About India: Indian Languages
Introduction
Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and written forms. There are over 6500 recognized languages in the world but unlike some of the other countries in the world, India doesn't have a single or even double national language. This is because we are a nation with diverse cultural background with each culture having its own language both written and spoken, which makes it almost impossible to choose a national language that would be universally accepted.
The following image (source: GreenHeart) shows how language has evolved over time across the world:
How language has evolved over time
Indian Languages mostly belong to the Indo-Europian family of languages with ~73% of India speaking one of the 574 Languages belonging to it. The Dravidian languages (153) are spoken by ~24% of the population. Making it extremely hard to choose a language that can we the national language of India.
Indian Scheduled and Offical Languages
According to Article 343(1) in the Indian Constitution "The Official Language of the Union shall be Hindi in Devanagari script and English could be also used for official purposes.". In addition, Article 345 of the constitution also provides recognition to "official languages" of the union.
The list of Scheduled/Offical Languages of India is as given below:
- Assamese
- Bengali
- Gujarati
- Hindi
- Kannada
- Kashmiri
- Marathi
- Malayalam
- Oriya
- Punjabi
- Sanskrit
- Tamil
- Telugu
- Urdu
- Sindhi
- Konkani
- Nepali
- Manipuri
- Bodo
- Dogri
- Maithili
- Santhali
As per the Language Census of 2011 (which is the latest census of India as the census of 2021 was pushed out due to Covid ) the following table shows Scheduled Languages in descending order of speakers' strength
| Language | Persons who returned the language as their mother tongue | Percentage to total |
| Hindi | 52,83,47,193 | 43.63 |
| Bengali | 9,72,37,669 | 8.03 |
| Marathi | 8,30,26,680 | 6.86 |
| Telugu | 8,11,27,740 | 6.7 |
| Tamil | 6,90,26,881 | 5.7 |
| Gujarati | 5,54,92,554 | 4.58 |
| Urdu | 5,07,72,631 | 4.19 |
| Kannada | 4,37,06,512 | 3.61 |
| Odia | 3,75,21,324 | 3.1 |
| Malayalam | 3,48,38,819 | 2.88 |
| Punjabi | 3,31,24,726 | 2.74 |
| Assamese | 1,53,11,351 | 1.26 |
| Maithili | 1,35,83,464 | 1.12 |
| Santali | 73,68,192 | 0.61 |
| Kashmiri | 67,97,587 | 0.56 |
| Nepali | 29,26,168 | 0.24 |
| Sindhi | 27,72,264 | 0.23 |
| Dogri | 25,96,767 | 0.21 |
| Konkani | 22,56,502 | 0.19 |
| Manipuri | 17,61,079 | 0.15 |
| Bodo | 14,82,929 | 0.12 |
| Sanskrit | 24,821 | Negligible |
More details on the Census and language breakdown by population etc is available here
Language of the Judiciary
In order to ensure that all proceedings in the court are accessible to all citizens, Article 348(1)(a) of the Constitution of India states that all proceedings in the Supreme Court and in every High Court, shall be in English language. However, Article 348 (2) of the Constitution of India provides that the Governor of a State may, with the previous consent of the President, authorize the use of Hindi Language, or any other language used for any official purposes of the State, in proceedings in the High Court having its principal seat in that State.
Section 7 of the Official Language Act, 1963 states that the Governor of a State may, with the previous consent of the President, authorize the use of Hindi or the official language of the State, in addition to the English Language, for the purposes of any judgment, decree or order passed or made by the High Court for that State and where any judgment, decree or order is passed or made in any such language (other than the English Language), it shall be accompanied by a translation of the same in the English Language issued under the authority of the High Court.
Additional Details on the language of the judiciary are available here.
Additional Information on Indian Languages