India 🇮🇳

India lies in Southern Asia, part of Asia. In formal use it is Republic of India. New Delhi is the capital.

Around 1.45 billion people live there, placing it 1st of 249 by population — more populous than every other entry, including China. Measured only against its own subregion, it is 1st of 9 in size and 1st in population.

By land area it covers 3,287,590 km², which ranks it 8th of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Australia and just ahead of Argentina. That makes it around a quarter larger than Argentina.

Density comes out at around 441 people per square kilometre, which makes it densely populated. For comparison, the median entry on this list sits near 91 per square kilometre.

People from India are called Indians.

It recognises 3 languages: English, Hindi and Tamil. Hindi is listed for no other entry in this dataset, which makes it effectively unique to India. English, the first listed, is shared with 90 other entries worldwide.

Inside Asia it places 1st of 50 by population, and it accounts for 70% of everyone living in Southern Asia.

Within Southern Asia, India is the most populous of the 9 entries this site lists, and the largest by area as well. Pakistan is next in line by population.

Every entry in Southern Asia has its own guide here, so if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time, Pakistan is the place to carry on.

• 🇵🇰 Pakistan
• 🇮🇳 India

The coordinates the dataset gives are 20.0° N, 77.0° E, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 2,226 km from the equator, in what geographers would call tropical latitudes.

It is one of the countries that the Tropic of Cancer crosses. Mauritania, Cuba and the Dominican Republic sit at almost exactly the same latitude on other parts of the globe.

It borders 6 neighbours: Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar, China, Nepal and Pakistan. The largest of them by area is China, which is also the most populous. Together those neighbours hold about 1.92 billion people.

With both a coast and land borders, it has the trade options a landlocked country does not.

Put next to every other entry on this site, India ranks 8th of 249 by area and 1st by population. That works out at 2.2% of the combined land area of all 249 entries and 17.9% of their combined population. Those denominators matter: this list includes territories and dependencies as well as UN member states, so a rank here is not the same as a rank among sovereign countries.

For a sense of scale, the entries immediately either side of India in the size ordering are Australia at 7,692,024 km² and Argentina at 2,780,400 km², against India's 3,287,590 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. India averages 441 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it densely settled by global standards — 31st of the 247 entries that have both a population and a measured area. Total area includes inland water, so the true figure for habitable land is higher than this.

India does not have the Indian rupee to itself. It is one of 3 entries on this site that use the currency, whose code is INR, and the others include listed below. A shared currency usually points at something real — a monetary union, a currency board, a former colonial administration, or a small economy pegging itself to a large neighbour's money — and it means a price quoted in INR travels further than you might expect.

Language reaches wider still. English is listed for 91 entries here, India among them, so a visitor who speaks it can be understood across a large part of the map. Shared language tends to outlive the empires, trade routes and migrations that spread it, which is why the linguistic map and the political one rarely line up.

Money there is the Indian rupee (₹, INR). It is issued for India alone.

Websites there use the .in domain. The international dialling code is +91. Its ISO codes are in and IND, which is what most databases and flag files use.

New Delhi is the seat of government and the answer most quizzes are looking for.

As a sovereign state it is among the 192 UN members listed here. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 249 rather than the familiar 195.