India , or Hind, in Arabic, is the historic name for the Indian subcontinent, which today encompasses seven nations and has the largest concentration of Muslims in the world, totalling some 400 million people at the beginning of the 21st century, that is to say twice the population of Indonesia and about one third of all the Muslims on the globe. Each of the three largest countries (Pakistan, Bangladesh, India) having approximately one third of this Muslim population. 1. Overview The Indian subcontinent (also called South Asia in English) was historically