page_title: Darjeeling district
section_title: Demographics
hierarchical_section_title: Darjeeling district / Demographics
caption_attribution_description: Toy Train, Darjeeling, India
context_page_description: Darjeeling District is the northernmost district of the state of West Bengal in eastern India in the foothills of the Himalayas. The district is famous for its hill station Darjeeling tea. Darjeeling is the district headquarters.
  Kurseong, Siliguri and Mirik, three other major towns in the district, are the subdivisional headquarters of the district. Kalimpong was one of the subdivisions but on 14 February 2017, it officially became a separate Kalimpong district.
  Geographically, the district can be divided into two broad divisions: the hills and the plains. The entire hilly region of the district comes under the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration, a semi-autonomous administrative body under the state government of West Bengal. This body covers the three hill subdivisions of Darjeeling, Kurseong and Mirik and the district of Kalimpong. The foothills of Darjeeling Himalayas, which comes under the Siliguri subdivision, is known as the Terai. The district is bounded on the north by Sikkim, on the south by Kishanganj district of Bihar state, on the east by Kalimpong district and on the west by Nepal.
context_section_description: According to the 2011 census Darjeeling district has a population of 1,846,823, roughly equal to the population of Kosovo. This gives it a ranking of 257th in India (out of a total of 640). The district has a population density of 586 inhabitants per square kilometre (1,520/sq mi). Its population growth rate over the decade 2001-2011 was 14.77%. Darjeeling has a sex ratio of 970 females for every 1000 males, and a literacy rate of 79.56%.
  In 2001, the population of the district was 1,609,172. The rural population was 1,088,740 and urban population was 520,432. Total males were 830,644 and females were 778,528. The density of population was 511 per km². The decennial population growth rate (1991–2001) was 23.79%.
  The original inhabitants of the Darjeeling Hills were the Lepchas or Rongpa (the ravine folks) as they prefer themselves to be known as. The Limbus are another ancient inhabitants of this district. The greater bulk of the people in the hills are the Indian Gorkhas who speak Nepali and other dialects. Among the population are the Sherpas and Denzongpas (Bhutias). There is also a sizeable population of Tibetans who arrived from Tibet since the 1950s. In the plains, the Bengalis are in majority along with several communities like the Biharis, Gorkhas, Marwaris and the Adivasi people originally from Chotanagpur and Santhal Parganas.
caption: Darjeeling Toy Train.
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