North India
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North India is a geographic and linguistic-cultural region of India. In traditional Indian geography, India is divided into five major zones: North India, North-East India, East India , West India and South India. The Vindhya mountains, in particular the line marked by the Narmada River and the Mahanadi River marks the southern boundary of north India. The line made by the Son river and the Kosi river marks its eastern border. The dominant geographic feature of northern India is the Indo-Gangetic Plain.
However, the socio-cultural boundaries of north India have actually surpassed these traditional boundaries. As a linguistic-cultural and political region, North India consists of twelve Indian states: Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhatisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan (Bihar and Jharkhand are also considered as parts of East India). The National Capital Territory of Delhi is also a part of northern India. It shares most of its cultural, historical, musical, and linguistic heritage with neighboring Pakistan, which was part of the region prior to Partition.
North India remains primarily rural, but its vast population has ensured that it has always supported very large cities: apart from the great metropolis of Delhi, the cities of Lucknow, Patna, Kanpur, Allahabad, Varanasi, Meerut, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Ludhiana, Amritsar, Jalandhar, Patiala, Srinagar, Jammu, Bhopal and Indore would rank with the most populous cities of Europe.
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[edit] Introduction and History
The defining features of North India are the racial origins of its people, linguistics and its history. North Indians are primarily defined to be of the Indo-Aryan race [1], although there has been a significant diffusion of all Indian populations since independence. The languages spoken in North India, namely, Hindi (around 300 million), Punjabi (37 million), Bhojpuri (23 million) and others are classified by linguists as being Indo-Aryan languages. They differ from South Indian languages which are classified Dravidian languages but share great similarities with West and East Indian languages. The key historical differences between Northern and other regions of India is the influence of Islam and the interaction with Middle Eastern civilization through the ages. These influences can be understood by reviewing articles on Indian History and the Mughal Empire.
[edit] People
| North India | South India | |
|---|---|---|
| Per capita income (Rs.) | 8433 | 13629 |
| Literacy (%) | 59 | 74 |
| Per capita expenditure on public health (Rs.) | 92 | 127 |
| Proportion of households with electricity (%) | 49 | 74 |
| Source: Business Today, January 2005 | ||
Anthropologists often associate regional affinities with racial differences. South Indian or "Dravidian" states usually have people with darker skin. People in the states of Eastern Kashmir, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, and other Northeastern Indians states tend to look more East Asian. North India shows a stronger Aryan influence. In the last thousand years or so, North India was subjected to various invasions from neighbouring kingdoms than any other region of India. Indeed, such invasions has left a major scar on the cultural and linguistic traditions of North India. Physically, after repeated invasions by Arab, Turk, Afghan and other kingdoms, North India is now a mixture of Arab, Turk, Afghan, Indo-Aryan and Huns in their composition. Genetically, North Indians are more closer to South/East/West Indians than other neighbouring nations or Europeans. In spite of repeated invasions North India was quite resilient and re-built itself rather quickly. Repeated invasions also made it difficult for North India to concentrate on art and cultural development and that is the reason there is no contemporary North Indian dance form when compared to South or East Indian culture. Indeed, the languages of northern India are preponderantly Indo-Aryan, and it is in this region that Sanskrit and the various Prakrits are thought to have first found a home in India. Also, although skin colour in all parts of India varies by caste rather than region, it is generally speaking the case that inhabitants of the north Indian states have lighter skin (but not as light as Europeans) than those of their caste counterparts in western/eastern/southern India. These phenotypic variations are indubitably due to the ingress, across many millennia and in every era, of Central Asian invaders (and migrators)(including "Indo-Greeks", "Indo-Parthians", Sakas, Kushanas, Hunas or Huns, and Turks) into the Indo-Gangetic
North India shows a fuller range of Caste (varna, literally:"colour") variation than does South India – there are proportionately more kshatriya and vaishya castes than is generally the case in most areas of South India.
In terms of religion, North India is generally speaking a stronghold of Vaishnava sects of Hinduism; Shaktism and Shaivism. North Indians generally believe in unity of God and that Shiva, Vishnu, and Brahma constitute the trīmurtī, or trinity. Having been ruled for nearly eight centuries by Muslim invaders from Central Asia, North India is the main centre of Islam in India.
North India also forms the heartland of the so-called "Cow Belt" of India, which stretches from Indo-Gangetic Plain towards other conservative states like Gujarat, where BJP is particularly efficient in politics and has its traditional support base.
To an outsider, who is not aware of the difference of North and South India, people from both parts appear to be alike. One can see extremely light skinned people in South and extremely dark skinned people in the North as well. Over the centuries, India has become a true melting pot, despite issues like caste, tribe, colour, religion, wealth, and language.
[edit] Geography
North India lies mainly on continental India and a very small part of it lies on the Indian peninsula. Towards its North are the Himalayas which largely define the boundary between India and China. To its west is the Thar desert and the Aravalli hills. The Vindhya mountains are generrally taken to be the southern boundary of North India.
The predominant geogrphical feature of North India is the Indo-Gangetic plain which spans the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and supports more than half the regions population. The melting of glaciers in the summer and the monsoon rains ensure that the Ganges and its tributaries are perennial, this along with the fertile alluvial nature of the soil have historically been able to be support increasing populations. Additionally, the plains in Punjab and Haryan support large populations there.
The Thar desert is an arid and semi-arid region that receives very little rain from the monsoons. The state of Madhya Pradesh has large areas under forest cover as do Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Chattisgarh. [2] The sate of Jammu and Kashmir is generally mountainous and only supports a population of around 6 million people.
Traditional economy The economy of northern India, especially the region surrounding is growing at a remarkable pace. Shown here are commercial buildings in Gurgaon,Haryana
The economy of this region is predominantly agrarian; culturally, socially and historically the country has always been defined by its village societies. It is therefore proper to devote space to a detailing of the north Indian socio-agrarian structure.
North India largely retains a feudal agricultural setup, with a preponderance of tenant farmers as against South India or East India, where extensive land reforms and land redistribution policies over the second half of the 20th century put in place an equally bad system of small, fragmented land holdings being farmed by their owners, who are actually almost as impoverished as the tenant farmers of north India. Some of these differences stem from the later Mughal emperors' practice of relying on zamindars, or 'hereditary tax farmers', who collected taxes from rural communities in return for a percentage of the proceeds, and were granted certain administrative powers. The Zamindari system was never as prevalent in the south, as Mughal rule did not extend to much of the South.
The British administrators of the Bengal Presidency (Eastern India) inherited and expanded upon the Zamindari system, while the Madras Presidency which governed much of south India, relied on textpanchayats, or village councils, for rural administration and tax collection. Although the zamindari system was formally abolished after India's independence, a rural economy dominated by landlords is still prevalent across much of northern India. Tensions between landlords and their tenant farmers are widespread in northern India, notably in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh these tensions have given rise to landlord-tenant strife in several northern states, and has fueled Naxalite movements.
[edit] References
- Demographics of India. Retrieved on December 21, 2006.
- FOREST SURVEY OF INDIA - STATE OF FOREST REPORT 2003. Retrieved on December 21, 2006.
