Map on Monday: INDIA

Stratfor - short for Strategic Forecasting, Inc. - is a private global intelligence company that offers geopolitical insight into the interplay of nations. Stratfor has developed an excellent series of short (~2-4 minute) videos which provide the viewer with a specific nation, along with its basic history, geography, culture, and geopolitical allies and adversaries. In the following video, they present the geographic challenges facing India.

India and Pakistan were part of the British Indian Empire which was partitioned into a Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan in 1947. East Pakistan broke from West Pakistan in 1971 as Bangladesh. Over ten million people were displaced in the bloody religious and ethnic partitioning of 1947, with more than 300,000 deaths from “communal violence.” Both India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons. India is the second most populous nation on the planet, and at almost one billion Hindus, India is also the world's largest Hindu nation (only Nepal boasts a higher percentage of Hindus in its general population). India is also home to 172 million Muslims, who make up 14% of the population and comprise the second largest religion in the country. Christianity, which traces its historic roots in India to the preaching of the St. Thomas (the Apostle's tomb may be visited today in southern India), is the nation's third largest religion with 24 million adherents. While India was the birthplace of Buddhism, there are actually over twice as many Sikhs in India (1.9% of the population) as Buddhists (0.8% of the population).