. At independence 25 percent of males and 8 percent of females were literate. In 1995 those figures had been raised to 66 percent of males and 38 percent of females—52 percent of the overall population. The government invests comparatively more in secondary and tertiary schools, particularly colleges and universities. There was no serious political demand for primary education until the 1990s, when a grassroots movement arose to organize volunteers and conduct campaigns for universal adult literacy.
Education for the elite has been a tradition in India since the beginnings of its civilization. Great Buddhist universities at Nalanda and Taxila were famous far beyond India's borders. Withholding education from the nonelite, including women, has also been a tradition. The lowest caste members, including the Harijans and non-Hindu tribal groups, were denied the right even to hear the Vedas, sacred Hindu texts, recited.
State governments control their own school systems, with some assistance from the central government. The federal Ministry of Education directs the school systems of centrally administered areas, provides financial help for the nation's institutions of higher learning, and handles such tasks as commissioning textbooks. Education generally consists of ten years of elementary and high school, two years of higher secondary education, and three years at university level. While most students enroll in government schools, the number of private institutions is increasing at all educational levels. Indians have a right to establish institutions to provide education in their native language and with a religious or cultural emphasis, although the schools must conform to state regulation of teaching standards. Students begin specializing in subjects at the level of higher secondary school. A university typically has one or more colleges of law, medicine, engineering, and commerce, and many have colleges of agriculture. Prestigious and highly selective institutes of management have been established. The educational establishment also includes a number of high-level scientific and social science institutes, as well as academies devoted to the arts.
In 1996 elementary and middle level schools enrolled about 110 million pupils, and secondary schools 69 million. Total yearly enrollment in institutions of higher education was 6.1 million. India had around 581,300 primary and upper primary schools, many of them one-room (or even open-air) operations with poorly paid teachers. There are also some 84,000 secondary schools; about 200 recognized universities; and 5,000 technical, arts, and science colleges. The universities of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay, founded in 1857, are the oldest still operating in India, though colleges existed in those cities before that date. Other major universities in India include Banaras Hindu University, in Vârânasi; Alîgarh Muslim University and Jawaharlal Nehru University, in New Delhi; Âgra University; the University of Bihâr; the University of Delhi; Gauhati University; Gorakhpur University; Gujarât University; Kânpur University; the University of Kerala, in Trivandrum; the University of Mysore; the University of Pune; and the University of Râjasthân, in Jaipur.
G Way of Life The life of Indians is centered in the family. Extended families often live together, with two or more adult generations, or brothers, sharing a house. In much of the countryside, neighboring houses share a wall, so from the street one sees a continuous wall pierced by doorways. In other areas, in the south for example, the main house will have a verandah on the street, with an open courtyard behind. As farmers prosper, they change from adobe construction to brick plastered with cement, and from a tile or thatch roof to a flat concrete or corrugated metal one. Most home activity is outside in the compound courtyard or on the verandahs of the house.
Only in a few parts of India, such as Kerala and Bengal, do people live on their farmland. The village is thus a settlement area, or a set of settlement areas, surrounded by unbroken fields, with farms frequently made up of separated plots. A large village will have a primary school, perhaps a temple or mosque, and a small shop or two. Some artisans have workshops in their houses. Most villages and settlement areas are fairly small, with about 100 to 200 families and a land area of about 250 hectares (about 620 acres) in regions where the land is irrigated, or three or four times that in dry areas. Villages are no longer isolated; the majority are now connected by paved roads and have electricity. Many villagers now work for part of the day or part of the year in nearby towns or cities, while continuing to farm or to work as day laborers in agriculture or construction.
Men work mainly in the fields, although where rice is grown, women transplant the seedlings. The entire family will pitch in at harvest time because most agricultural work is still done by hand. Women fetch water, prepare meals, clean, and care for milking animals that are stabled in or near the house compound. Among Hindus particularly, most worship is done in the home, where a room or an alcove is devoted to images of a god or gods. Young girls are expected to help with the women's work, and girls care for their younger siblings. Boys have fewer responsibilities, though they often herd goats and bring cattle to and from the fields.
