North India in the context of Caste system of India

In linguistics, diglossia (/daɪˈɡlɒsiə/ dy-GLOSS-ee-ə, US also /daɪˈɡlɔːsiə/ dy-GLAW-see-ə) is where two dialects or languages are used (in fairly strict compartmentalization) by a single language community. In addition to the community's everyday or vernacular language variety (labeled "L" or "low" variety), a second, highly codified lect (labeled "H" or "high") is used in certain situations such as literature, formal education, or other specific settings, but not used normally for ordinary conversation. The H variety may have no native speakers within the community. In cases of three dialects, the term triglossia is used. When referring to two writing systems coexisting for a single language, the term digraphia is used.

The high variety may be an older stage of the same language (as in medieval Europe, where Latin (H) remained in formal use even as colloquial speech (L) diverged), an unrelated language, or a distinct yet closely related present-day dialect (as in northern India and Pakistan, where Hindustani (L) is used alongside the standard registers of Hindi (H) and Urdu (H); Germany, where Hochdeutsch (H) is used alongside German dialects (L); the Arab world, where Modern Standard Arabic (H) is used alongside other varieties of Arabic (L); and China, where Standard Chinese (H) is used as the official, literary standard and local varieties of Chinese (L) are used in everyday communication); in Dravidian languages, Tamil has the largest diglossia with Literary Tamil (H) used in formal settings and colloquial spoken Tamil (L) used in daily life. Other examples include literary Katharevousa (H) versus spoken Demotic Greek (L); Indonesian, with its bahasa baku (H) and bahasa gaul (L) forms; Standard American English (H) versus African-American Vernacular English or Hawaiian Pidgin (L); and literary (H) versus spoken (L) Welsh.

Islam is India's second-largest religion, with 14.2% of the country's population, or approximately 172.2 million people, identifying as adherents of Islam in a 2011 census. India has the third-largest number of Muslims in the world. Most of India's Muslims are Sunni, with Shia making up around 15% of the Muslim population.

Islam first spread in southern Indian communities along the Arab coastal trade routes in Gujarat and in Malabar Coast shortly after the religion emerged in the Arabian Peninsula. Later, Islam arrived in the northern inland of Indian subcontinent in the 7th century when the Arabs invaded and conquered Sindh. It arrived in Punjab and North India in the 12th century via the Ghaznavids and Ghurids conquest and has since become a part of India's religious and cultural heritage. The Barwada Mosque in Ghogha, Gujarat built before 623 CE, Cheraman Juma Mosque (629 CE) in Methala, Kerala and Palaiya Jumma Palli (or The Old Jumma Masjid, 628–630 CE) in Kilakarai, Tamil Nadu are three of the first mosques in India which were built by seafaring Arab merchants. According to the legend of Cheraman Perumals, the first Indian mosque was built in 624 CE at Kodungallur in present-day Kerala with the mandate of the last ruler (the Tajudeen Cheraman Perumal) of the Chera dynasty, who converted to Islam during the lifetime of the Islamic prophet Muhammad (c. 570–632). Similarly, Tamil Muslims on the eastern coasts also claim that they converted to Islam in Muhammad's lifetime. The local mosques date to the early 700s.

The Delhi Sultanate or the Sultanate of Delhi was a late medieval empire primarily based in Delhi that stretched over large parts of the Indian subcontinent for more than three centuries. The sultanate was established in 1206 in the former Ghurid territories in India. The sultanate's history is generally divided into five periods: Mamluk (1206–1290), Khalji (1290–1320), Tughlaq (1320–1414), Sayyid (1414–1451), and Lodi (1451–1526). It covered large swaths of territory in modern-day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, as well as some parts of southern Nepal.

The foundation of the Sultanate was established by the Ghurid conqueror Muhammad Ghori, who routed the Rajput Confederacy, led by Ajmer ruler Prithviraj Chauhan, in 1192 near Tarain in a reversal of an earlier battle. As a successor to the Ghurid dynasty, the Delhi Sultanate was originally one of several principalities ruled by the Turkic slave-generals of Muhammad Ghori, including Taj al-Din Yildiz, Qutb ud-Din Aibak, Bahauddin Tughril and Nasir ad-Din Qabacha, that had inherited and divided the Ghurid territories amongst themselves. Khalji and Tughlaq rule ushered a new wave of rapid and continual Muslim conquests deep into South India. The sultanate finally reached the peak of its geographical reach during the Tughlaq dynasty, occupying most of the Indian subcontinent under Muhammad bin Tughluq. A major political transformation occurred across North India, triggered by the Central Asian king Timur's devastating raid on Delhi in 1398, followed soon afterwards by the re-emergence of rival Hindu powers such as Vijayanagara Empire and Kingdom of Mewar asserting independence, and new Muslim sultanates such as the Bengal and Bahmani Sultanates breaking off. In 1526, Timurid ruler Babur invaded northern India and conquered the Sultanate, leading to its succession by the Mughal Empire.

