For more information see the India profile.

The Republic of India, consists of 25 union states and 7 union territories, and the nation dominates South Asia and the Indian Ocean. Nearly 16% of the world's population is Indian, living on 2.4% of the world's land surface. The great racial, ethnic, religious and linguistic diversity makes a simple subdivision of the population difficult.

India is the world's largest functioning democracy, since becoming independent from Britain in 1947. Internal tensions have steadily increased because of caste, religious and regional loyalties. Confrontations resulting in savage rioting and destruction of Muslim mosques, property, and lives followed the 1991 election, destabilizing India's political life and social balance.

No area of the world has such a diversity and concentration of unreached peoples.