North India

North India, also called Northern India or simply the North, is a loosely defined region consisting of the northern part of India. The dominant geographical features of North India are the Indo-Gangetic Plain and the Himalayas, which demarcate the region from the Tibetan Plateau and Central Asia. In a sometimes administrative sense, North India may be used to denote the Indo-Gangetic Plain within this broader expanse, stretching from the Ganga-Yamuna Doab to the Thar Desert. Historically, it may refer to the northern region of the Indian subcontinent where speakers of Indo-Aryan languages form a prominent majority population.

The term North India has varying definitions. The Ministry of Home Affairs in its Northern Zonal Council Administrative division included the states of Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and Rajasthan and Union Territories of Chandigarh, Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. The Ministry of Culture in its North Culture Zone includes the state of Uttarakhand but excludes Delhi whereas the Geological Survey of India includes Uttar Pradesh and Delhi but excludes Rajasthan and Chandigarh. Other states sometimes included are Bihar, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal.

Indo-Aryan migrations from Central Asia into North India saw the development of the Indo-Aryan languages, and the North Indian culture and cuisine soon after the decline of the Indus valley civilization. There was a slow migration of Indo-Iranian peoples through the northwest into this region between 2000 and 1500 BC, leading to the development of the Indo-Aryan languages from Proto-Indo-Iranian and some vocal synthesis with the Dravidian languages. North India was the historical centre of the ancient Vedic culture, the Mahajanapadas, and Magadha Empire, the medieval Delhi Sultanate and the modern Mughal India and the Indian Empire, among many others. It has a diverse culture, and includes the Hindu pilgrimage centres of Char Dham, Haridwar, Varanasi, Ayodhya, Mathura, Prayagraj, Vaishno Devi and Pushkar, the Buddhist pilgrimage centres of Sarnath and Kushinagar, the Sikh Golden Temple as well as world heritage sites such as the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve, Khajuraho temples, Hill Forts of Rajasthan, Jantar Mantar (Jaipur), Qutb Minar, Red Fort, Agra Fort, Fatehpur Sikri and the Taj Mahal. North India's culture developed as a result of interaction between these Hindu and Muslim religious traditions.

The Northern Zonal Council, which overlaps significantly with the region of North India, has the third-largest gross domestic product of all zonal councils in India. The languages that are official in one or more of the states and union territories located in North India are Hindi, Urdu, English, Punjabi, Dogri and Kashmiri.