The Mughal Empire was an early modern empire in South Asia. At its peak, the empire stretched from the outer fringes of the Indus River Basin in the west, northern Afghanistan in the northwest, and Kashmir in the north, to the highlands of present-day Assam and Bangladesh in the east, and the uplands of the Deccan Plateau in South India.

The Mughal Empire is conventionally said to have been founded in 1526 by Babur, a ruler from what is today Uzbekistan, who employed aid from the neighboring Safavid and Ottoman Empires to defeat the sultan of Delhi, Ibrahim Lodi, in the First Battle of Panipat and to sweep down the plains of North India. The Mughal imperial structure, however, is sometimes dated to 1600, to the rule of Babur's grandson, Akbar. This imperial structure lasted until 1720, shortly after the death of the last major emperor, Aurangzeb, during whose reign the empire also achieved its maximum geographical extent. Reduced subsequently to the region in and around Old Delhi by 1760, the empire was formally dissolved by the British Raj after the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

Hindustani is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in North India and Pakistan as the lingua franca of the region. It is also spoken by the Deccani-speaking community in the Deccan Plateau. Hindustani is a pluricentric language with two standard registers, known as Hindi (Prakritised and Sanskritised register written in the Brahmic script) and Urdu (Persianised and Arabised register written in the Perso-Arabic script) which serve as official languages of India and Pakistan, respectively. Thus, it is also called Hindi–Urdu. Colloquial registers of the language fall on a spectrum between these standards.

The concept of a Hindustani language as a "unifying language" or "fusion language" that could transcend communal and religious divisions across the subcontinent was endorsed by Mahatma Gandhi, as it was not seen to be associated with either the Hindu or Muslim communities as was the case with Hindi and Urdu respectively, and it was also considered a simpler language for people to learn. The conversion from Hindi to Urdu (or vice versa) is generally achieved by merely transliterating between the two scripts. Translation, on the other hand, is generally only required for religious and literary texts.

The Indo-Aryan migrations were the migrations into the Indian subcontinent of Indo-Aryan peoples, an ethnolinguistic group that spoke Indo-Aryan languages. These are the predominant languages of today's Bangladesh, Maldives, Nepal, North India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

Indo-Aryan migration into the region, from Central Asia, is considered to have started after 2000 BCE as a slow diffusion during the Late Harappan period and led to a language shift in the northern Indian subcontinent. Several hundred years later, the Iranian languages were brought into the Iranian plateau by the Iranians, who were closely related to the Indo-Aryans.

The Indo-Gangetic Plain, also known as the North Indian Plain or the Indus-Gangetic Plain, is a fertile plain spanning 700,000 km (270,000 sq mi) across the northern and north-eastern part of the Indian subcontinent. It encompasses northern and eastern India, eastern Pakistan, southern Nepal, and almost all of Bangladesh. It is named after the two major river systems that drain the region–Indus and Ganges.

It stretches from the Himalayas in the north to the northern edge of the Deccan Plateau in the south, and extends from North East India in the east to the Iranian border in the west. The region is home to many major cities and nearly one-seventh of the world's population. As the region was formed by the deposits of the three major rivers–Indus, Ganges and Brahmaputra, the plains consists of the world's largest expanse of uninterrupted alluvium. Due to its rich water resources, it is one of the world's most densely populated and intensely farmed areas.

The Ganges (/ˈɡændʒiːz/ GAN-jeez; in India: Ganga, /ˈɡʌŋɡɑː/ GUNG-ah; in Bangladesh: Padma, /ˈpʌdmə/ PUD-mə) is a trans-boundary river of Asia which flows through India and Bangladesh. The 2,525-kilometre-long (1,569 mi) river rises in the western Himalayas in the Indian state of Uttarakhand. It flows south and east through the Gangetic plain of North India, receiving the right-bank tributary, the Yamuna, which also rises in the western Indian Himalayas, and several left-bank tributaries from Nepal that account for the bulk of its flow. In West Bengal, India, a feeder canal taking off from its right bank diverts 50% of its flow southwards, artificially connecting it to the Hooghly River. The Ganges continues into Bangladesh, its name changing to the Padma. It is then joined by the Jamuna, the lower stream of the Brahmaputra, and eventually the Meghna, forming the major estuary of the Ganges Delta, and emptying into the Bay of Bengal. The Ganges–Brahmaputra–Meghna system is the second-largest river on earth by discharge.

