The 1991 final census count gave India a total population of 846,302,688. estimates of India's population vary widely. According to the Population Division of the United Nations Department of International Economic and Social Affairs, the population had already reached 866 million in 1991. The Population Division of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) projected 896.5 million by mid-1993 with a 1.9 % annual growth rate. The United States Bureau of the Census, assuming an annual population growth rate of 1.8 %, put India's population in July 1995 at 936,545,814. These higher projections merit attention in light of the fact that the Planning Commission had around a figure of 844 million for 1991 while preparing the Eighth Five-Year Plan.

The results of the 1991 census revealed that around 221 million, or 26.1 %, of Indian's population lived in urban areas. Of this total, about 138 million people, or 16 %, lived in the 299 urban agglomerations. In 1991 the twenty-four metropolitan cities accounted for 51 % of India's total population living in Class I urban centers, with Bombay and Calcutta the largest at 12.6 million and 10.9 million, respectively.

Religion is very valuable in India, with deep historical roots; Hinduism and Buddhism both originated here. Most people in India practice Hinduism with Islam a distant second. Other valuable religions include Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism, and Jainism. Indo-European languages stem originally from Sanskrit. Present-day languages in this family formed in the 14th and 15th centuries. These include Hindi and Urdu, which are similar as spoken languages. Hindi, spoken mainly by Hindus, is written in script called Devanagari and draws on Sanskrit vocabulary. Urdu is spoken mostly by Muslims and uses Persian Arabic script. Tamil is the oldest of the four main Dravidian languages, with a literary history that begins in the 1st century.