Official Languages of India

India is a huge country with varied ethnic cultures, traditions, languages. India has a diverse list of spoken languages among different groups of people. It has been said that in India, “Indian language changes every few kilometers”.

India being a union of states with 28 states and 8 Union Territories.

Article 343 of the Indian constitution stated that the official language of the Union is Hindi in Devanagari script instead of the extant English. Later, a constitutional amendment,

The Official Languages Act, 1963, allowed for the continuation of English alongside Hindi in the Indian government indefinitely until legislation decides to change it.

The Constitution of India does not give any language the status of national language.

The 8th Schedule of the Indian Constitution lists 22 languages, which have been referred to as scheduled languages and given recognition, status and official encouragement.

In addition, the Government of India has awarded the distinction of 6 classical language to Kannada, Malayalam, Odia, Sanskrit, Tamil and Telugu. Classical language status is given to languages which have a rich heritage and independent nature.

According to the Census of India of 2001, India has 122 major languages and 1599 other languages.

However, figures from other sources vary, primarily due to differences in definition of the terms “language” and “dialect”.

The 2001 Census recorded 30 languages which were spoken by more than a million native speakers and 122 which were spoken by more than 10,000 people.

Official Language of India

Two languages are chosen to be the official languages used by the central administration.

Hindi is the language used by the Central Government as per Article 343 when communicating with the states of Hindi Belt.

English is the Associate official language and the language to be used while communicating with the states.

List of Official Scheduled Language of India