Languages

The Constitution of India recognizes 18 languages as scheduled languages; besides this, there are hundreds of languages that do not have this status, but are spoken extensively by communities. The officially recognized languages are those of a specific state or region, like Tamil (Tamil Nadu), Gujarati (Gujarat), Malayalam (Kerala), Kannada (Karnataka), Telugu (Andhra Pradesh) etc. They are the ‘regional' languages. A regional language is also one that is spoken by people who are spread over one or two states. Urdu is an example of this – it is spoken in Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Jammu Kashmir and many other states. According to the constitution of India , "The official language of the Union shall be Hindi in Devanagari script”. English is the second official language. Besides these are the countless oral languages that do not have a script, and go unrecognized by most people.

All these languages do not have the same importance or prestige. The government tries to maintain Hindi as the official language by trying to use it as the language for official purposes, propagating Hindi through official communiqués and notices, through Akashvani and Doordarshan etc. However English is the language that is more in use. Despite governmental efforts, official work and legal procedures are still in English. Newspapers or electronic media that claim to be national mostly use the English language. Higher education and production of all forms of knowledge are in English. The advent of the computer and the internet has only increased the importance of English in India. The skill of writing and speaking good English is seen as necessary for social advancement in India. It is the general assumption in India that a regional language like Hindi is a language of the past, while English is seen as the language of the future. Thus English tops the linguistic hierarchy and has a place that is similar to Sanskrit or Persian in the past.