Hindi Belt (Indo-Gangetic heartland)

The Gangetic plain, where most of Indian political history happened and where most Indians still live. This is the alluvial corridor running from Punjab to Bengal, watered by the Ganges and Yamuna and farmed continuously for three thousand years, which made it the demographic centre of the subcontinent and therefore the prize. Magadha rose here in the sixth century BCE and became the base of the Mauryan empire under Chandragupta and Ashoka, the first state to govern most of India. The Guptas followed from the same ground. Both Buddhism and Jainism began in this region, at Bodh Gaya and in the Magadhan cities, before largely leaving it. The Delhi Sultanate from 1206 and the Mughals from 1526 ruled from its western end, and Agra, Delhi and Lucknow between them held the centre of power for six centuries. The British took it after Plassey and Buxar, made Calcutta their capital, and the revolt of 1857 ran along this plain from Meerut through Delhi to Lucknow and Kanpur. Hindi as a standard language is a nineteenth-century construction from Khari Boli, deliberately Sanskritised and written in Devanagari to distinguish it from Urdu, and the region actually speaks a continuum of related tongues - Bhojpuri, Awadhi, Braj, Maithili - that census practice files under Hindi. Uttar Pradesh and Bihar together hold more people than any country except China and India themselves. Caste politics here reshaped national government after 1990. The region is poorer than the south and has been for a century. Varanasi is among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Delhi has been the capital of seven distinct states. The Taj Mahal was finished at Agra around 1653.

• Existed: 1200 CE – present
• Type: Entity