In most cases a woman who marries moves to her husband’s village from her home village. Visits to her birth family, who may live a day's journey or more away, are generally rare, especially as the woman grows older. Senior men (and their wives) exercise power in the family. Disputes within the family, which can be common, may result in partitioning of land or even of the house compound.
In the cities families still remain the center of social life. Different families (of the same or similar caste) may occupy different floors of the same house. Newer housing is in the form of apartment blocks for the poor and lower middle class, and separate two- and three-story houses on very small plots for the rich and upper middle class. Most women in cities work in the home, though some may supplement the family income through craft work such as embroidery. Poor women may work as house servants, laborers on construction sites, or as street vendors. Increasingly among the educated, however, women have their own jobs as teachers, clerks or secretaries, or as professionals. Women entrepreneurs or shopkeepers are rare.
Meals in village India consist mainly of the staple grain—rice, or wheat in the form of unleavened bread baked on a griddle—with stir-fried vegetables, cooked lentils, and yogurt. Each part of the country has its own cuisine, with differences in the kinds and mix of spices, in the cooking oil used (mustard oil in the north, coconut oil in the south), and in favored vegetables or meats. In seasons of scarcity, such as the months before the harvest, the poor may be reduced to having just a chili pepper or salt to flavor their rice or bread. Vegetables are those in season, and cooked food is generally not stored. Food at weddings or other celebrations can be very elaborate, with city-style soft drinks and snacks brought in. Men drink alcohol, most often fermented toddy palm juice in the south, or cheap distilled spirits in the north.
In urban areas meals are still organized around a staple grain, but the variety and amount of vegetables and meat are greater. Food is bought and consumed on the same day, and even those families with refrigerators typically use them only to keep water, soft drinks, or milk cool. Social visiting in cities is also mainly with relatives or among students with their classmates. The upper classes will entertain friends or business acquaintances at home, but men of other classes will more often meet at restaurants or tea stalls to socialize.
The basic clothing for most Indians, men and women, is still a simple draped cloth. For women, this is the sari, worn with a blouse and, in fancier versions, a petticoat. Styles of tying the sari vary among regions and communities. Except for widows, who wear plain white, saris are generally colorful and can be made of cotton or the finest embroidered silks. Village men and men in some urban areas such as Kerala wear a cloth called a dhoti in its full-length form. In north India it is typically tied with one or both ends brought between the legs and tucked in, to form loose "pant" legs. In the south, the full cloth or a half-sized one is wrapped as a cylinder, an ankle-length skirt that can be pulled up and tucked in itself to form a short skirt when work requiring movement is done. Muslims tend to wear the half-cloth in colored cottons rather than the white with thin colored border favored by Hindus.
In Punjab, women, especially Sikh women, wear a baggy pants-and-shirt outfit known as the salwar-kameez. In Râjasthân and elsewhere long skirts and bodices are worn. This is also a common dress among young girls throughout the country. Men in northern India may also wear a pants-and-shirt outfit called the pajama-kurta. The pajama, which originated in India, is made of white cloth and can be loose or tight-fitting. The tight-fitting style is often worn with a long closed-collar coat (the sherwani) made famous in the West when India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, wore it. Also called the Nehru jacket, it is the most formal dress for men. Turbans are worn by a broad range of men, especially Sikhs and Hindus. Muslims can often be identified by their embroidered caps.
Western-style clothing has virtually replaced traditional dress for men, especially in northern India. With rare exceptions among elite women, who wear slacks and a blouse on occasion, women continue to wear the sari or other Indian dress. In Mumbai and a few other cities Christian women may wear skirts and blouses, a remnant of colonial rule when English dress was expected of those groups.
Colonial rule also is responsible for popularizing cricket and soccer. India's national cricket team competes at the highest international level. Soccer is popular in eastern India. In central India men play a traditional Indian team sport, kabaddi, that requires quickness and strength. The oldest sport, one that goes back to the time of the Hindu epics, is freestyle wrestling. Wrestling clubs, presided over by a guru, feature a regimen of Hindu religious ritual and practice.
