Literacy, longevity, income, and social cohesion
are first-rate by world standards.

India
Aryan tribes from the northwest infiltrated onto the Indian
subcontinent about 1500 B.C.; their merger with the earlier
Dravidian inhabitants created the classical Indian culture. The
Maurya Empire of the 4th and 3rd centuries B.C. - which reached its
zenith under ASHOKA - united much of South Asia. The Golden Age
ushered in by the Gupta dynasty (4th to 6th centuries A.D.) saw a
flowering of Indian science, art, and culture. Arab incursions
starting in the 8th century and Turkic in the 12th were followed by
those of European traders, beginning in the late 15th century. By
the 19th century, Britain had assumed political control of virtually
all Indian lands. Indian armed forces in the British army played a
vital role in both World Wars. Nonviolent resistance to British
colonialism led by Mohandas GANDHI and Jawaharlal NEHRU brought
independence in 1947. The subcontinent was divided into the secular
state of India and the smaller Muslim state of Pakistan. A third war
between the two countries in 1971 resulted in East Pakistan becoming
the separate nation of Bangladesh. India's nuclear weapons testing
in 1998 caused Pakistan to conduct its own tests that same year. The
dispute between the countries over the state of Kashmir is ongoing,
but discussions and confidence-building measures have led to
decreased tensions since 2002. Despite impressive gains in economic
investment and output, India faces pressing problems such as
significant overpopulation, environmental degradation, extensive
poverty, and ethnic and religious strife.

Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's
five oceans (after the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Ocean, but larger
than the Southern Ocean and Arctic Ocean). Four critically important
access waterways are the Suez Canal (Egypt), Bab el Mandeb
(Djibouti-Yemen), Strait of Hormuz (Iran-Oman), and Strait of
Malacca (Indonesia-Malaysia). The decision by the International
Hydrographic Organization in the spring of 2000 to delimit a fifth
ocean, the Southern Ocean, removed the portion of the Indian Ocean
south of 60 degrees south latitude.

Indonesia
The Dutch began to colonize Indonesia in the early 17th
century; the islands were occupied by Japan from 1942 to 1945.
Indonesia declared its independence after Japan's su