Geography of Kenya..Must Read.

The country takes its name from Mount Kenya, located in the central highlands.

Location and Geography : Kenya is located in East Africa and borders Somalia to the northeast, Ethiopia to the north, Sudan to the northwest, Uganda to the west, Tanzania to the south, and the Indian Ocean to the east. The country straddles the equator, covering a total of 224,961 square miles (582,600 square kilometers; roughly twice the size of the state of Nevada). Kenya has wide white-sand beaches on the coast. Inland plains cover three-quarters of the country, they are mostly bush, covered in underbrush. 

In the west are the highlands where the altitude rises from three thousand to ten thousand feet. Nairobi, Kenya's largest city and capital, is located in the central highlands. The highest point, at 17,058 feet (5,200 meters), is MountKenya. Kenya shares Lake Victoria, the largest lake in Africa and the main source of the Nile River, with Tanzania and Uganda. Another significant feature of Kenyan geography is the Great Rift Valley, the wide, steep canyon that cuts through the highlands. Kenya is also home to some of the world's most spectacular wildlife, including elephants, lions, giraffes, zebras, antelope, wildebeests, and many rare and beautiful species of birds. Unfortunately, the animal population is threatened by both hunting and an expanding human population; wildlife numbers fell drastically through the twentieth century. The government has introduced strict legislation regulating hunting, and has established a system of national parks to protect the wildlife.

Demography : According to an estimate in July 2000, Kenya's population is 30,339,770. The population has been significantly reduced by the AIDS epidemic, as have the age and sex distributions of the population. Despite this scourge, however, the birth rate is still significantly higher than the death rate and the population continues to grow.

There are more than forty ethnic groups in the country. The largest of these is the Kikuyu, representing 22 percent of the population. Fourteen percent is Luhya, 13 percent is Luo, 12 percent is Kalenjin, 11 percent Kamba, 6 percent Kisii, and 6 percent Meru. Others, including the Somalis and the Turkana in the north and the Kalenjin in the Great Rift Valley, comprise approximately 15 percent of the population. These ethnic categories are further broken down into subgroups. One percent of the population is non-African, mostly of Indian and European descent.

Linguistic Affiliation : The official languages are English and Kiswahili (or Swahili). Swahili, which comes from the Arabic word meaning "coast," is a mix of Arabic and the African language Bantu. It first developed in the tenth century with the arrival of Arab traders; it was a lingua franca that allowed different tribes to communicate with each other and with the Arabs. The major language groups native to the region include Bantu in the west and along the coast, Nilotic near Lake Victoria, and Cushitic in the north.English is the language generally used in government and business. It is also used in most of the schools, although there has been movement towards using Kiswahili as the teaching language. English is not spoken solely by the elite, but only people with a certain level of education speak it.

Symbolism : The Kenyan flag has three horizontal stripes—red, black, and green—separated by thin white bands. The black symbolizes the people of Kenya, the red stands for the blood shed in the fight for independence, and the green symbolizes agriculture. In the center of the flag is a red shield with black and white markings and two crossed spears, which stands for vigilance in the defense of freedom.

Indian Independence Movement...Must Read....!

The Indian Independence Movement incorporated the efforts by Indians to liberate the region from British rule and form the nation-state of India. It involved a wide spectrum of Indian political organizations, philosophies, and rebellions between 1857 and India's emergence as a unified nation-state on August 15, 1947. The Indian independence movement incorporated the efforts by Indians to liberate the region from British rule and form the nation-state of India. It involved a wide spectrum of Indian political organizations, philosophies, and rebellions between 1857 and India's emergence as a unified nation-state on August 15, 1947.

The initial Indian Rebellion of 1857 was sparked when soldiers serving in the BritishEast India Company's British Army and Indian kingdoms rebelled against the British. After the revolt was crushed, the British partitioned the region into British India and the Princely States. They tried to develop a class of educated elites, whose political organizing sought Indian political rights and representation. However, increasing public disenchantment with the British authority — their curtailing of Indian civil liberties (such as the Rowlatt Act), political rights, and culture as well as their avoidance of basic issues facing common Indians and an essential nonacceptance of foreign occupation — led to an upsurge in revolutionary activities aimed at overthrowing the European colonial powers, particularly the British.

The movement came to a head between 1918 and 1922 when the first series of non-violent campaigns of civil disobedience were launched by the Indian National Congress under the leadership of Mohandas Gandhi — whose methods were to a large extent inspired by the philosophy and methods of Baba Ram Singh, a Sikh who led the Kuka Movement in the Punjab in the 1870s. Gandhi's movement came to encompass people from across India and across all walks of life. These initial civil disobedience movements soon came to be the driving force that ultimately shaped the cultural, religious, and political unity of a diverse nation.

Committing itself to Purna Swaraj in 1930, the Congress led mass struggles between 1930 and 1932. By the late 1930s, however, with growing disenchantments over the delaying tactics of the Raj and the Congress's failure to extract commitment on self-rule and political independence, a faction within the movement turned towards more radical ideas of Subhash Chandra Bose. Bose's actions proved controversial among the Congress party but popular within the Indian populace, when Bose defeated Gandhi's candidate in leadership elections in the Tripuri Session of the Congress Working Committee. However, this was the parting of ways between the radicals and the conservatives. Bose left the Congress to found his own party during the war, seeking first Soviet and then Axis help to raise a liberation force. The raising of the Indian National Army in 1942 by Subhash Chandra Bose would see a unique military campaign to end British rule. Following the trial of Indian National Army officers at the Red Fort, mutinies broke out in the navy, in the Air Force, and in the army. The Congress also led a civil disobedience movement in 1942 demanding that the British leave India (a movement called the Quit India Movement). Following these and widespread communal rioting in Calcutta, the Raj ended on the mid-night of 15th August, 1947, but only at the expense of thepartition of the country into India and Pakistan.