When the Moghul Empire invaded during the sixteenth century, they left a significant mark on the Indian cuisine, according to Texas A&M University. According to its World Factbook, around 80 percent of the population is Hindu, 14.2 percent is Muslim, 2.3 percent is Christian, 1.7 percent is Sikh and 2 percent is unspecified. Christians and Sikhs make up a small percentage of the population, and there are even fewer Buddhists and Jains, according to the "Handbook." There are many variations of Hinduism, and four predominant sects - Shaiva, Vaishnava, Shakteya and Smarta.Ībout 13 percent of Indians are Muslim, making it one of the largest Islamic nations in the world. About 84 percent of the population identifies as Hindu, according to the " Handbook of Research on Development and Religion," edited by Matthew Clarke (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2013). India is identified as the birthplace of Hinduism and Buddhism, the third and fourth largest religions. "There's been a very long-running debate about whether the Indo-European languages were brought from migrations from outside, which is what most linguists would accept, or if they evolved indigenously." Religion
"People have been debating the arrival of the Indo-European languages in India for hundreds of years," said study co-author Martin Richards, an archaeogeneticist at the University of Huddersfield in England. New DNA research in 2017 found that an Aryan invasion may have introduced the beginnings of Sanskrit. It shares many similarities with English, French, Farsi and Russian languages. How the language started has been a point of argument amongst linguists. Sanskrit, an ancient Indo-European language usually referred to in action movies, came from Northern India. Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil and Urdu are some other languages spoken in the country. Though many people speak Hindi in India, 59 percent of India residents speak something other than Hindi, according to The Times of India. In fact, it is a misconception that the majority of people in India speak Hindi. Many people living in India write in Devanagari script. Language, religion, food and the arts are just some of the various aspects of Indian culture. Different regions have their own distinct cultures. Today, India is a very diverse country, with more than 1.2 billion people, according to the CIA World Factbook, making it the second most populous nation after China. However, Indians made significant advances in architecture ( Taj Mahal), mathematics ( the invention of zero) and medicine ( Ayurveda). Essentially this included all the colonized countries and people, such as African countries, India, and the Far East."
"In this view, societies outside of Europe or North America, or societies that did not follow the European or Western way of life, were considered primitive and culturally inferior. Early anthropologists once considered culture as an evolutionary process, and "every aspect of human development was seen as driven by evolution," she told Live Science. Western societies did not always see the culture of India very favorably, according to Christina De Rossi, an anthropologist at Barnet and Southgate College in London. Map of India (Image credit: pavalena Shutterstock)