Wait is this true? Doesn’t it also use SQLAlchemy at least? Which then likely has its own dependencies? I’d be really surprised if Django had no dependencies at all.
For example you need an external package to use builtin postgresql, mysql or oracledb support. You need tblib to run tests in parallel using the built-in test runner. You need external packages to use argon2 or bcrypt as password hashers in the builtin auth system, and I'm sure there are others, since Django is very much batteries included, but modular.
The modularity also means you can also use any 3rd party database, use pytest to run tests, make your password hashing on your own, ... so I can understand that these are not listed as dependencies on pypi, but I don't really like that I have to list packages I don't directly import in my code as direct dependencies...
The first release of Django was in 2005. Back then, the Python Package Index didn't exist yet. Installing Python dependencies was really hard - you pretty much had to grab a copy of the code for each one and put it on your "sys.path" somehow.
So Django avoided the issue entirely by bundling everything you needed to build a web application in a single package.
That's why Django has "django.contrib" - in a time before pip dependencies, it was a way to separate out things like GeoDjango which weren't exactly part of the "core" framework but could be distributed along with it.
django does not use sqlalchemy as its ORM, it has its own system (which i prefer!).
I have tried a lot and the least worst is Zapatos (and it's not really an ORM) because it at least tries to not paper over SQL and instead just creates a type-safe API for using SQL.
Now, if someone could create a Django-like ORM for Java or Rust, then we're talking. Hibernate and Diesel are nowhere near Django's ORM in terms of productivity and "it just works" factor. Go's GORM looks pretty good but haven't tried it. jooq does not look as easy to use or setup, and the workflow is entirely different.