The main stem of the Ganges begins at the town of Devprayag, at the confluence of the Alaknanda, which is the source stream in hydrology on account of its greater length, and the Bhagirathi, which is considered the source stream in Hindu mythology.

Uttarapatha (Hindi: उत्तरापथ) is the name used by ancient Buddhist and Hindu texts to describe the Northern part of Jambudvipa (equivalent of present-day Afro - Eurasia), one of the "continents" in Vedic belief. In modern times, the Sanskrit word uttarapatha is sometimes used to denote the geographical regions of North India, Western India, Central India, Eastern India, Northeast India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal in just one term. The pronunciation of the word varies depending on the regional language of the speaker.

Uttar Pradesh (UTT-ər prə-DESH, abbr. UP; Hindi: Uttar Pradēś, pronounced [ˈʊtːəɾ pɾəˈdeːʃ] , lit. 'Northern Province') is a state in northern India. With over 241 million inhabitants, it is the most populated state in India as well as the most populous country subdivision in the world – more populous than all but four other countries outside of India (China, United States, Indonesia, and Pakistan) – and accounting for 16.5 per cent of the population of India or around 3 per cent of the total world population. The state is bordered by Rajasthan to the west, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Delhi to the northwest, Uttarakhand and Nepal to the north, Bihar to the east, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand to the south. It is the fourth-largest Indian state by area covering 243,286 km (93,933 sq mi), accounting for 7.3 per cent of the total area of India. Lucknow serves as the state capital, with Prayagraj being the judicial capital. It is divided into 18 divisions and 75 districts.

Uttar Pradesh was established in 1950 after India had become a republic. It is a successor to the United Provinces, established in 1935 by renaming the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, in turn established in 1902 from the North-Western Provinces and the Oudh Province. Though long known for sugar production, the state's economy is now dominated by the services industry. The service sector comprises travel and tourism, hotel industry, real estate, insurance and financial consultancies. The economy of Uttar Pradesh is the third-largest state economy in India, with ₹18.63 lakh crore (US$220 billion) in gross domestic product and a per capita GSDP of ₹68,810 (US$810). The High Court of the state is located in Prayagraj. The state plays an important role in national politics, sending 80 seats to the lower house Lok Sabha and 31 seats to the upper house Rajya Sabha.

Himachal Pradesh (Hindi: Himācal Pradeś, pronounced [ɦɪˈmäːtʃəl pɾəˈd̪eːʃ]; Sanskrit: himācāl prādes; lit. "Snow-laden Mountain Province") is a state in the northern part of India. Situated in the Western Himalayas, it is one of the 13 mountain states and is characterised by an extreme landscape featuring several peaks and extensive river systems. Himachal Pradesh is the northernmost state of India and shares borders with the union territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh to the north, and the states of Punjab to the west, Haryana to the southwest, Uttarakhand to the southeast and a very narrow border with Uttar Pradesh to the south. The state also shares an international border to the east with the Tibet Autonomous Region in China. Himachal Pradesh is also known as Dev Bhoomi, meaning 'Land of Gods' and Veer Bhoomi which means 'Land of the Brave'.

The predominantly mountainous region comprising the present-day Himachal Pradesh has been inhabited since pre-historic times, having witnessed multiple waves of human migrations from other areas. Through its history, the region was mostly ruled by local kingdoms, some of which accepted the suzerainty of larger empires. Prior to India's independence from the British, Himachal comprised the hilly regions of the Punjab Province of British India. After independence, many of the hilly territories were organised as the Chief Commissioner's province of Himachal Pradesh, which later became a Union Territory. In 1966, hilly areas of the neighbouring Punjab state were merged into Himachal and it was ultimately granted full statehood in 1971.

In India, social classification based on caste has its origin in ancient times. It was transformed by various ruling elites in medieval, early-modern, and modern India, especially in the aftermath of the collapse of the Mughal Empire and the establishment of the British Raj. Caste is traditionally associated with Hinduism, but is more pervasive in extent: an estimated 98% of contemporary Indians, including Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jains, identify with a caste.

Beginning in ancient India, the caste system was originally centered around varna, with Brahmins (priests) and, to a lesser extent, Kshatriyas (rulers and warriors) serving as the elite classes, followed by Vaishyas (traders and merchants) and finally Shudras (labourers). Outside of this system are the oppressed, marginalised, and persecuted Dalits (also known as "Untouchables") and Adivasis (tribals). Over time, the system became increasingly rigid, and the emergence of jati led to further entrenchment, introducing thousands of new castes and sub-castes. With the arrival of Islamic rule, caste-like distinctions were formulated in certain Muslim communities, primarily in North India. The British Raj furthered the system, through census classifications and preferential treatment to Christians and people belonging to certain castes. Social unrest during the 1920s led to a change in this policy towards affirmative action.

