The Census of India has classified languages in the categories of Scheduled and Non-Scheduled languages.
There are 22 Scheduled and 100 Non-Scheduled languages.
22 Languages
02.
As of today, the Indian constitution recognizes 22 major languages of India in what is known as “the 8th Schedule” of the Constitution.
They also happen to be the major literary languages in India, with a considerable volume of writing in them.
22 Languages
03.
Of these Indian languages, 14 were initially included in the Constitution.
Sindhi language was added in 1967. Konkani, Manipuri and Nepali were included in 1992. Bodo, Dogri, Maithili and Santhali were added in 2004.
22 Languages
04.
1. Hindi
2. Bengali
3. Marathi
4. Telugu
5. Tamil
6. Gujarati
7. Urdu
8. Kannada
9. Odia
10. Malayalam
11. Punjab
The first Prime Minister of India, Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru had made this comment about the recognition of languages:
‘The makers of our Constitution were wise in laying down that all the 13 or 14 languages’ were to be national languages.
Hindi
07.
Hindi (in Devanagari script) and English are the two official languages of India.
India does not have a single national language.
DravidianLanguages
08.
About 20 per cent of the Indian population speak the Dravidian Languages.
Dravidian languages are older than the Aryan languages.
The southern (Dravidian) languages of India were less impacted by the Mughal invasion.
PopularLanguages
09.
Kashmiri, Punjabi, Hindi, Bengali, Assamese, Gujarati, Marathi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Oriya
are considered to be the twelve most widely spoken languages of India among the diversified culture.