India

At a Glance

Cherrington Scholars Eligible

• India leads the world in film production, outpacing even Hollywood. Mumbai-based Bollywood (a fusion of Bombay and Hollywood) specializes in musicals with melodramatic plotlines.
• India has 22 officially recognized languages, each with its own literary tradition. The Bengali writer Rabindranath Tagore received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, becoming the first Asian to be awarded a Nobel.
• Indians writing in English find literary sustenance through the Bombay Writers Café, which sponsors an online networking site and collaborative blog called Caferati.
• The city of Chandigarh serves as the capital of two Indian states: Punjab and Haryana. To convey his nation’s modern outlook, Jawaharlal Nehru, independent India’s first prime minister, asked the Swiss modernist Le Corbusier to serve as the city’s official architect.
• Having given birth to four major world religions—Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism—India is celebrated for its mix of cultures and traditions.
• The Indian Himalayas are a repository of some of the most rare and treasured species of medicinal plants. To conserve and propagate endangered species, the region sponsors a series of herb orphanages.