According to one prominent researcher, there were at one time 225 distinct languages, not including their attendant dialects, in India. Modern counts still put the number at some 212. An ancient crossroads of culture, the Indian subcontinent is home to many different peoples with very different ways of life. These include the Sikhs, the Rajputs, the Bengalis, the Gujaratis, the Marathas, the Brahmins, the Tamils, the Andhras, the Kannadigas, the Malayalis and the Parsis, among the most prominent groups.
There had been a strong British presence on the Indian subcontinent since the beginning of the seventeenth century, when the East India Company, a British trading conglomerate, set up its first post on India's northwest coast. The Company was to virtually rule India, controlling trade, law and order, and education until 1859, when Queen Victoria proclaimed that India would be governed directly by the British sovereign.
What changed the Company's fortunes in India was the series of events known today as the "Indian Mutiny" or the "First Indian War of Independence." (India would not, in fact, become an independent nation until 1947.) Although the events leading up to the bloodshed were extremely complicated, one of the reasons for the uprising was the suspicion that the British were determined to do away with the most basic Indian social and religious customs and replace them with British ones.
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