India

• 1. Introduction

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  India, officially the Republic of India, holds a distinction that no other country on earth can claim: it is simultaneously the world's most populous nation and its most populous democracy. More than 1.4 billion people live within its borders, a number that has grown from 361 million in 1951. But the arithmetic alone barely hints at what this place is. India is a country where the earliest anatomically modern humans arrived from Africa no later than 55,000 years ago, where settled life first took root some 9,000 years ago along the western margins of the Indus river basin, and where four of the world's major religions were born. What is the shape of a civilization that old? How does a society that invented the decimal number system, composed the Mahabharata, raised the Mughal Empire, endured British colonial rule for nearly two centuries, and then chose democracy, hold together? And what does India look like today, as it navigates nuclear deterrence, record air pollution, a booming middle class, and a disputed border that has remained unresolved since the mid-20th century? Those are the questions this documentary will follow.

• 2. Ancient Roots

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  Mehrgarh, a site in what is now Balochistan, Pakistan, holds some of the oldest evidence of settled life on the Indian subcontinent. Farmers there domesticated grain-producing plants, including barley, and animals, including humped zebu cattle, before these practices gradually evolved into the Indus Valley Civilisation. That civilisation flourished in what is now Pakistan and western India, centred on cities such as Mohenjo-daro, Harappa, Dholavira, Ganweriwala, and Rakhigarhi. These were not rough settlements. They had standardised weights, a written script, urban planning, and public works. The Pashupati seal, excavated at Mohenjo-daro in 1928-29, is among the most famous artefacts of that era.

  An archaic form of Sanskrit, an Indo-European language, diffused into India from the northwest between periods scholars associate with the composition of the Rig Veda, the oldest scripture tied to what later became Hinduism. Its hymns recorded early religious thought and were composed by Indo-Aryan-speaking tribes migrating east from the region now known as northern Afghanistan, across the Punjab. As the Ganges plain was cleared for agriculture, social stratification hardened. By the mid-first millennium BCE, caste, or varna, had emerged in fortified Gangetic cities alongside two powerful counter-movements: Jainism, rooted in the teachings of Mahavira, and Buddhism, in those of the Buddha. Both rejected hereditary social orders and the animal sacrifices of Brahmanism.

  The rise of those religions coincided with the first large-scale political formation in South Asia: the Maurya Empire. Under Ashoka, who ruled from approximately 268 to 232 BCE, the empire briefly controlled most of the subcontinent's major urban arteries, stopping short only of the deep south. After his forces caused immense loss of life in the conquest of Kalinga, Ashoka adopted Buddhism and commissioned rock and pillar edicts across the empire promoting non-violence, ethical conduct, and social welfare. His edicts also forbade the killing of wild animals and the destruction of forests, a detail that has led some environmental historians to regard him as a forerunner of conservation thinking.

  By the 4th and 5th centuries, the Gupta Empire had built a complex administrative and taxation system across the greater Ganges Plain that became a model for later Indian kingdoms. That period saw a flowering of art, literature, and science. Meanwhile, in South India, Tamil Sangam literature records that the Cheras and Cholas ruled the Kaveri river valley and the Pandyas ruled further south along the Vaigai, trading extensively with the Roman Empire and with West and Southeast Asia.

• 3. Faiths and Philosophies

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  The Indian subcontinent is the birthplace of four major world religions: Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, and Sikhism. That fact alone distinguishes it from every other region on earth. In the 1st millennium CE, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism also became established on India's southern and western coasts, and in the 6th and 7th centuries the first devotional hymns were composed in Tamil, launching a religious renewal that spread across the subcontinent and helped generate all modern languages of India.

  Sikhism emerged in the Punjab, rejecting institutionalised religion outright. In the 13th century, Islamic Delhi Sultanate rule drew northern India into the cosmopolitan networks of medieval Islam, creating what historians describe as a syncretic Indo-Islamic culture in the north. The sultanate's weakening of regional South Indian kingdoms eventually paved the way for the Vijayanagara Empire, which built on Shaivite traditions and the military technology of the sultanate to control much of peninsular India.

