Languages of India – History of India | By Dr. Mahipal Singh Rathore | Free PDF Download

INTRODUCTION

• In India there are 22 scheduled languages, 114 other languages, 216 mother tongues, 96 non specified languages
• and totally up to 1365 languages spoken by the people.
• Classification
• 1) Indo-Aryan
• 2) Dravidian
•3) Sino-Tibetan
• 4)Negroid
• 5) Austro-asiatic
• 6) Andamanese.
1. Indo-Aryan:
• part of the Indo-European family of languages, which came to India with the Aryans.
• biggest language group in India and accounts for about 74% of the total Indian population.
• principal languages of northern and western India such as Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Sindhi, Rajasthani, Assamese, Oriya, Pahari, Bihari, Kashmiri, Urdu and Sanskrit.
2. Dravidian:
• It covers about 25% of the Indian population. The major languages of the Dravidian group are: (i) Telugu (numerically biggest) (ii) Tamil (oldest and purest of the Dravidian family) (iii) Kannada (iv) Malayalam (smallest and the youngest of)
3. Sino-Tibetan:
• sub-Himalayan tracts, covering North Bihar, • North Bengal, Assam up to •
4. Austro-Asiatic:
very ancient languages
• were referred in ancient Sanskrit literature as Nisadas.
• The most important language of the Austric group is Santhali, which is spoken by over 5 million Santhals and is the largest spoken among the Adivasi languages.
• Mundari, spoken by about a million Mundas.

Official Languages

Art 343 –in 1950-Hindi and english were made official Union language. After 15 years,Hindi was to replace english totally. But non-Hindi speaking communities across the country protested on the aspect of the change in official language in 1960s from English to Hindi. This protest resulted in the enactment of the Official Language Act .
• Hindi was declared the official language of the Union and English was given the status of the ‘subsidiary official language‘ of India.
• Either Hindi or English can be used for procedures of Parliament.
• It should be noted that there is no national language of India. Hindi is not a national language.
• Provision for states to choose their own official language for communicating at the state level.
• At present there are 22 languages in the Eighth schedule

The 22 official languages

(VIII schedule)
1. ASSAMESE
2. BENGALI
3. BODO – Assam
4. DOGRI –
5. GUJARATI
6. HINDI
7. KANNADA
8. KASHMIRI
9. KONKANI
10. MAITHILI
11. MALAYALAM
12. MANIPURI (also MEITEI or MEITHEI)
13. MARATHI
14. NEPALI
15. ODIYA
16. PUNJABI
17. SANSKRIT
18. SANTHALI
19. SINDHI
20. TAMIL
21. TELUGU
22. URDU

FREEDOM to Chose any State langauage

• constitution does not specify the official languages to be used by the states and leaves each state free to adopt any language used in its territory as its official language .
• The language need not be one of those listed in the Eighth Schedule

• Classical language status

• In 2004, the Government declared that languages that met certain requirements could be accorded the status of Classical cinema
• Classical languages
• Sanskrit
• Tamil
• Telugu
• Malyalam
• Kannada
• Odiya (2014)

Indian History | Free PDF

By Dr. Mahipal Singh Rathore
Facebook Id-> facebook.com/mahipalsinghrathore

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