Wealth of Indian linguistic culture lies outside the purview of what is recognised as official language, in the backdrop of the statement analyse the linguistic diversity and richness in the country.

India is one of unique countries in the world that has the legacy of diversity of languages.
The Constitution of India has recognised 22 official languages. Multilingualism is the way of life in
India as people in different parts of the country speak more than one language from their birth and
learns additional languages during their life time.
Though officially there are 122 languages, Peoples Linguistic Survey of India has identified 780
languages, of which 50 are extinct in past five decades.
The twenty two languages that are recognised by the Constitution are: Assamese, Bengali,
Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kashmiri, Kannada, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi,
Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santhali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu are included in the Eighth
Schedule of the constitution.
Among these three languages, Sanskrit, Tamil and Kannada have been recognised as classical
language with special status and recognition by Government of India. The classical languages have
written and oral history of more than 1000 years. In comparison to these, English is very young as it
has the history of only 300 years.
Provisions that safeguard the wealth of Indian languages -
 In addition to these scheduled and classical languages, The Constitution of India has included the
clause to protect minority languages as a fundamental right. It states” Any section of the
citizens residing in the territory of India or any part of thereof having a distinct language, script
or culture of its own shall have the right to conserve the same.”
 The language policy of India provides guarantee to protect the linguistic minorities. Under the
Constitution, provision is made for appointment of Special Officer for linguistic minority with
the sole responsibilities of safeguarding the interest of language spoken by the minority groups.
 During the colonial rule the first linguistic survey was conducted during 1894 to 1928 by George
A. Grierson that identified 179 languages and 544 dialects. Due to lack of trained personnel as
linguists this survey had many deficiencies.
 In the post-independence era Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL), based in Mysore was
assigned to carry out an in-depth survey of languages.
 In 1991 the Census of India listed 1576 mother tongues’ with separate grammatical structures
and 1796 speech varieties that is classified as other mother tongues’.
 Another unique feature of India is the concept of protecting the interest of children to get basic
education in their mother tongue. The Constitution provides” it shall be the endeavour of every
State and of every local authority within the state to provide adequate facilities for instruction in
the mother tongue at the primary stage of education to children belonging to linguistic minority
groups”. Thus, even before the United Nations declared the International Mother Language Day
(February 21) the founders of the Indian Constitution gave top priority to teaching in mother
tongues’, enabling the child to develop its full potential.
 In 1956 reorganisation of states in India was carried out with linguistic boundaries that had its
own script. Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel, the then home minister played key role in formation and
amalgamation of states based on linguistic attributes.
 The language policy of India has been pluralistic, giving priority to the use of mother tongue in
administration, education and other fields of mass communication. The Language Bureau of
Ministry of Human Resource Development is set up to implement and monitor the language
policy.
Thus it is quite clear from the above facts that the language diversity and richness of the country
is much beyond just the recognised official languages and is the true identity of the diverse Indian
culture. In recent years the language diversity is under threat as speakers of diverse languages are
becoming rare and major languages are adopted after abandoning the mother tongues. The problem
needs to be addressed at societal level, in which the communities have to take part in conservation
of language diversity that is part of cultural wealth.