INDIA -- ALL THINGS INDIA: NEWS FROM INDIA, CULTURE OF INDIA, HISTORY OF INDIA, RECIPES FROM INDIA

India is a Continent unto itself.

India is home to 1 out of every 6 human beings on our planet. In addition, millions of people with roots in India live spread across the world, from London, Birmingham and Manchester in Britain, to Toronto and other cities in Canada (South Asians recently became the largest ethnic minority in the city of Toronto).

India herself, in a sense, is several countries. Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have close cultural and historical ties with the people of India and of course, before the British left, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh were all part of the same country.

India is home to countless languages and dialects, certain languages standing out perhaps (Hindi or course, Bengali, Gujarati, Panjabi, in Pakistan Urdu), and several major religions.

Hinduism is in a sense a mix of many traditions and beliefs and, despite being practiced by relatively few non-Indians, is among the most populous religions in the world; Islam is well-represented, despite so many Muslims moving to East and West Pakistan (Bangladesh and present-day Pakistan) during the Partition in the late 1940's; the home of Sikhism is the Indian region of the Punjab; the religion of Jain is widely practiced; Buddhism began here; and there are sizeable numbers of Christians, descendants of converts in contact with Portuguese colonists arriving in India several centuries ago.

India is often called the largest democracy in the world and, despite terrible political upheavals, religious terrorism, separatism, and nationalism (Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh), poverty, and involvement in a permanent showdown with Pakistan, it still lays claim to being the country with the largest population that has more-or-less avoided dictatorship successfully since its liberation from the British Empire sixty years ago.

Of course the history of India is as long as it is fascinating.

Settled by people related to the ancestors of modern-day Europeans (and for this reason called Indo-Europeans), and speaking a language connected to those of Europe, the Indus River Valley was settled millenia ago, and holds its head up in the competition to be considered the place where civilization proper arose independently of any cultural importation (along with Iraq, China, and Mexico... if memory serves at least...).

The great religions of Buddhism and Hinduism were already fully-established well before either Plato or Aristotle had put pen to paper, and before the armies of Alexander the Great rose up to conquer all neighbouring territories, eventually reaching India itself, and certainly before the births of both Christianity and Islam, the Rise and Fall of Rome, and the birth of European civilization.

In what we, in the West at least, usually refer to as the Middle Ages, in India, as for so many peoples in places stretching from central France to southeast Asia, and south into both East and West Africa, Islam arrived and, like Buddhism in the Far East and Christianity in Europe and the Americas, set up shop.

Like Buddhism and Christianity, Islam is, at least theoretically, blind to race (only around 1 in 6 of the world's Muslims are actually Arab); this is why it was taken on, via the many processes that saw also Buddhism and Christianity take root in the countries it did, by peoples from places as diverse as Spain, Albania, Turkey, Persia, Indonesia, Central Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. India was no exception. Much like Christianity in Europe and the Americas, many Indians became converts to Islam through marriage, persuasion, convenience, coercion, conviction and expediency.

The result is that the Indian sub-Continent is home to a large selection of peoples of varying backgrounds, cultures, languages and religions, Hinduism and Islam being perhaps the largest in number and most impressive in terms of developed institutions that stretch across the entire nation (rather than being more localized, as is the case with Sikhism), and legacy of customs, architecture and history within India.

At least this could have been definitively stated up until the advent of the Second World War.

Britain's domination of the Indian Sub-Continent (as well as partial or full control of or interference with other nations in the wider region, including Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Jordan-Palestine (as was), Afghanistan, Malaysia and China), lasting several centuries, starting with such controversial luminaries as "Clive of India", and reaching its high point in terms of development under Queen Victoria, came to an end when, certainly in many ways thanks to the agitation of Gandhi, but also because the War had changed the notion of Empire forever in some way, India was granted, or won, independence.

At this point two states were set up, predominantly Muslim Pakistan, and predominantly Hindu India.

Much has happened since that time. Gandhi himself was assassinated just as the process of liberation was getting under way. Since then, India and Pakistan have eyed each other suspiciously and at times clashed militarily: both now possess membership in the exclusive nuclear club, the preserve otherwise only of Western nations (the USA, Britain, France) her allies (Israel), and former Soviet Republics. Similarly, the "two Pakistans", (India having been positioned geographically dividing that country into two) fought a terrible civil war in the 1970's, Bangladesh in the East being the result.

Perhaps as always in all periods of history, it has been new forms of technology that are transforming India more than anything at present.

Anyone who has had to call Air Canada to report lost baggage, to chase down a rebate cheque from Corel, or has had to get trouble-shooting advice from Lexmark, knows that the buzzword in corporate restructuring is outsourcing.

And for India, with millions of people, and so inevitably and in real terms, large numbers of literate, English-speaking college graduates, coupled with currency parity systems that mean that wages are drastically different in different countries, suddenly the call centre is as common as the sacred cow.

Indeed, it is because of the large numbers of Hubbers at Hubpages who clearly live in India that I have written this.

Many of us in the West, much like many of you, I am sure, in the East, are hungry for real information about what life is like in our respective countries.

Enough with the galleries of sexy Bollywood actresses. We all already know that Indian women are beautiful!

Tell us instead about your culture.

How is it that, in a land of such incredible poverty, so many of you are clearly wealthy, literate, and technically advanced, as plugged into the Internet as anyone in the United States, say, or Germany?

What about these people we talk to when we order airline tickets or need details of our credit card statement? Are their wages acceptable in real terms? Or are they victims of the horrific Export Processing Zones where so many of our goods are made?

What are the differences between the city and countryside? The North and the South, the middle-class areas and the shanty-towns?

Do you have health insurance?

What did you think of the assassination of Bhutto, or Musharaf's cosying up to Bush?

Hubpages is a fantastic opportunity for you to share with us about a country you know much better than us; a country where one in six of our species lives, where what happens within your culture, affects us all, everywhere.

I implore you therefore, Hubbers from India, forget the galleries. Write to us about what you know, and what we don't -- write to us about India.