North India
Categories: Cleanup from June 2005 | Regions of India
North India is a geographic and linguistic-cultural region of India. Geographically, North India traditionally includes the entire Indian Peninsula north of the Satpura and Vindhya ranges and Narmada River. The dominant feature geographic feature is the Indo-Gangetic Plain.
As a linguistic-cultural and political region, North India consists of fourteen Indian states Maharastra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir, and Bihar. These are states with very strong Aryan influence, and generally, inhabitants of these states have lighter skin than those of their southern counterparts. Their languages are preponderantly Indo-Aryan, and it is in this region that Sanskrit and the various Prakrits are thought to have first flourished.
North India remains primarily rural, but it is the location of the great metropolises of Delhi and Kolkata, and Mumbai, as well as many other important cities, including Allahabad, Kanpur, Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Patna, Jodhpur, Indore, Nagpur, and Bhopal.
Contents |
People
Anthropologists often associate regional affinities with racial differences. So called "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 "Mongoloid" than "Caucasoid". Those in North India, however, are more likely to have the lighter skin. As in many parts of the world, this feature has become highly prized as a sign of beauty. In part these phenotypic variations may owe something to the history of Central Asian invaders (including Hunas or Huns, Kushanas, Sakas, and Turks) who have been able to advance rapidly across the Indo-Gangetic plain.
North India shows a fuller range of caste (varna) variation than does South India – there are proportionately more brahmans here, as well as kshatriya and vaishya castes which are not present over all of South India.
In terms of religion, North India is generally a stronghold of Vaishnava varieties of Hinduism, as well as being the main centre of Islam in India. Shaktism is also well-established, particularly in Bengal, while Shaivism has a very strong minority following in North India.
North India is, on the whole, poorer and less literate than South India. There is also a generally higher level of inequality between male and female literacy rates. The four BIMARUstates of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh, collectively have the highest population growth rates in India, as well as lower than average literacy rates and economic growth rates than India as a whole.
There are also differences in the rural economy; North India has a higher preponderance of tenant farmers than Southern India. Some of these diferences stem from the later Mughal emperors' practice of relying on zamindars, or '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 inherited and expanded upon the Zamindari system, while the Madras Presidency, which governed much of south India, relied on village panchayats, or 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.
The Economy
Maharastra
Maharastra is most famous for the port of Mumbai. Agriculture and tourism represent a large portion of the state's economy. The state's vast cultural assets include the Ellora and Ajanta caves.