India: The Land Of Diverse Languages And Scripts
“Language is the roadmap of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going.” — Rita Mae Brown, renowned writer and activist
Did you know that according to a study conducted in 2014–2016 by The People’s Linguistic Survey of India, the people of India speak about 781 languages?
The results of this survey are almost double the number found by Ethnologue, an annual reference publication that provides statistics and information on the living languages of the world, according to which India has about 461 languages. These numbers make India one of the most linguistically diverse nations (fourth largest) of the world.
This article is a small attempt to provide an overview of the different languages, scripts, and practices of multilingualism in India.
The Interesting Classification
Have you ever wondered how are languages classified? Linguists, generally, group languages into language families based on historical reconstructions and connections by comparing the words and sounds of different languages together.
On the basis of this classification, India has four major language families. The biggest one is Indo-European. It is in fact, one of the biggest families in the entire world and stretches all the way from India to Russia and Europe. In India, most languages of this family are part of the Indo-Aryan branch and are concentrated in the North, pretty much from the upper Deccan area up to Pakistan and over to the East (towards Bengal and Bangladesh). On the contrary, we don’t get to see this family much in the South, until we reach Sri Lanka. Some Indo-European languages include Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Marathi, Urdu, Gujarati, Pahari, and English, in the long list of many others.
Next, follow the Dravidian languages, which are spoken mostly in the Southern parts of India. Some examples are Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Gondi, Malayalam, Naiki, and so on. In the North, there is a very low percentage of these languages, until we reach the Central area of the country. This is the Tribal Belt of India with areas of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Orissa. Generally, most of the Dravidian languages outside South-India are tribal in nature.
The Austro-Asiatic (Munda) is the third family. With languages like Santali, Mundari, Ho, Khasi, Asur, etc., it is spread out from the Western-most parts (Maharashtra — Madhya Pradesh — Chhattisgarh border), goes all the way to the Eastern regions of the country, and then towards China and Southwest Asia. In India, most of these languages are spoken by the tribal communities of Jharkhand, Orissa, Bihar, and West Bengal.
The fourth language family is the Tibeto-Burman. It is mostly found in the borderlands between China, Myanmar, and India — in the Northwest regions and Ladakh. Even though these languages are spoken in a small area, they are extremely diverse viz., Ladakhi, Lahul, Gurung, Chin, and Almora, among many others. We don’t really know exactly how many languages are in this family. For instance, the state of Arunachal Pradesh is the home to hundreds of languages, many of which have still not been documented!
Then there are languages that do not fit into any of these families such as the Andamanese, Nihali, and Tai.
From Languages to the World of Scripts
Unlike many other places in the world, the people of India write these languages in multiple scripts. Linguistically diverse countries like Europe and China use only one or two (at most, very few) scripts, but India is different. Some estimates are as high as 88 diverse scripts and this, possibly, makes India as one of the most graphically diverse nations across the globe.
An interesting fact — some of these scripts and languages are written on all the currency notes of India. On the frontside of these notes, there are Hindi (Devanagari script) and English (Roman script) languages. On the backside, we have Assamese and Bengali (variants of Eastern Brahmi script with some minor changes in the letters), Gujarati (Western Brahmi script), Kannada and Telugu (variants of the Kadamba script), Urdu and Kashmiri (Persio-Arabic script), Malayalam (Western Grantha script), Odia (Utkal script), Punjabi (Gurumukhi script), Tamil (Eastern Grantha script), and Sanskrit, Konkani, Marathi and Nepali (again in Devanagari script).
As we can see from the example stated above, languages and scripts are different from each other. They both have their separate and independent developments. It is a misnomer to put them together — they are not the same thing!
Furthermore, scripts are not static — new ones are constantly being created. This process has accelerated over the past 100 years when humans gradually became more literate. Tribal languages such as Santali (Ol-Chiki script), Gondi, Ho, Kurux, and Mundari have got their scripts within the last century or so. In fact, it is easier to develop a script as compared to a language. Developing scripts is a very grassroots activity and still happens in marginalized places.
A Complicated Question
What is the official language of India — Hindi or English?
It is, of course, a complicated question. India does not have a single national language, rather it has 22 national languages. According to Article 343 of the Indian Constitution, the official language of the Union is Hindi in the Devanagari script. But the second part of this Article states that for a period of 15 years from the commencement of the Constitution, the English language shall continue to be used for all the official purposes of the Union.
It means that the English language was supposed to be used only for 15 years after the Republic of India was founded, after which it should have been replaced by Hindi. This was the original intent, but it did not quite work out like that. Why? Because, by that time, English had become an Indian language. Although English was the linguistic inheritance of British colonialism, the imposition of Hindi was a big issue and caused riots and deaths in several parts of the country. As a result, English is now considered as a de-facto official language for India.
