Who doesn’t love a good bit of random trivia knowledge?  Here we give you 32 lesser known facts about the ever-Interesting India…

1) India has never invaded any country in her last 100,000 years of history.

2) Chess was invented in India.

3)  Algebra, Trigonometry and Calculus are all studies that originated in India.

4) India has the largest number of Post Offices in the world.

5) The ‘Place Value System’ and the ‘Decimal System’ were developed in India in 100 B.C.

6) The Indian Railways employs over 1.3 million people and has over 23 million passengers each day.

7) The value of “pi” was first calculated by the Indian Mathematician Budhayana, and he explained the concept of what is known as the Pythagorean Theorem. He discovered this in the 6th century, long before the European mathematicians.

8) Until 1896, India was the only source of diamonds in the world.

9) Sushruta is regarded as the Father of Surgery. Over 2600 years ago Sushrata & his team conducted complicated surgeries like cataract, artificial limbs, cesareans, fractures, urinary stones, plastic surgery and brain surgeries.

10) Islam is India’s and the world’s second largest religion.  There are over 300,000 active mosques in India, more than any other country, including the Muslim world.

11) Jews and Christians have lived continuously in India since 200 B.C. and 52 A.D. respectively

12) Varanasi,also known as Benaras, was called “the Ancient City” when Lord Buddha visited it in 500 B.C., and is the oldest, continuously inhabited city in the world today.

13) India provides safety for more than 300,000 refugees originally from Sri Lanka, Tibet, Bhutan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, who escaped to flee religious and political persecution.

14) His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists, runs his government in exile from Dharmashala in northern India.

15) Martial Arts were first created in India and later spread to Asia by Buddhist missionaries.

16) Yoga has its origins in India and has existed for over 5,000 years

17) In the next three years, up to 25% of the world’s new workers will be Indian

18) 42% of the world’s poor live in India.  That’s over 450 million people living below the international poverty line of $1.25 a day, according to the World Bank.

19) India grows 12 million tons of mangoes in a year, the weight equivalent to 80,000 blue whales

20) A bigger movie market than America and Canada combined, India sold 3.2 billion tickets last year.

21) India has 568 million more registered voters than the US — and a better turnout rate too.

22) The village of Shani Shingnapur, Maharashtra is known for the fact that no homes in the village have doors- residents do not keep their valuables under lock and key and believe that the god of the famous Shani temple punishes anyone attempting theft.  Reports of theft in the village are extremely rare.

23) A teenager by the name of Arshid Ali Khan is believed to be a reincarnation of the monkey God Hanuman and is worshipped by many Indians because of the rare, 7 inch tail he was born with.

24) India is the world’s largest producer of dried beans, such as kidney beans and chickpeas. It also leads the world in banana exports; Brazil is second.

25) India is the largest democracy in the world.

26) The Indian state Kerala is communist..by choice.

 

27) Many Indians find toilet paper repellent and consider 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.

 

28) It is illegal to take Indian currency (rupees) out of India.

29) 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.

30) It is traditional to wear white, not black, to a funeral in India. Widows will often wear white in contrast to the colorful clothes of married or single women

31) India is the world’s largest tea producer, and tea (chai) is its most popular beverage

32) It took 22,000 workmen 22 years to complete the Taj Mahal.