  According to the 2011 census, 79.8% of India's population follows Hinduism, 14.2% Islam, 2.3% Christianity, 1.7% Sikhism, 0.7% Buddhism, and 0.4% Jainism. Several tribal religions also persist, including Donyi-Polo, Sanamahism, Sarnaism, and Niamtre. India holds the world's largest populations of Hindus, Sikhs, and Jains; the third-largest Muslim population after Indonesia and Pakistan; and the largest populations of Zoroastrians and adherents of the Baha'i Faith. The Preamble to the Constitution of India declares the country a secular state and names freedom of religion a fundamental right.

• 4. The Colonial Century

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  The appointment of Lord Dalhousie as Governor General of the East India Company in 1848 set in motion changes that would remake India as a modern state. Railways, canals, and the telegraph arrived soon after their introduction in Europe. But those technological transfers came paired with harsh land taxes, invasive social reforms, and the summary dispossession of wealthy landowners and princes. In 1857, those grievances ignited the Indian Rebellion, which shook Company rule across much of northern and central India.

  After the rebellion was suppressed in 1858, the British government disbanded the East India Company and began ruling India directly. Crown rule proclaimed a unitary state and a gradual, limited parliamentary system, while also protecting princes and landed gentry as a feudal check against future unrest. The Indian National Congress was founded in 1885. The commercialisation of agriculture in the second half of the 19th century brought economic dislocation: many small farmers grew dependent on distant markets, and large-scale famines multiplied.

  More than 1.3 million Indians served in World War I. Afterwards, Mahatma Gandhi launched a movement of nonviolent non-cooperation after 1920 that became, in the source's words, the primary factor in ending British rule. It was the first such nationalist movement in the non-European British Empire and influenced others elsewhere. The 1930s brought slow British legislative reform and Congress election victories. Then came World War II, Congress's final push for non-cooperation, and a surge in Muslim nationalism. Independence arrived in 1947, but it came with partition. The British Indian Empire was divided into two dominions: a Hindu-majority India and a Muslim-majority Pakistan. The partition was accompanied by large-scale loss of life and what the source describes as an unprecedented migration. India adopted its constitution in 1950, establishing a secular, democratic republic.

• 5. Democratic Life

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  India's constitution was drafted between 1946 and 1949 with what the source calls uncommon speed and an absence of irregularities, using the Government of India Act 1935 as its model and framework. The document established a federal state with a parliamentary system and a strong central government that exclusively controls defence, foreign affairs, railways, ports, and currency. Its definition of fundamental rights drew on the United States Constitution; its constitutional directives drew on the Constitution of Ireland. Article 17 made untouchability illegal, and Articles 15(2) and 16(2) derecognised caste distinctions.

  After independence on the 15th of August 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru became prime minister. He led the Congress to comfortable election victories in 1951, 1957, and 1962, and died in office in May 1964. Lal Bahadur Shastri succeeded him unanimously, but died in January 1966, soon after signing the Tashkent Peace Declaration following the 1965 war with Pakistan. Indira Gandhi then led the party, winning landmark victories in 1967 and 1971. In 1975 she declared a state of emergency, suspending many civil liberties. Public discontent removed Congress from power in 1977. She was assassinated by a Sikh bodyguard on the 31st of October 1984, after a military operation against Sikh militants occupying the Golden Temple in Amritsar.

  Rajiv Gandhi succeeded her. He was himself assassinated in 1991, by a member of a Sri Lankan Tamil separatist organisation. Congress re-formed under P. V. Narasimha Rao, who served a full five-year term. In 1999, Atal Bihari Vajpayee of the BJP became the first non-Congress prime minister to complete a five-year term. In the 2014 general election, the BJP under Narendra Modi became the first party since 1984 to win an absolute majority. Modi won a larger majority in 2019 before losing it in 2024 and forming a coalition government with NDA partners, making him the longest-serving non-Congress prime minister.

• 6. Economy and Industry

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  An acute balance of payments crisis in 1991 forced India to liberalise its economy, and the country has moved increasingly toward a free-market system ever since. Nominal GDP per capita stood at US$308 in 1991; it had risen to an estimated US$2,731 by 2024. Some 431 million Indians left poverty between 1985 and the mid-2020s, and the middle classes are projected to reach around 580 million by 2030.

