India @70- 70 Facts About India That Will Blow Your Mind

India is a vast South Asian country with diverse terrain – from Himalayan peaks to Indian Ocean coastline – and history reaching back 5 millennia. In the north, Mughal Empire landmarks include Delhi’s Red Fort complex and massive Jama Masjid mosque, plus Agra’s iconic Taj Mahal mausoleum. Pilgrims bathe in the Ganges in Varanasi, and Rishikesh is a yoga centre and base for Himalayan trekking. Here are 70 facts about India to Blow your Mind-

# India is the world's largest democracy, with 1.2 billion people.

# 100 million people come to India's Kumbh Mela Festival, the world's biggest gathering of humans.

# India's Hindu calendar has 6 seasons: spring, summer, monsoon, autumn, winter and prevernal.

# It's illegal for foreigners to take Indian currency (rupees) out of India.

# An Indian man claims he hasn't eaten or drunk for 70 years. After many tests, doctors still don't know how it's possible.

# Traditionally, Indians found toilet paper repellent and considered it cleaner to splash water with the left hand in the appropriate direction. Consequently, the left hand is considered unclean and is never used for eating.

# Cows can be found freely wandering the streets of India’s cities. They are considered sacred and will often wear a tilak, a Hindu symbol of good fortune. Cows are considered one of humankind’s seven mothers because they offer milk as does one’s natural mother.

# India has one of the world’s highest rates of abortion. Time magazine reports that in 2012, the number of abortions in India could be as high as 7 million, with 2/3 of abortions taking place in unauthorized health facilities. Due to unsanitary conditions, a woman in India dies every two hours. Additionally, there are more men than women in India due to the high rate of abortions performed on female fetuses, a practice known as "gendercide."

# Indians made significant contributions to calculus, trigonometry, and algebra. The decimal system was invented in India in 100 B.C. The concept of zero as a number is also attributed to India.

# The earliest cotton in the world was spun and woven in India. Roman emperors would wear delicate cotton from India that they would call “woven winds.” Mogul emperors called the fabrics “morning dew” and “cloth of running water.”

# Breathing the air in Mumbai, India, for just one day is equivalent to smoking 100 cigarettes.

# The world's biggest family lives together in India: a man with 39 wives and 94 children.

# A man married a dog in India as atonement.

# Police officers in one state in India are given a slight pay upgrade for having a moustache.

# India has the world's lowest meat consumption per person.

# India has more mobile phones than toilets.

# Children's Day is celebrated in India on November 14th, 9 months after Valentine's Day.

# 61% of school children in India have disease-causing germs on their hands.

# In West Bengal, India, cows must have a Photo ID Card.

# One woman dies every hour in India because of dowry-related crimes.

# 70% of all the world's spices come from India.

# Sex toys are illegal in India.

# India has the largest slave population in the modern world with over 14 million slaves.

# To earn enough to buy a Big Mac, the average person in India has to work almost 6 hours.

# 53% of homes in India do not have a lavatory.

# In India, a polling station is set up in a forest for a lone voter in every election since 2004.

# India has more population than the entire Western Hemisphere of Earth.

# "Anal" is a language spoken in India and Burma by 23,000 people.

# In India, there is a vigilante group called the "Love Commandos" that offers protection from harassment to couples from different castes who fall in love.

# While Beijing's pollution problem is more famous, the world's most polluted city is New Delhi, India.

# India's "Go Air" airline only hires female flight attendants because they are lighter, so they save up to US$500,000 per year in fuel.

# Gleevec, a cancer drug that costs US$70,000 in the U.S. per year, cost just US$2,500 in India because it can't be patented there.

# The Kumbh Mela (or Grand Pitcher Festival) is a huge Hindu religious festival that takes place in India every 12 years. In 2001, 60 million people attended, breaking the record for the world’s biggest gathering. The mass of people was photographed from space by a satellite.

# The Himalayas—from the Sanskrit hima, meaning “snow,” and alaya, meaning “abode”—are found in the north of India. They extend 1,500 miles and are slowly growing taller, by almost an inch (2.5 cm) a year. Several ancient Indian monasteries are found nestled in the grandeur of these mountains.

# Indians hold prominent places both internationally and in the United States. For example, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems (Vinod Khosla), the creator of the Pentium chip (Vinod Dahm), the founder/creator of Hotmail (Sabeer Bhatia), and the GM of Hewlett-Packard (Rajiv Gupta) are all Indian.

# Every major world religion is represented in India. Additionally, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism all originated in India.

# Mumbai (Bombay) is India’s largest city, with a population of 15 million. In 1661, British engineers built a causeway uniting all seven original islands of Bombay into a single landmass.

# The lotus is sacred to both Hindus and Buddhists. The Bahá’í house of worship in Delhi, known as the “Lotus Temple,” is shaped like a lotus flower with 27 gigantic “petals” that are covered in marble.

# The banyan, or Indian fig tree, is considered a symbol of immortality and is mentioned in many Indian myths and legends. This self-renewing plant is India’s national tree.

# Marigold flowers are used as decoration for Hindu marriages and are a symbol of good fortune and happiness.

# Most historians agree that the first recorded account of plastic surgery is found in ancient Indian Sanskrit texts.

# Rivers have played a vital role in India’s popular culture and folklore—they have been worshipped as goddesses because they bring water to an otherwise dry land. Bathing in the Ganges in particular is thought to take away a person’s sins. It is not unusual to spread a loved one’s ashes in the Ganges.

# The temples of Khajuraho are famous for their erotic sculptures and are one of the most popular tourist attractions in India. Scholars still debate the purpose of such explicit portrayals of sexual intercourse, which sometimes involve animals.

# India has the world’s third largest road network at 1.9 million miles. It also has the world’s second largest rail network, which is the world’s largest civilian employer with 16 million workers.

# In recent years, Indian authors have made a mark on the world with such novels as Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses (1988), Vikram Seth’s Suitable Boy (1993), and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things (1997).

# Dancing is one of India’s most highly developed arts and was an integral part of worship in the inner shrines of every temple. It is notable for its expressive hand movements.

# The first and greatest civilization in ancient India developed around the valley of the Indus River (now Pakistan) around 3000 B.C. Called the Indus Valley civilization, this early empire was larger than any other empire, including Egypt and Mesopotamia

# About 80% of Indians are Hindu. Muslims are the largest minority in India and form approximately 13% of the country’s population. In fact, India has the third largest population of Muslims in the world, after Indonesia and Pakistan.