CULTURE OF INDIA BY LEGUND

 

Christians and Sikhs make up a small percentage of the population, and there are even fewer Buddhists and Jains, according to the "Handbook."

The CIA cited similar figures. Mumbai is the second largest city in India with 20.67 million people, followed by Kolkata, Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad, all with more than 10 million people.

According to Statista, 26.16 percent of India population was under 14-years-old as of 2020, 67.27 were aged 15 to 64 and 6.57 percent were 65 or older.

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About 35 percent of the population lives in urban areas with an estimated annual rate of a little over 2 percent moving to cities each year. Indian culture is built upon centuries of history and heritage, making it one of the oldest in the word India culture is among the world's oldest as the people of India can track their civilization back as far as 4,500 years ago. "There's been a very long-running debate about whether the Indo-European languages were brought from migrations from outside, which is what most linguists would accept, or if they evolved Indigenously ."India is identified as the birthplace of Hinduism and Buddhism, the third and fourth largest religions in the world.

There are many variations of Hinduism, and four predominant sects — Shaiva, Vaishnava, Shakti and Smarta.

About 13 percent of Indians are Muslim, making it one of the largest Islamic nations in the world.

Sanskrit, an ancient Indo-European language, came from Northern India. About 84 percent of the population identifies as Hindu, according to the "Handbook of Research on Development and Religion(opens in new tab)," edited by Matthew Clarke (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2013). Early anthropologists once considered culture as an evolutionary process, and "every aspect of human development was seen as driven by evolution," she told Live Science. A tradition of vegetarianism appears to go back to the ancient past. Bengali,, Marathi, Telugu Tamil, Gujarati and Urdu are some other languages spoken in the country.

Many people living in India write in Devanagari script. Chutneys — thick condiments and spreads made from assorted fruits and vegetables such as tamarind and tomatoes and mint, cilantro and other herbs — are used generously in Indian cooking.

Many Hindus are vegetarian, but lamb and chicken are common in main dishes for non-vegetarians. How the language started has been a point of argument amongst linguists. The food is rich with curries and spices, including ginger, coriander, cardamom, turmeric, dried hot peppers, and cinnamon, among others. It shares many similarities with English, French, Farsi and Russian languages. We do not know for sure as its script has not been unlocked, but it has been proven that the ancient Dravidian civilization was truly vegetarian," wrote Dubey.

Much of Indian food is eaten with fingers or bread used as utensils. This cuisine is a fusion of Turkish and Persian cuisine, where mostly ground spices are used in the preparation of unique flavor and taste," wrote Krishna Gopal Dubey in "The Indian Cuisine(opens in new tab)" (PHI Publisher, 2010). Essentially this included all the colonized countries and people, such as African countries, India, and the Far East."

However, Indians made significant advances in architecture (Taj Mahal), mathematics (the invention of zero) and medicine (Ayurveda) well in advance of many western civilizations. Today, India is a very diverse country, with more than 1.3 billion people, according to the CIA World Factbook(opens in new tab), making it the second most populous nation in the world after China. Many sources describe it as "Sa Prathama Sanskritic Vishwakarma" — the first and the supreme culture in the world, according to the All World Gayatri Pari war(opens in new tab) (AWGP) organization.

Western societies did not always see the culture of India very favorably, according to Christina De Rossi, an anthropologist at Barnet and Southgate College in London. India has 28 states and seven territories, according to the World Health Organization(opens in new tab). "People have been debating the arrival of the Indo-European languages in India for hundreds of years," said study co-author Martin Richards, an archaeogenetic at the University of Huddersfield in England. "India may have been vegetarian during the Mohenjo-Daro and Harappan civilizations. It is known for its large assortment of dishes and its liberal use of herbs and spices. There are a wide array of breads served with meals, including naan, a leavened, oven-baked flatbread; and Bator, a fried, fluffy flatbread common in North India and eaten with chickpea curry.

. "The influence of the Mughal rulers who ruled India is distinctly perceptible in the style of cooking made famous by them. Cooking styles vary from region to region. Wheat, Basmati rice and pulses with chana (Bengal gram) are important staples of the Indian diet. The Constitution of India officially recognizes 23 official languages.

New DNA research in 2017 found that an Aryan migration may have introduced the beginnings of Sanskrit. Though many people speak Hindi in India, at least 56 percent of Indian residents speak something other than Hindi, according to the CIA. There is no official language in India, according to a Gujarat High Court ruling in 2010(opens in new tab), though Hindi is the official language of the government and English is considered a subsidiary official language. "In this view, societies outside of Europe or North America, or societies that did not follow the European or Western way of life, were considered primitive and culturally inferior. New Delhi is the most populous city in India with a population of 31.18 million people, according to the CIA, second only to Tokyo, Japan for its population size. Some estimates, such as those by Statista(opens in new tab), place the population at very nearly 1.4 billion. Indian cuisine is also influenced by many other countries. According to its World Factbook, around 80 percent of the population is Hindu, 14.2 percent is Muslim, 2.3 percent is Christian, 1.7 percent is Sikh and 2 percent is unspecified. When the Mughal Empire invaded during the sixteenth century, they left a significant mark on Indian cuisine. The ethnic makeup of India, according to the CIA is 72 percent Indo-Aryan (a coverall term for people of largely Central Asian descent) and 25 percent are Dravidian (being largely of South Asian descent). "The Guardian(opens in new tab)" reports that between 20 percent and 40 percent of India's population is vegetarian. In fact, it is a misconception that the majority of people in India speak Hindi.