English — The Indian Version
The English language, which Indians speak, has become Indian over time. It cannot be compared to the English that is spoken in other countries. This language has been greatly influenced by the multilingual nature of India. A fun example is the song ‘Why This Kolaveri Di’ which was in Tamil-English! Another example is the movie ‘Jab We Met.’ The title is in Hinglish — a code-mixing of Hindi and English. So, basically, people switch back-and-forth between English and their local Indian languages. This is how English sort of became an Indian language by imbibing several characteristics of different local languages. Moreover, it is written in diverse scripts of the country. It is also used in things like writing the names of the shops/stores on boards in places or areas where people do not speak English at all.
Similar to this, several other countries have their own versions of the English language, such as Singapore (Singlish). All these instances describe how English has localized all over the world, blending in with the languages of different nations.
Hindi — India, Urdu — Pakistan?
Hindi originated from Khari Boli, which is the language of Northern-Central India. Since it originated in the late Mughal times, it was known as Hindustani (of Hindustan). It was mostly written in three scripts — Devanagari, Persio-Arabic, and Kaithi. This language was used as a lingua-franca by the Mughal army when its soldiers traveled to different places and hence, it came out as a mixed language and had various names such as Lashkari Zabaan and Urdu (which means army in Turkic). The Hindi that we know of today comprises Sanskrit and Persian origin words along with English words.
During the late Colonial period, the Hindustani language was split into two, along the lines of the scripts. The one in Devanagari came to be known as Hindi and the other in Persio-Arabic was called Urdu. This separation caused different aspects of these languages to change. At the time of the partition of British India, Hindi was proposed as the official language of India and Urdu of Pakistan.
The spread of Hindi is mostly in the Indian states that are considered to be in the Hindi Belt such as Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and so on. Outside this region, the concentration of Hindi speakers decreases. Towards the far South like Tamil Nadu, this number is almost nil. The same is the case when we move towards the Eastern regions of the country. A crucial point to note here is that Hindi is the official language of the Hindi Belt states but it is not their local language. People have grouped a number of distinct languages (dialects — Bhojpuri, Marwari, Haryanavi, Mewari, Awadhi, etc.) under the name Hindi. There is a huge language diversity in these regions.
In present times, Urdu has about 50 million first-language speakers in India. This number is a lot bigger than the 10 million first-language speakers of this language in Pakistan. It is only spoken natively in the big cities and near the India-Pakistan border areas of Pakistan. In contrast, a big spread of the first language Urdu speakers is visible in India. It covers Northern India, Bihar-Nepal borders, and South India (especially in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and Karnataka — where it is known as Dakhani Urdu, a mix of the Hindustani and South Indian languages).
Both Hindi and Urdu are the official languages of some states of India. Example: Uttar Pradesh. Newspapers and official government documents prefer more Sanskrit vocabulary, and popular culture like music and films (Bollywood) go for a more Persian vocabulary. Interesting, isn’t it?
Exploring Gujarati
Many languages are spoken in Gujarat and Gujarati is one of them. It is spoken in the central part of the state, starting from Patan all the way to the Surat-Navsari area. Earlier, it was written in different scripts. Around the 1900s, when Gujarat and Maharashtra were not divided, Gujarati was written in the Devanagari script in the Bombay area (now Mumbai) and Gujarati script in the Ahmedabad area. But, amidst the Gujarat-Maharashtra separation and other problems, the Devanagari script Gujarati phased out of use. This language is also written in the Persio-Arabic script by Muslim communities of Gujarat like Dawoodi Bohra.
Did you know that Gujarati is not just spoken in India but many other countries of the world as well? For instance, in New Jersey (the USA), it is the third most spoken language after English and Spanish. Other nations include Canada, the UK, Belgium, Pakistan, Singapore, Fiji, Japan, and so on. Moreover, a lot of Gujarati is spoken in Africa — it is, for instance, a widely spoken language in Zanzibar.
The Final Points
Hence, we can say that the linguistic landscape of India is incredibly diverse — both in terms of languages as well as scripts. Languages have been intricately linked with the foundations of this country and have been a part of its territory, politics, and social identity. The most important of all, an understanding of the linguistic realities simply defy several common assumptions such as Hindi is for India, Urdu is for Pakistan, and so forth. Another interesting point — global languages can get easily local (English) and local ones can become global (Gujarati)!
An analysis of the different languages and scripts of a nation can provide a detailed understanding of its past, present, and future.
What do you think?
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This article is based on one of the sessions (delivered by Nishaant Choksi, faculty in the Humanities and Social Sciences discipline) of the Virtual Seminar Series by IIT Gandhinagar. It is an online program started by the Institute in the wake of the current pandemic as a means to engage the people so that they can learn about a diversity of topics from the comfort of their homes, in an interesting manner. (The 5th article of this series can be found here. The 7th article is available here.)
