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Languages With Official Status in India

The Constitution of India designates Hindi and English as the official languages of the central government. States have the freedom to choose their own official languages through legislation, resulting in over 20 languages being officially recognized in India. Hindi is spoken by 14.5-24.5% of the population as a native language, while other dialects are spoken by 45%. While Hindi was intended to replace English over 15 years, resistance led to both continuing as official languages, with Hindi used at the central level and states' own languages used at the state level. The legal framework for official languages includes the Constitution, the Official Languages Act of 1963, and state laws.

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24 views

Languages With Official Status in India

The Constitution of India designates Hindi and English as the official languages of the central government. States have the freedom to choose their own official languages through legislation, resulting in over 20 languages being officially recognized in India. Hindi is spoken by 14.5-24.5% of the population as a native language, while other dialects are spoken by 45%. While Hindi was intended to replace English over 15 years, resistance led to both continuing as official languages, with Hindi used at the central level and states' own languages used at the state level. The legal framework for official languages includes the Constitution, the Official Languages Act of 1963, and state laws.

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tinku
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LANGUAGES WITH OFFICIAL STATUS IN INDIA

The Constitution of India designates a bilingual approach to the official language of the
Government of India that employs the use of Hindi written in the Devanagari script and
English. “Hindi and English are important for everyday use, such as parliamentary procedure,
the judiciary, communications between the central government and state government official
purposes. Indian states have the freedom and power to specify their own official language (s)
through legislation and therefore there are more than 20 languages officially recognized in
India, including English, Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil, kannada, Malayalam, gujarati,
Punjabi, Marathi, etc. the number of native speakers of Hindi range from 14.5 to 24.5% of the
total population of India, however, other dialects of the Hindi termed as languages are spoken
by nearly 45% percent of Indians, mostly represented from states within the Hindi belt.
Compared with Hindi, other Indian languages are not left behind and are spoken by about
10% or less of the population.” English is still used for some official purposes by the
Government of India along with Hindi, the number of English speakers in India has grown
significantly in India to nearly 20%.

States specify their own official language (s) through legislation. The section of the
Constitution of India on official languages therefore includes detailed provisions have to do
only with the languages used for official purposes of the Union, but also with the languages
that will be used for purposes officers from each state and union territory in the country, and
the languages to be used for communication between the Union and states inter se. During the
British Raj, English is used for purposes at the federal level. The Indian Constitution adopted
in 1950 provides that Hindi be phased in to replace English over a period of fifteen years, but
gave Parliament the power to, by law, provide for the continued use of English even
thereafter. Plans to make Hindi the sole official language of the Republic met with resistance
in some parts of the country. Hindi is still used today, in combination with another (at the
central level and in some states) official languages of the state at the state level.

The legal framework governing the use of languages official purposes is currently comprised
of the Constitution, the Official Languages Act, 1963 Official Languages (used for functions
Officer of the Union) Rules 1976 and various state laws, as the rules and regulations made by
the central government and the states.1

1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_with_official_status_in_India

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