border, the Indus and Ganges River Plains, the
Thar Desert in the west near the pakistan border,
the Deccan Plateau that defines peninsular India,
and a 4,350 mile coastline (including island ter-
ritories) that meets the Arabian Sea, the Bay of
Bengal, and the Indian Ocean. It shares its longest
border with bangladesh in the east, followed
by Pakistan in the west, China and Nepal in the
north, and Burma and Bhutan in the northeast.
Sri Lanka lies just 18.5 miles off the southern
coast of India. India has several sizeable cities:
Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), Delhi, Mumbai (for-
merly Bombay), Chennai (formerly Madras), and
Bangalore. The national capital is New Delhi, a
modern extension to the old city of delhi; it is
situated on the banks of the Yamuna River in the
Indo-Gangetic plain.
The government of India is a federal parlia-
mentary democracy—the largest in the world. It
has a multiparty political system, with the two
leading parties being the Indian National Con-
gress Party and the Baharatiya Janata Party (BJP,
Indian People’s Party). The majority party alliance
in the parliament selects the prime minister, who
chairs a council of ministers and holds executive
power. India also has an elected president, but this
is a ceremonial office. The president’s term is five
years. Each of India’s 28 states has its own elected
state legislature and chief minister. There are also
seven union territories, four of which are located
in outlying areas. The others are the territories of
Delhi (like Washington, D.C.), Chandigarh in the
Punjab, and Pondicherry (Puducherry), a former
French colony located in southern India.
India’s population is estimated to be nearly
1.15 billion (2008). Hindus are by far the major-
ity (80.5 percent). Sikhs make up about 2 percent
of the population, and other minority religions
include Zoroastrians, Christians, Buddhists, and
Jews. Muslims make up about 13.4 percent of
the total, or about 160 million. This means India
has one of the largest Muslim populations in the
world after indonesia and Pakistan. Prior to the
1947 partition of India that resulted in the cre-
ation of Pakistan, it is estimated that about 24.3
percent of the country’s population was Muslim
(1941 census). According to the 2001 census of
India, 97 percent of the country’s Muslims live in
13 states. The states with the highest percentages
are Jammu and kashmir (67 percent), West Ben-
gal (25.2 percent), Kerala (24.7 percent), Uttar
Pradesh (18.5 percent), Bihar (16.5 percent), and
Karnataka (12.2 percent). Several of the union
territories also have large percentages of Muslims:
Lakshadweep (95 percent), Assam (30.9 percent),
and Delhi (11.7 percent). About 61 percent of
India’s Muslims today are involved in agricUl-
tUre, whereas those living in cities tend to beVisitors flock to the shrine of Hajji Ali, Bombay (Mum-
bai), India.( Juan E. Campo)India 349 J