South Asia: Political |
The Republic of India |
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| Official Name: Bhārat Ganarājya [bhArata gaNarAjya] |
| Capital: New Delhi |
| Form of Government: Federal Republic |
| Head of State: President Smt. Pratibha Devisingh Patil elected by parliament and state legislatures to 5-year terms |
| Head of Government: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, leader of majority party in Lok Sabha
and appointed by President |
| Parliament (2 Houses) |
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Lok Sabha (People's Parliament): most members elected by people |
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Rajya Sabha (State's Parliament): most members elected by state legislatures |
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| State governments: governor appointed by president, governor selects state chief minister (leader of majority party) |
| 28 States and 9 Territories: The constitution created India's states
on the basis of their principal language (e.g., Gujarat and Maharashtra
separated in 1960) |
Member of the commonwealth
of nations (but British monarch not recognized as head of state)
constitution went into effect 26 January 1950 |
| Currency: Rupee/Pice (100
Pice = 1 Rupee) |
| Flag. Coat of Arms. |
| Geographic Area: 1,269,219 square miles |
| Religion: 83% are Hindu, 11% Muslim,
3% Christian, 2% Sikh, Jains and Buddhists each less than 1% |
| Population: approximately 1.13 billion |
| Language |
14 major languages and 1,000+
minor languages and dialects
Major Languages belong to 2 language families |
| Indo-European Languages |
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Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati,
Hindi, Kashmiri, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Rajasthani, Urdu, etc. |
| - |
spoken by 73% of population
(north and central regions) |
| - |
Hindi is the official
national language: derived from Sanskrit |
| - |
English associate official |
|
| Dravidian Languages |
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Kanada, Malayalam, Tamil, Telegu, etc. |
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spoken by about 24% of population (southern region) |
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| Sino-Tibetan: Himalayas &
Burmese border region |
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