Christianity is India's third-most followed religion with 28 million adherents, who make up 2.3 percent of the population as of the 2011 census. Christianity is the largest religion in parts of Northeast India, specifically in Nagaland, Mizoram, and Meghalaya. It is also a significant religion in Manipur, which is 41 percent Christian.

Nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of India's Christians are found in South India, Goa, & Mumbai (Bombay). The oldest known Christian group in North India are the Hindustani-speaking Bettiah Christians of Bihar, formed in the early 1700s through a Capuchin mission and under the patronage of Rajas (kings) in the Moghal Empire. The Church of North India and the Church of South India are a United Protestant denomination; which resulted from the evangelism/ ecumenism of Anglicans, Calvinists, Methodists and other Protestant groups who flourished in colonial India. Consequently, these churches are part of the worldwide Anglican Communion, World Communion of Reformed Churches, and World Methodist Council. Along with native Christians, small numbers of mixed Eurasian peoples such as Anglo-Indian, Luso-Indian, Franco-Indian and Armenian Indian Christians also existed in the subcontinent. Also, there is the Khrista Bhakta movement, who are unbaptised followers of Christ and St Mary, mainly among the Shudras and Dalits.

Uttarakhand (Hindi: Uttarākhaṇḍ, pronounced [ˈʊt̪ːəɾaːkʰəɳɖ], lit. 'Northern Land'), also known as Uttaranchal (English: /ˌʊtəˈræntʃəl/; the official name until 2007), is a state in northern India. The state is bordered by Himachal Pradesh to the northwest, China to the north, Nepal to the east and Uttar Pradesh to the south. Uttarakhand has a total area of 53,483 km (20,650 sq mi), equal to 1.6% of the total area of India. Dehradun serves as the state capital, with Nainital being the judicial capital. The state is divided into two divisions, Garhwal and Kumaon, with a total of 13 districts. The forest cover in the state is 45.4% of the state's geographical area. The cultivable area is 16% of the total geographical area. The two major rivers of the state, the Ganges and its tributary Yamuna, originate from the Gangotri and Yamunotri glaciers respectively. Ranked 6th among the Top 10 Greenest States in India with Best AQI.

Uttarakhand's history dates back to prehistoric times, with archaeological evidence showcasing human habitation. It was part of the ancient Kuru and the Panchal kingdoms during the Vedic age, and later saw the rise of dynasties like the Kunindas and influence of Buddhism as evidenced by Ashokan edicts. Though primarily driven by agriculture and hydropower, the state's economy is now dominated by the service industry. The service sector comprises primarily travel, tourism, and hotel industry. The Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) of Uttarakhand is ₹3.78 lakh crore (US$45 billion). The state contributes five seats to the lower house Lok Sabha and three seats to the upper house Rajya Sabha.

Western India is a loosely defined region of India consisting of western states of Republic of India. The Ministry of Home Affairs in its Western Zonal Council Administrative division includes the states of Goa, Gujarat, and Maharashtra along with the Union territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, while the Ministry of Culture and some historians also include the state of Rajasthan. The Geological Survey of India includes Maharashtra but excludes Rajasthan whereas Ministry of Minority Affairs includes Karnataka but excludes Rajasthan.

Madhya Pradesh is also often included and Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh and southern Punjab are sometimes included. Western India may also refer to the western half of India, i.e. all the states west of Delhi and Chennai, thus also including Punjab, Kerala and surrounding states. The region is highly industrialised, with a large urban population. Roughly, Western India is bounded by the Thar Desert in the north, the Vindhya Range in the east and north and the Arabian Sea in the west. A major portion of Western India shares the Thar Desert with North India and Pakistan and the Deccan Plateau with South and Central India.

The Timurid Empire was a late medieval, culturally Persianate, Turco-Mongol empire that dominated Greater Iran in the early 15th century, comprising modern-day Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, much of Central Asia, the South Caucasus, and parts of contemporary Pakistan, North India, and Turkey. The empire had a syncretic culture and combined Turkic, Mongolic, and Persian influences, with the last members of the dynasty being regarded as "ideal Perso-Islamic rulers".

The empire was founded by Timur (Tamerlane), a warlord of Turco-Mongol lineage, who established the empire in 1370 and ruled it until his death in 1405. He saw himself as the great restorer of the Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan, regarding himself as Genghis's heir, and closely associated with the Borjigin. Timur continued to have strong trade relations with Ming China and the Golden Horde, with Chinese diplomats like Ma Huan and Chen Cheng regularly traveling west to Samarkand to conduct trade. The empire led to the Timurid Renaissance, particularly during the reign of astronomer and mathematician Ulugh Begh.