India

India fills most of the Indian subcontinent, a block of land that drifted north and collided with Asia, pushing up the Himalayas along its northern edge. Below the mountains the Ganges and its tributaries have built one of the most fertile and densely settled plains on earth. To the south the Deccan Plateau tilts eastwards between the Western and Eastern Ghats, and the Thar Desert spreads across the north-west. The summer monsoon brings the rains on which much of its farming depends.

The planned cities of the Indus Valley flourished around 2500 BC, and the Vedas, the oldest Hindu scriptures, were composed in the centuries after. The emperor Ashoka helped carry Buddhism across Asia, and Indian mathematicians developed the decimal system, zero included. Sultans and then the Mughals ruled much of the north from the thirteenth century, and British rule followed. A freedom movement led most famously by Mahatma Gandhi won independence in 1947 at the cost of partition, and India became a republic in 1950.

The country is the birthplace of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism, with large Muslim and Christian communities too, and each region has its own language, script, food and festivals. Classical dance, the film studios of Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad, and cricket compete for the nation’s attention. Small family farms grow rice, wheat, pulses, cotton and sugar cane, Bengaluru and Hyderabad are hubs of software services, and Indian factories supply much of the world’s generic medicine.