There are a number of traditional games played mainly by men. These include chess, which originated in India and pachisi, which literally means "twenty-five," after the number of spaces moved in one throw of the dice in the original Indian game. Card games also are common as is gambling.
Indians with leisure time and money, such as the middle classes, go to the cinema, or increasingly watch television. During school holidays families may visit relatives or go briefly to hill resorts where it is cooler. In rural areas, slack times in the agricultural cycle allow families to go on pilgrimage or attend weddings, which include much feasting. India has many religious festivals, which provide occasions for even more feasting and conversation, perhaps accompanied by music or a dance or folk theater performance.
H Social Issues Social problems in India center on the connected issues of poverty and inequality. Particularly in rural areas lower castes and marginal social groups, such as tribal people and Muslims, are generally poor. India's poor face disease, scarce educational opportunities, and often physical abuse by those who control their livelihood. It is difficult or impossible for the poor to escape and enter the modernizing sector of society, where discrimination on the basis of caste or community is less prevalent. In all classes and in urban as well as rural areas, discrimination and at times violence against women is almost taken for granted.
Poverty has been reduced in India since independence, although in 1994, 35.04 percent of the population still lived below the poverty line. Industrialization has created jobs in the cities, and rural workers have been able to diversify their sources of income. Urban workers at entry level, however, are usually forced to live in appalling conditions in slums.
Modern water supply and sanitation arrangements are rare in the poor areas of most towns and cities and are lacking entirely in most villages. As a result, many Indians suffer and even die from diarrhea, malaria, typhoid, and cholera. India has succeeded in eradicating smallpox and has brought down the overall death rate, in significant part by investing in a health care system that includes hospitals, clinics, and drug manufacture and distribution. By the mid-1990s acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) emerged as a serious problem. To combat the disease, the Indian government, with help from volunteer groups, established a vigorous AIDS-awareness program.
Part of the problem of disease and poverty in villages is that poor people cannot afford the money and time it takes to provide treatment for their children, many of whom are already weakened by an inadequate diet. Girls of all classes are given less medical care than their brothers and so die in greater numbers. Many parents prefer sons, who remain with them and provide security for them in old age. Because daughters often require a dowry at marriage and are unlikely to earn an income that could raise a family's economic position, they are seen as a liability. By the mid-1990s, the spread of family-planning facilities and the increase in confidence that children would survive to adulthood helped reduce the preferred family size to just three children: two sons and a daughter. Second- and third-born daughters, especially in families without sons, continue to die at rates greater than average.
Discrimination against women does not end with childhood, nor is it confined to the countryside. Although India has had a woman as prime minister, the percentage of women serving in political or administrative office still remains very low. Some women are major leaders of grassroots movements, and women play an active role in India's vigorous press. Yet women are rare in senior business positions and in the legal and medical professions. Women's movements to combat violence against women have had considerable success in raising awareness of the issue and stimulating government action.
Discrimination against lower caste members, including the Harijans or former Untouchables, is still a problem in India. As a result violence between castes sometimes breaks out. Since independence, many lower caste groups have mobilized politically and have achieved positions of power or leverage in several states. More than 50 percent of the positions in the national civil service were reserved for members of lower castes by the mid-1990s. Efforts to organize the landless and the homeless, however, have not enjoyed the same success. In rural areas, men of lower caste traditionally serve those of higher caste. This situation has aggravated caste conflict and has helped to keep the poor politically and socially weak.
Relations between Hindus and Muslims have also been problematic. After the partition of British India into India and Pakistan, Muslims of the northern provinces who stayed in India—where they were a minority—became vulnerable. Riots between Hindus and Muslims have occurred on occasion since the mid-1960s. Muslims in rural areas remain largely untouched by the conflict. Riots tend not to occur in areas where there are structures of mutual social or economic advantage—for example, in towns with a large industry owned by Hindus and employing Muslims. Also, at the personal level, there are many examples of friendships and mutual respect. Muslim leaders have served as presidents of India, and Muslims have held positions of great prominence in all fields, including the military.