India is a rather interesting and unique country in terms of its internal structure and management principles. Its form of government is federal, and the state acts as the largest administrative unit of the country. Each state speaks its own language, officially enshrined in the Constitution, and dialects derived from it. India, whose official language, in addition to Hindi, is also English, controls only 29 states (not counting the seven union territories), and the borders between them are drawn according to national and linguistic principles. In this regard, they vary significantly in area, population and standard of living, available resources.
The relevance of studying the language issue
In this article, I would like to pay special attention to the linguistic situation in India, because now it is becoming more vulnerable due to the observed processes of erasing cultural and other barriers, and trends towards westernization. In this situation, it will be increasingly difficult for a given state to maintain its identity and ensure the further development of each of more than twenty languages and over fifteen hundred dialects that have emerged from them.
Of course, the threat of extinction does not hang over most of them, since India is the second most populous country, and any of its official languages can boast of the number of its speakers (from 1.5 million to 423 million are Hindi). The problem lies in maintaining the purity of languages (avoiding borrowing and simplifications) and in the need for their use, because English, Spanish, etc. come to the fore in the modern world. Almost half of the world owns them.
Historical Explanation of Country Features
In fact, India has historically evolved not as a unitary state, and there are reasons for this. The country is home to many nationalities, professing their own religions and belonging to different language groups. All these peoples in different centuries came and settled in Indian lands. Various kinds of interactions took place between them: some mini-states united neighboring ones under their auspices, others tried to spread their own faith or to build an economic exchange. However, not a single nation - “Indians”, nor a strong country with stable internal ties and a common political course has developed over this long time.
Perhaps the blame for everything is too deep a lack of understanding of each other's views and mutual distrust, plus the passivity characteristic of the Indians, unwillingness to actively fight for something. Indeed, at present, separatist movements and national conflicts are strong in India. The country did not break up, probably only because the British colonizing it were able to maintain control over the states for a long time and built on their base more or less effective management institutions, which the Indian authorities use now.
Language families of India
There are only four officially registered language groups in the country . Turns out that:
- In the northern and central regions, representatives of the Indo-Aryan family dominate.
- South India - Dravidian.
- The northeast is a zone of distribution of Sino-Tibetan languages.
- Apart can be distinguished and native speakers of the Australian-Asian or Australian groups (tribes of the Santals).
The official languages of the Indian states, the number of speakers
The country's constitution declares 22 languages official. The following is a list of Indian languages (in random order) through which states communicate primarily. The numbers are based on the 2002 census.
- Hindi - 422 million
- Urdu - 51.6 million (note, the official language of Pakistan).
- Bengali or Bengali - 83.4 million
- Tamil - 61.2 million
- Telugu - 75 million
- Marathi (the language of the most economically developed state - Maharashtra) - 81.3 million.
- Gujarati - 47 million
- Kannada - 38.7 million
- Punjabi - 30 million
- Kashmiri - 5.9 million
- Oriya - 34 million
- Malayalam - 34.1 million
- Assamese - 13.9 million
- Maithili - 13.1 million
- Santalsky - 7.2 million
- Nepali - 2.9 million
- Sindian - 2.7 million
- Dogry - 2.4 million
- Manipuri - 1.5 million
- Konkani - 2.5 million
- Bodo - 1.4 million
- Sanskrit is a dead language.
India: State Language - Hindi
If we look more closely at the linguistic environment that India has, its state language is not one - there are two. But the first and main language is Hindi, which, incidentally, is spoken by the government of the state. It is very expressive, and along with Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi, etc., comes from the ancient Indo-Aryan language - Sanskrit. It is owned by about 422-423 million people, which makes Hindi the second most widely spoken language in the world.
English status and role
The question involuntarily arises: why in India the official language is English, where is the connection? Information from world history comes to the rescue. It turns out that since the 17th century, England, on behalf of the East India Campaign established in it, was conducting trade with India that was advantageous for itself. Having exhausted the previous sources of enrichment, the British subjugated the entire territory of the country for a hundred years (by 1850), and India turned into a colony of Great Britain. It established its orders, authorities, the English monopoly on trade, and the local population was engaged in the extraction, supply of raw materials and production of goods.
During their stay in the British kingdom, until independence was declared in 1947, the population of India became involved in capitalist relations, adopted English control models, and also adopted the language of the conquerors and their ways of thinking. Therefore, India, whose official language is also Hindi, recognizes English as its equal in importance.
The latter, as a rule, is used when communicating with foreigners. For example, it is actively practiced in the field of tourism, because a huge flow of tourists annually goes on vacation on the shores of the Indian Ocean. In addition, all business meetings of businessmen and politicians of India with partners and colleagues from abroad are held in English. After gaining independence, the country has not lost close and profitable ties with Britain, it is part of the British Commonwealth of Countries.
Conclusion
Thus, a rather difficult language situation is emerging in India. After all, when each of the states of the country communicates mainly in its official language, it is quite difficult to develop building a common domestic policy in the state. Misunderstandings, problems with accurate reporting of information may arise, distrust of the government in power or national movements may arise. Nevertheless, there are positive aspects. The presence of such an extensive range of languages in India provides that each of them is associated with certain cultural characteristics, values of the people using it. Therefore, India today is a country with a rich cultural heritage, which arouses the interest of the world community. Thus, Indian culture gained respect and recognition from him, and, therefore, a guarantee of prosperity in the future.