| NAME: |
India |
| LOCATION: |
Asia |
| GOVERNMENT: |
Federal Republic |
| OFFICIAL LANGUAGE: |
English enjoys associate status but is the most important language for national, political, and commercial communication; Hindi is the national language and primary tongue of 30% of the people; there are 14 other official languages: Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Assamese, Kashmiri, Sindhi, and Sanskrit; Hindustani is a popular variant of Hindi/Urdu spoken widely throughout northern India but is not an official language |
| MAJOR RELIGION(S): |
Hindu 80.5%, Muslim 13.4%, Christian 2.3%, Sikh 1.9%, other 1.8%, unspecified 0.1%. |
| MAJOR ETHNIC GROUPS: |
Indo-Aryan 72%, Dravidian 25%, Mongoloid and other 3%. |
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