Garima Chaudhry
As per the Census of 2011, the top 10 languages identified by Indians as mother tongues are Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, Gujarati, Urdu, Kannada, Odia and Malayalam in that order. Together they are spoken by approximately 90% of the population.
Each of the top 10 languages has registered a growth in absolute numbers but Hindi is the only language that has grown in percentage terms from 1991 to 2011. 43.63% of Indians identified Hindi as their mother tongue in 2011 as against 39.29% in 1991.
Please note that the Census covers the ‘mother tongue’ only. As per the instructions to the enumerators – ‘Mother tongue is the language spoken in childhood by the person’s mother to the person. If the mother died in infancy, the language mainly spoken in the person’s home in childhood will be the mother tongue. In the case of infants and deaf mutes, the language usually spoken by the mother should be recorded. In case of doubt, the language mainly spoken in the household may be recorded.’
We believe that given the above definition, it can be assumed that the actual number of Indians speaking a specific language will be a higher number.
Through our series of Infographics – Languages of India, Cultural Samvaad attempts to bring to you some interesting facts and figure about the many languages that we still speak and the many languages that have been lost somewhere in the annals of time. This is the second part in the series. Do look up the first part!
Refer to our Data Source for more details.
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