Teaching Asia’s Giants: India Teaching Asia’s Giants: India Multilingualism in India By Jessica Chandras A sign at the border with Pakistan in the state of Punjab featuring the same message written in three different languages (Hindi/Urdu, Punjabi, and English) and four different scripts from the top down: Devanagari (Hindi), Punjabi, Roman (English), and Perso–Arabic (Urdu). Source: © Hemis/Alamy. ith a growing population of just over 1.3 billion people, India is an incredibly diverse country in many ways. This article will focus specifically on contemporary linguistic di- versity in India, first with an overview of India as a multilingual country just before and Wafter Independence in 1947 and then through a brief outline of impacts of multilingualism on busi- ness and schools, as well as digital, visual, and print media. India is home to many native languages, and it is also common that people speak and understand more than one language or dialect, which can entail the use of different scripts as well. India’s 2011 census documents that 121 languages are spoken as mother tongues, which is defined as the first lan- guage a person learns and uses.1 Of these languages, the Constitution of India recognizes twenty-two of them as official or “scheduled” languages. Articles 344(1) and 351 of the Constitution of India, titled the Eighth Schedule, recognizes the following languages as official languages of states of India: Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santhali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu.2 Six languages also hold the title of classical languages (Kannada, Malayalam, Odia, Sanskrit, Tamil, and Telugu), which are determined to have a history of recorded use for more than 1,500 years and a rich body of literature. Furthermore, for a contemporary language to also be a classical language, it must be an original language and cannot be a variety, such as a dialect, stemming from another language. Just as there are many people who wish for their mother tongues to be recognized as official, scheduled languages, there are also efforts to add Indian languages to the list of classical languages. Once a language has the official status of a classical language, the Ministry of Education 38 Education About ASIA Volume 25, Number 3 Winter 2020 39 Teaching Asia’s Giants: India Teaching Asia’s Giants: India organizes international awards for scholars of those languages, sets up language studies centers, and grants funding to universities to promote the study of the language. Interestingly, the Constitution of India lists no national language for the country as a whole. Of the official, scheduled languages, Modern Standard Hindi—as an umbrella term for a family of languages—has the most mother tongue speakers, with around 528 million speakers, or 44 percent of India’s population, followed by Bengali with around 97 million speakers, or 8 percent of the popu- lation. Marathi has around 83 million speakers, or 7 percent of the population, and Telugu speakers number around 81 million, or almost 6 percent of the population. Speakers who list the remaining official languages as their mother tongues also number between 2 and 4 percent of the population, as recorded in the 2011 census. It is interesting to note that due to India’s large population, native speakers of these regional Indian languages often outnumber native speakers of other major world languages such as Korean—with 77.2 million native speakers—and Italian—with 67 million native speakers—as of 2020.3 Languages in India are categorized into language families based on their different linguistic or- igins, which often include different scripts as well. The main language families include Dravidian, Indo–Aryan, and Sino–Tibetan. Bodo is the Sino–Tibetan language spoken in northeastern Indian states with the most speakers (1.4 million). Languages considered to be mother tongues or regional languages in the south of India have grammatical structures and scripts with Dravidian roots, and languages used in the central and northern regions of India are part of the Indo–Aryan family of languages. Many central and northern Indian languages use scripts derived from the Nagari script. Contemporary variations of Hindi use the Devanagari script, and scripts used in Gujarati, Punjabi, and Marathi use Nagari-derived scripts or versions of Devanagari that include some differences in their alphabets. The 22 scheduled languages of the Republic of India Language Family Speakers Official Recognition in State(s) (in millions, 2011) Assamese Indo–Aryan, Eastern 15.3 Assam Bengali Indo–Aryan, Eastern 97.2 West Bengal, Tripura, Assam, and, Jharkhand Bodo Tibeto–Burman 1.48 Assam Dogri Indo–Aryan, Northwestern 2.6 Jammu and Kashmir Gujarati Indo–Aryan, Western 55.5 Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, and Gujarat Hindi Indo–Aryan 528 Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Bihar, Dadra and Nagar Haveli Daman and