Hindustani is a historical mixed language that arose as a facilitating, or contact, language in North India, in the vicinity of Delhi and Meerut, in the 13th century in response to growing political and cultural predominance of Muslims from Central Asia. It later became a lingua franca in a larger, loose-knit, region of Northern India. In the late 18th- and early 19th centuries, after British attempts at standardization, it was identified with Urdu, and became, along with English, from 1837 to 1857, an official language of India under Company rule . Under the British Raj, 1858–1947, Hindustani, as Urdu, remained, along with English, an official language of the British Indian Empire. The attempts at standardization, which had the unintended effect of exacerbating sectarian divisions characterized by diverse goals of linguistic purity, prompted Mahatma Gandhi in the 20th-century to promote a colloquial version of Hindustani. However, by the time of the partition of India in 1947, Hindustani had become even more polarized, and split into Hindi and Urdu, the two official languages of India and Pakistan, respectively. Hindustani remains today as an informal mutually intelligible, common, denominator of these two languages.