South and Central Asia INDIA

All Around This World classes start our journey this season in India, a country with 1.44 billion people and counting, 80% of whom are Hindu.

India is the world’s most populous democracy and boasts the world’s longest national constitution, the preamble of which defines India as a sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic and promotes equality (even as the country continues to wrestle, like so many others, with a stratified — albeit evolving — system of class). India is simultaneously one of the world’s largest economies and, considering income, one of the most unqeual. 

In class we learn how to dance, Bollywood style! Bollywood is India’s Mumbai-based billion-dollar film industry. Most Bollywood films are lavish, epic musicals, full of lavish,epic musical production numbers. Listen to Bollywood music — known as “filmi” — and you have no choice but to get up and move.