The layers of identity — racial, tribal, religious and linguistic — that make up India's population.
Anthropologists have historically classified India's population into broad racial groups — Negrito, Proto-Australoid, Mongoloid, Mediterranean, and Nordic/Aryan — though this classification is largely of historical/anthropological interest today rather than a scientifically rigid framework, given extensive intermixing over millennia.
India's tribal (Scheduled Tribe) population is concentrated in a few major belts: the Central Indian tribal belt (Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Jharkhand — home to groups like the Gonds, Santhals, Mundas), the North-Eastern hill tribes (Nagas, Mizos, Khasis, and others, each with distinct customary systems), and smaller pockets in Western India (Bhils) and the Andaman & Nicobar Islands (including Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups like the Great Andamanese and Jarawa).
India is majority Hindu, with significant Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist and Jain populations, alongside smaller communities like Parsis and Jews — making it one of the world's most religiously diverse countries, a diversity constitutionally protected via secularism and minority rights provisions.
India recognises 22 scheduled languages (Eighth Schedule) among hundreds of spoken languages and dialects, reflecting deep linguistic diversity — a diversity that has itself shaped India's political geography, since the linguistic reorganisation of states (1956) directly followed language-based regional identity.
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