India, formally the Republic of India (Hindi: Bhārat Gaṇarājya),[25] is a rustic in South Asia. It is the seventh-biggest u . s . via way of means of area, the second-maximum populous u . s ., and the maximum populous democracy withinside the world. Bounded via way of means of the Indian Ocean at the south, the Arabian Sea at the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal at the southeast, it stocks land borders with Pakistan to the west;[f] China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the north; and Bangladesh and Myanmar to the east. In the Indian Ocean, India is withinside the location of Sri Lanka and the Maldives; its Andaman and Nicobar Islands proportion a maritime border with Thailand, Myanmar, and Indonesia. The nation`s capital town is New Delhi.Modern human beings arrived at the Indian subcontinent from Africa no later than 55,000 years ago.[26][27][28] Their lengthy occupation, to start with in various varieties of isolation as hunter-gatherers, has made the vicinity exceedingly diverse, 2d best to Africa in human genetic diversity.[29] Settled lifestyles emerged at the subcontinent withinside the western margins of the Indus river basin 9,000 years ago, evolving steadily into the Indus Valley Civilisation of the 1/3 millennium BCE.[30] By 1200 BCE, an archaic shape of Sanskrit, an Indo-European language, had subtle into India from the northwest.[31][32] Its proof these days is located withinside the hymns of the Rigveda. Preserved through a resolutely vigilant oral tradition, the Rigveda information the dawning of Hinduism in India.[33] The Dravidian languages of India have been supplanted withinside the northern and western regions.[34] By four hundred BCE, stratification and exclusion through caste had emerged inside Hinduism,[35] and Buddhism and Jainism had arisen, proclaiming social orders unlinked to heredity.[36] Early political consolidations gave upward push to the loose-knit Maurya and Gupta Empires primarily based totally withinside the Ganges Basin.[37] Their collective technology become suffused with wide-ranging creativity,[38] however additionally marked through the declining popularity of women,[39] and the incorporation of untouchability into an organised gadget of belief.[g][40] In South India, the Middle kingdoms exported Dravidian-languages scripts and non secular cultures to the kingdoms of Southeast Asia.[41] 
 
In the early medieval technology, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism have become set up on India`s southern and western coasts.[42] Muslim armies from Central Asia intermittently overran India's northern plains,[43] ultimately founding the Delhi Sultanate, and drawing northern India into the cosmopolitan networks of medieval Islam.[44] In the fifteenth century, the Vijayanagara Empire created an enduring composite Hindu subculture in south India.[45] In the Punjab, Sikhism emerged, rejecting institutionalised religion.[46] The Mughal Empire, in 1526, ushered in  centuries of relative peace,[47] leaving a legacy of luminous architecture.[h][48] Gradually increasing rule of the British East India Company followed, turning India right into a colonial economy, however additionally consolidating its sovereignty.[49] British Crown rule started in 1858. The rights promised to Indians have been granted slowly,[50][51] however technological adjustments have been introduced, and current thoughts of schooling and the general public lifestyles took root.[52] A pioneering and influential nationalist motion emerged, which become stated for nonviolent resistance and have become the main issue in finishing British rule. In 1947 the British Indian Empire become partitioned into  impartial dominions,a Hindu-majority Dominion of India and a Muslim-majority Dominion of Pakistan, amid large-scale lack of lifestyles and an unparalleled migration.