Demographics of India

India is the second most populous country in the world, with only China having a larger population. Language, religion, and caste are major determinants of social and political organisation within the highly diverse Indian population today. Its biggest metropolitan agglomerations are Mumbai (formerly Bombay), Delhi, Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), and Chennai (formerly Madras).

Hinduism is the largest professed religion in India. Pictured here is a temple in Goa.

India’s literacy rate is 64.8%, with 53.7% of females and 75.3% of males being literate. The sex ratio is 933 females for every 1000 males[8]. Work Participation Rate (WPR) (the percentage of workers to total population) stands at 39.1%, with male WPR at 51.7% and female WPR at 25.6%[9]. India’s median age is 24.66 and has a growth rate of 22.32 births/1,000 population[10].

Although 80.5% of the people are Hindus, India is also home to the second largest population of Muslims in the world (13.4%; see Islam in India) after Indonesia. Other smaller religious minorities include Christians (2.33%; see Christianity in India), Sikhs (1.84%), Buddhists (0.76%), Jains (0.40%), Ayyavazhi (0.12%), Jews (see Jews in India), Parsis, Ahmadi, and Bahá’ís[11].

India is home to two major linguistic families, those of the Indo-Aryan and Dravidian-derived languages. The Indian constitution recognises twenty-three official languages[12]. Hindi along with English are the languages used by the Central Government for official purposes. Two classical languages native to the land are Sanskrit and Tamil. The number of mother tongues in India is as high as 1652