About India

• On 26 October 1947, Maharaja Hari Singh signed the Instrument of Accession and the entire State of Jammu & Kashmir acceded to India.
• On 22 February 1994, both Houses of Parliament unanimously resolved that the State of Jammu & Kashmir has been, is and shall be an integral part of India, and that Pakistan must vacate the areas it occupied through aggression.
• Under the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019, two Union Territories were formed on 31 October 2019. Under the official map of 2 November 2019, the Union Territory of Ladakh has the Leh and Kargil districts. The Leh district includes the areas of Gilgit, Gilgit Wazarat, Chilhas and the Tribal Territory as they stood in 1947. The rest, including Mirpur and Muzaffarabad, is in the Union Territory of Jammu & Kashmir.
• The areas held by Pakistan are Pakistan-occupied Jammu & Kashmir (PoJK) and Gilgit-Baltistan, which are under its illegal occupation. Aksai Chin, part of Ladakh, is under China's illegal occupation. The Shaksgam valley was illegally ceded by Pakistan to China under the so-called boundary agreement of 1963, which India has never recognised.
• Article 370 was abrogated in August 2019. The Supreme Court upheld this on 11 December 2023.

• Arunachal Pradesh is an integral and inalienable part of India. India rejects attempts by other countries to assign "invented" names to places in the State. It became a full State on 20 February 1987.

• The Survey of India is the national mapping agency. Maps of India published in India must show the external boundaries as officially depicted.
• Section 2 of the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 1961 makes it an offence to question the territorial integrity or frontiers of India in a manner prejudicial to the interests of the country.
• The map shown in Know India is simplified for the screen. For the authoritative map, see the Survey of India.

The Preamble declares India a sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic. It promises every citizen justice (social, economic and political), liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship, equality of status and opportunity, and fraternity that assures the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation.

• Fundamental Rights (Part III): equality, freedoms, protection against exploitation, freedom of religion, cultural and educational rights, and the right to constitutional remedies.
• Directive Principles of State Policy (Part IV) guide the government in making laws and policies.
• Fundamental Duties (Article 51A) include upholding the sovereignty, unity and integrity of India, promoting harmony, and valuing and preserving our composite culture.

• India is a Union of States with a parliamentary system: the President is the head of State and the Council of Ministers headed by the Prime Minister holds executive power.
• Parliament has the Lok Sabha (House of the People) and the Rajya Sabha (Council of States). Each State has its own legislature and government.
• An independent judiciary, with the Supreme Court at the top, guards the Constitution.

• The Himalayan mountains in the north, with the world's highest peaks and glaciers that feed the great rivers.
• The Northern Plains of the Indus, Ganga and Brahmaputra, among the most fertile lands on Earth.
• The Peninsular Plateau (Deccan), bordered by the Western and Eastern Ghats.
• The Thar (Great Indian) Desert in the north-west.
• The coastal plains along the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal.
• The island groups: Andaman & Nicobar in the Bay of Bengal and Lakshadweep in the Arabian Sea.

• Himalayan rivers flow all year round: the Ganga and Yamuna, the Brahmaputra, and the Indus with its tributaries Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas and Satluj.
• Peninsular rivers depend on rain: the Godavari (the longest of them), Krishna, Kaveri and Mahanadi flow east. The Narmada and Tapi flow west.

• The south-west monsoon (June–September) brings most of India's rain. Mawsynram and Sohra (Cherrapunji) in Meghalaya are among the wettest places on Earth, while Dras in Ladakh is among the coldest inhabited places.
• The Tropic of Cancer passes through eight States: Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Tripura and Mizoram.

• Bangladesh 4,096.7 km · China 3,488 km · Pakistan 3,323 km · Nepal 1,751 km · Myanmar 1,643 km · Bhutan 699 km · Afghanistan 106 km. Total 15,106.7 km.

• India has four of the world's 36 biodiversity hotspots: the Himalaya, Indo-Burma, the Western Ghats and Sri Lanka, and Sundaland (Nicobar Islands).
• About three-quarters of the world's wild tigers live in India (3,682 estimated in 2022). Gir in Gujarat is the only home of the Asiatic lion. Kaziranga holds the largest population of the one-horned rhinoceros.

• The decimal place-value system with zero, used by the whole world today, developed in India. Brahmagupta (628 CE) gave rules for calculating with zero.
• Aryabhata (499 CE) explained the daily rotation of the Earth and gave π as about 3.1416.
• The Sushruta Samhita describes surgical procedures and instruments, including reconstructive surgery of the nose. The Charaka Samhita is a foundational text of Ayurveda.
• The Iron Pillar at the Qutb complex in Delhi, from the Gupta period, has resisted rust for over 1,500 years.
• Lothal in Gujarat had one of the world's earliest known dockyards. The Jantar Mantar observatories of Sawai Jai Singh II measured time and the sky with stone instruments.

• C. V. Raman won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930 for the Raman effect. National Science Day (28 February) marks its discovery.
• ISRO was founded in 1969. India launched its first satellite, Aryabhata, in 1975. Rakesh Sharma flew to space in 1984.
• The Mars Orbiter Mission (Mangalyaan) reached Mars on 24 September 2014. India was the first country to do so on its first attempt.
• In 2017, PSLV-C37 placed 104 satellites in orbit in a single launch.
• Chandrayaan-3 made India the first country to land near the Moon's south pole, on 23 August 2023, now National Space Day.
• Aditya-L1, India's first solar observatory, reached its orbit around the L1 point in January 2024.
• In 2025, Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla became the first Indian to visit the International Space Station. The Gaganyaan programme will send Indian astronauts to space on an Indian rocket.