The Republic of India

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History:
India have had inhabitants for more then 5,000 years, that means that India is the oldest civilisation in the world!
The Indian culture were created when India were invaded by Aryan people from the northwest, in 1500 B.C., the cultures mixed to what it is today…
India has been invaded by the Arabs, the Turkish and the British people after that.
During the middle of the 1900 century (15 August, 1947 to be precise) Mohandas Gandhi lead the Indian people in the non-violence resistance against Britain, that leaded to independence and the dividing into two countries; India and Pakistan.

Basic facts:
India lies between Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Burma and China. India is one of the twenty poorest countries in the world. The size of India is about 3,288,000 km2, and the capital is New Delhi with about 11 millions inhabitants. It lived (July 2001) 1,029,991,145 people in India, 72 % of these are Indo-Aryan, 25 % are Dravidian and about 3% is Mongoloid or other. They believe in Hinduism (80 %), Islam (12%), Christianity (2,3%) Sikhism (1,9%), Buddhism (0,7%) or other religion (like Zoroastrianism, Jainism, Judaism and Parsism) (3,1%).
There are 18 official languages, but Hindi and English are the largest ones, all for all, there are more then 1600 different language and most of them have a couple of accents to…
The currency in India is Rupee, 1 rupee is 100 paises, and 5 rupees are about 1 Swedish krona.

Government:
India is a federal republic. That means that India has a president, a prime minister and a parliament.
India’s president is Kocheril Raman NARAYANAN, he was elected in 1997 and next election is to be held sometime in July of this years (2002).
The prime minister is called Atal Behari VAJPAYEE and were elected in 1998.
BJP, Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress Party are the largest parties in the parliament, People’s Assembly. The next People’s Assembly election is to be held in 2004, the last where in 1999.
India has capital punishment, but it doesn´t uccure that often.

Caste:
India used to have different caste, and even thou they are not legal anymore, you still can se the differences. There were between 3,000 and 6,400 different castes and (as if that wasn’t enough) 25,000 sub castes but they are usually divided in 4 groups; (number one) the priests, (number two) the soldiers and the officials, (number three) the tradesmen and the craftsmen, (number four) the farmers, and the casteless (which is no group). In the old days, the higher caste persons had to go through a long cleaning ceremony if even the shadow of a casteless touched on him. The only way to change caste is to die and be reborn into another caste.

Climate:
The climate in India is divided into three seasons, the hot, the wet and the cold.
The hot season starts in February and in May-July the heat can go over 45 degrees Celsius.
In June the wet season and the monsoons starts, that means that it’s raining but it is still hot.
The cold season starts about October, it’s not really cold, more like warm, but it is still colder then the hot season.
In Himalaya it is of course colder, and during the cold season comes snow, which doesn’t melt until June.

Animals:
India has many different mammals, for example tigers, elephants, rhinos, crocodiles, asiatic lions (very rare), antelopes, hyenas, wolves and leopards. There are also about 2,000 different kinds of birds. And to protect these (many of them are endangered) there are many national parks. Unfortunately there are much poaching.
One special thing about animals i India is that the cows are holy. They can walk around free, without anyone driving them away. They are holy because of the work they do in the agriculture and they also give food.

Plants:
The largest part of India is Plainland, but 10 % is forest, and in the north there are big mountainareas.
In the southern part of India there are rainforests, mangrove forests, palms and bamboos, ...