Some insight in to the language census of India-2011

Language is the fundamental instrument of communication. It bears distinctive identity of the people who speak it. Linguistic homogeneity holds a society together through shared socio-cultural bonds. It is often considered as a contested issue dividing people in a geographic region with varied linguistic people. India is a land of diversity and this attribute is also observed among the languages spoken in the country. In a pluri-lingual country like India, language is thus a sensitive issue as it mirrors the identity for unity as well as bases for separation. After an inordinate delay, recent release of language data in June 2018 have brought linguistic cornucopia in to the forefront. This study, being an exploratory research tries to analyze the linguistic diversity in India as per the Language Census of 2001 and 2011, mapping the spatial distribution of languages. The study finds, among all 22 scheduled languages Hindi is spoken by largest number of population, followed by Bengali which has replaced Marathi to the third spoken language. However, there is regional dominance of different languages in different states. There is substantial growth among the non-scheduled languages.