Diu, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, West Bengal, Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh Kannada Dravidian 43.7 Karnataka Kashmiri Indo–Aryan, Dardic 6.8 Jammu and Kashmir Konkani Indo–Aryan, Southern 2.25 Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, and Goa Maithili Indo–Aryan, Eastern 13.6 Jharkhand Malayalam Dravidian 34.8 Kerala, Lakshadweep, and Puducherry Manipuri Tibeto–Burman 1.8 Manipur Marathi Indo–Aryan, Southern 83 Maharashtra Nepali Indo–Aryan, Northern 2.9 Sikkim and West Bengal Odia Indo–Aryan, Eastern 37.5 Odisha, Jharkhand, and West Bengal Punjabi Indo–Aryan, Northwestern 33.1 Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, and West Bengal Sanskrit Indo–Aryan 0.02 Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand Santali Austroasiatic 7.3 Jharkhand Sindhi Indo–Aryan, Northwestern 2.7 Sindhi is not official in yan states or union territories Tamil Dravidian 69 Tamil Nadu and Puducherry Telugu Dravidian 81.1 Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and Puducherry Urdu Indo–Aryan, Central 50.7 Jammu and Kashmir, Telangana, Jharkhand, Delhi, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal The Eighth Schedule to the Indian Constitution contains a list of twenty-two scheduled languages. This table lists the twenty-two scheduled languages of the Republic of India set out in the Eighth Schedule as of May 2008, together with the regions where they are widely spoken and used as the state’s official language. However, states are not mandated to choose their official languages from the scheduled languages. Sindhi is not official in any states or union territories even through it is official in the Eighth Schedule.Source: Wikimedia Commons at https://tinyurl.com/y2cb8wrt. 38 Education About ASIA Volume 25, Number 3 Winter 2020 39 Teaching Asia’s Giants: India Teaching Asia’s Giants: India States and Territories of India States 1. Andhra Pradesh 2. Arunachal Pradesh 3. Assam 4. Bihar 5. Chhattisgarh 6. Goa 7. Gujarat 8. Haryana 9. Himachal Pradesh 10. Jammu and Kashmir (Now a union territory. See note in caption.) 11. Jharkhand 12. Karnataka 13. Kerala 14. Madhya Pradesh 15. Maharashtra 16. Manipur 17. Meghalaya 18. Mizoram 19. Nagaland 20. Orissa 21. Punjab 22. Rajasthan 23. Sikkim 24. Tamil Nadu 25. Tripura 26. Uttar Pradesh 27. Uttarakhand 28. West Bengal 29. Telangana Union territories A. Andaman and Nicobar Islands B. Chandigarh C. Dadra and Nagar Haveli D. Daman and Diu E. Lakshadweep F. Delhi (National Capital Territory) G. Puducherry India consists of twenty-eight states and eight union territories. All states, and the two union territories of Puducherry and Delhi (National Capital Territory), have elected legislatures and govern- ments patterned on the Westminster model (three arms of government: the executive, the legislature, and an independent judiciary). The other five union territories are directly ruled by the central government through appointed administrators. In 1956, under the States Reorganization Act, states were formed on a linguistic basis. Note: Jammu and Kashmir became a union territory in 2019. The map was made before this year when Jammu and Kashmir was an Indian state. Source: Wikimedia Commons at https://tinyurl.com/yyv7be5j. Similarly, Modern Standard Hindi and Urdu are grammatically identical, though they often differ in some vocabulary and their use of scripts, as Urdu uses a modified form of the Perso–Arabic script. As Hindi and Urdu are often considered to be one language with two scripts, a common belief is that the distinction among speaking and writing Hindi and Urdu falls along a religious divide be- tween Hindus and Muslims, where Hindus are listed as Hindi speakers and Muslims as Urdu speak- ers in government documents such as the census.4 However, in practice, the distinction between Hindi and Urdu speakers is much more fluid and complex, as linguistic boundaries rely more on geographic location and speech community. Another aspect of India’s multilingualism is that each mother tongue, or regional language, roughly belongs to one or more states. India’s twenty-eight states have been largely organized along linguistic lines since the 1950s, just after Independence, with the formation of the southeastern state of Andhra Pradesh in 1953 for Telugu speakers. Andhra Pradesh was created after prolonged pro- tests and strikes by Telugu speakers, which included the prominent activist Potti Sreeramulu fasting for the creation of a Telugu state until his death in 1952.5 A new state was finally created in 1953 by dividing the Tamil- and Telugu-speaking regions in what, under the British, was called the Madras 40 Education About ASIA Volume 25, Number 3 Winter 2020 41 Teaching Asia’s Giants: India Teaching Asia’s Giants: India Indian state names in the script of each state’s regional language (Note: the map’s creator is Japanese hence the Kanji in the top right). Source: New World Encyclopedia at https://tinyurl.com/y5jtgaoy.