Top 10 India facts

None of the above. India is unique for having Hindi as an official languages. Hindi is widely spoken in Pakistan, Fiji, and Nepal, but it is not the official language. The official languages of Pakistan are English and Urdu. The official language of Nepal is Nepali. The official languages of Fiji are Fijian, English, and Fiji Hindi. However, Fiji Hindi, aka Hindustani, is NOT the same thing as Hindi.

Madras. The renaming of cities in India started after the end of the British imperial period in 1947 and continues to date. Madras was changed to Chennai in 1994, but the old name is preserved in many institutions, like Madras Stock Exchange, Madras University and Madras High Court.

Buddhism. Indian Buddhism peaked in the 3rd century BC, during the reign of Asoka the Great, who patronised Buddhism following his conversion. He sent missionaries abroad, allowing Buddhism to spread across Asia. However, Indian Buddhism declined constantly following the loss of royal patronage, and today only 0.8% of the Indian population are Buddhists.

Varanasi. Hindus believe that bathing in the Ganges remits sins and that dying in Varanasi ensures release of a person's soul from the cycle of its transmigrations. Those who are lucky enough to die in Varanasi, are cremated on the banks of the Ganges, and are granted instant salvation. Thus, many Hindus arrive here for dying.

Son of Brahma. While most rivers of the Indian subcontinent have female names, this river has a rare male name, as it means "son of Brahma" in Sanskrit (Putra means "son").

Bengali. The number of native speakers is the highest for Hindi (41.1% of the population) followed by Bengali (8.11%), Telugu (7.19%), Marathi (6.99%), Tamil (5.91%) and Urdu (5.01%).

12%. About 12% of the inhabitants of India speak English. This makes India the world's second-largest English-speaking nation (with 125 million English speakers), after the United States.

In India. Harrison embraced the Hare Krishna tradition and became a lifelong devotee. His ashes were scattered in the Ganges River with his close family in a private ceremony according to Hindu tradition.

Indigo dye. In 1863, the German chemists Ferdinand Reich and Hieronymous Theodor Richter found a blue line in the spectrum of tested minerals. As no element was known with a bright blue emission, they concluded a new element was present, and they named it from the indigo color in its spectrum.

Denmark. The colony was run by the Danish East India Company with headquarters in Tranguebar (currently Tarangambadi) nearby Madras (Chennai) that was later settled by the English.