  The service sector today makes up 55.6% of GDP, industry 26.3%, and agriculture 18.1%. India's labour force of 522 million is the world's second largest. In 2022, India received US$100 billion in foreign exchange remittances, the highest in the world, contributed by 32 million Indians working abroad. India joined the World Trade Organization on the 1st of January 1995.

  Specific industries underscore the breadth of this transformation. At the end of 2011, India's IT industry employed 2.8 million professionals and generated revenues close to US$100 billion, equalling 7.5% of GDP. The pharmaceutical sector counts 3,000 companies and 10,500 manufacturing units; India is the world's largest producer of generic medicines and supplies 50-60% of global vaccine demand. In 2022, India became the world's third-largest vehicle market, surpassing Japan. Between 2001 and 2011, the share of petrochemical and engineering goods in India's total exports grew from 14% to 42%. Economic growth has come with rising inequality, and the country faces persistent challenges in gender equality and child malnutrition alongside its gains.

• 7. Languages and Learning

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  The 2011 census recorded speakers of five major language families within India's borders, with Indo-Aryan languages accounting for roughly 78% of speakers and Dravidian languages for about 19.6%. Hindi, written in the Devanagari script, is the official language of the federal government; English serves as an associate official language. That arrangement was settled by a compromise in September 1949 after three years of debate. In 1965, when Hindi was set to become the sole official language, bitter opposition from South India produced a second compromise: English would continue as an associate official language indefinitely.

  The Eighth Schedule of the constitution recognises 22 languages that the government is obligated to develop. In 1950, the list held 14 languages; subsequent constitutional amendments added Sindhi in 1967, Nepali, Manipuri, and Konkani in 1992, and Maithili, Dogri, Santali, and Bodo in 2004. Sanskrit remains on the schedule for its cultural heritage value even though it no longer has first-language speakers in India.

  India's education system is the world's second largest. The literacy rate rose from 18% in 1951 to 74.04% in 2011. That year, Kerala recorded the highest state literacy rate at 93.91%, while Bihar recorded the lowest at 63.82%. According to researcher Latika Chaudhary, in 1911 there were under three primary schools for every ten villages. India now has over 900 universities, 40,000 colleges, and 1.5 million schools. The improvement in rural literacy between 2001 and 2011 was twice that of urban areas, a shift that has helped drive broader economic participation.

• 8. Science, Art, and the Natural World

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  Significant mathematics began in India in the first millennium BCE. The Sulba Sutras, dated roughly 700-400 BCE, contain the earliest known written expression of the Pythagorean theorem. The decimal number system in worldwide use today was first recorded in Indian mathematics, as were early formulations of zero as a number, negative numbers, and algebra. Trigonometry was further developed in India, where the modern definitions of sine and cosine emerged. In the 15th century, mathematicians of the Kerala school developed power series expansions for trigonometric functions, work completed two centuries before calculus was invented in Europe. In the modern era, Srinivasa Ramanujan made foundational contributions to number theory.

  In visual art, thousands of seals carved with animals from the Indus Valley Civilisation survive from the third millennium BCE. The Pashupati seal from Mohenjo-daro is the most recognised. Mauryan art was the first imperial artistic movement in north India. The large bronzes of the Pallava and Chola dynasties in the south, portraying Shiva as Nataraja, have become an iconic image of Indian culture. The ancient paintings in the Ajanta Caves, depicting crowded scenes of court life, are among the most important surviving examples of early Indian painting.

  India is also one of only 17 countries designated as megadiverse. It is habitat to 8.6% of the world's mammals, 13.7% of bird species, and 6% of all flowering plant species, with fully a third of Indian plant species endemic. Four of the world's 34 biodiversity hotspots overlap with India. Among animals facing critical endangerment is the Indian white-rumped vulture, which has become nearly extinct after ingesting carrion from cattle treated with diclofenac. The national system of protected areas was first established in 1935 and expanded substantially after the Wildlife Protection Act and Project Tiger were enacted in 1972.