The diversity in languages of India

India is perhaps the richest language hub on the earth. Exhibiting a baffling range of linguistic diversity, India is a home to more than 350 languages that can be grouped under just five families. India can boast of being the home for a number of dominant languages of the world, and a large number of small languages that are in the brink of extinction. Seeing the language plurality of India, we can say that no single state in India is homogeneous in terms of language. Also, the dominant language of a given region might be a case of linguistic minority in another region.

Unity in Diversity

Described as the living “Tower of Bable”, there are several linguistic communities in the country that share common culture and nationality thereby justifying the description of India as the land of 'Unity in Diversity'. The constitution of India has listed out 18 national languages. Each of them has its own unique history and richness. There are twenty two official languages in India including Assamese, Bodo, Bengali, Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Konkani, Kashmiri, Maithili, Meitei, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Santhali, Telugu, Tamil, and Urdu. There are several hundreds of mother tongues in India. Since in several cases it is difficult to distinguish a dialect from a distinct language, arriving at an accurate number is not that easy.

The mass appeal of a language

Studies have brought to surface that about 29 languages in India are spoken by over million local communities, about fifty languages are spoken by over 1 lakh people and not less than 114 languages are used by about 10,000 natives. The demand for carving the states of India on linguistic basis was voiced since long in the past. Following India's independence, The States Reorganisation Act of 1956 ventured to reform the boundaries of Indian states and union territories on a linguistic basis. Since then, despite a few insignificant clashes and disputes in the name of languages, language diversity of the country was never a threat to national integration.

Hindi as the official language

Hindi written in Devanagri script is the official language of India. Due to the popular spread of English among the masses during the British regime, after Independence, English continues to be the official language of the country to this day. There are four classical languages in India namely Sanskrit, Tamil, Kannada and Telugu each of which has a rich literary tradition that has been flourishing since historic times. While English is the judicial language of India, the proceedings in the parliament need to be done either in English or in Hindi unless a person can't express himself in any of these two languages. Special permission is to be sought from the speaker to address in mother tongue. All laws and enactments of the democracy are made in English.

Classic family of languages

All Indian languages are said to have evolved from the four language families namely Indo Aryan, Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic and Tibeto Burman. In addition, there is also a fifth group of isolated remnant languages like Buruhaski of North Pakistan, Kusunda of Central Nepal, Nahali of Central India, Nilgiri languages spoken by Toda, Kota and Kurumba communities, Vedda of Sri lanka and the Negroid languages of the Andaman Islands. The language history of the subcontinent from historic times reveals that India was inhabited by the migrants from both Asia and Europe. Therefore, no language seems to be purely Indian in terms of its family and therefore seems to have had its origin from outside. For all practical purposes, we can say that the Indian languages are dominated by the Aryan and Dravidian stock of languages.

Script and writing system

Most Indian languages have their own distinct alphabetical system except Kashmiri, Punjabi, Sindhi and Urdu which make use of the altered versions of the Arabic script. Though Hindi and Urdu have originated from the same source, they make use of Devnagri and Persian-Arabic scripts respectively.

Presenting a rich tradition of its own, each of the languages of India has immensely contributed to weave the fabric of the national culture in India.