Dravidian Languages Now the Mother Tongue of Only 18.9% Indians

While Hindi has grown since 1971, Sanskrit has been diminished to only 25,000 people across India.

The Census office recently released the 2011 Census data on language and mother tongue. On account of the lower growth rate of population in the southern states, the major Dravidian languages are now the mother tongue of a lesser proportion of Indians compared to 1971.

Hindi is now the mother tongue of 43.63 percent Indians compared to 36.99 percent in 1971.

Scheduled Languages Still the Most Widely Spoken

The 22 languages included in the 8th schedule of the Constitution account for the mother tongue of 96.72 percent of Indians as per the 2011 census. This has been more or less consistent at around 97 percent since 1971 except for the year 1981. As far as the 1981 census is concerned, the full figures for Tamil are not available as the records were lost in floods. Similarly, the 1981 census could not be conducted in Assam because of disturbed conditions.

Hence the figures for even 1981 could have been similar if they were part of the census.

Hindi is the Most Widely Spoken

Among the 22 scheduled languages, the most widely spoken language is Hindi. As per the 2011 census, 43.63 percent of Indians reported Hindi as their mother tongue.

Bengali, with 8.03 percent, is next in the list. Marathi was reported as the mother tongue by 6.86 percent whereas Telugu was reported by 6.7 percent. Tamil with 5.7 percent is the only other language to be reported as the mother tongue by more than 5 percent of the population. In all, 13 of the 22 scheduled languages were reported as the mother tongue by at least 1 percent of the population. In other words, each of the 13 languages (out of the 22 scheduled languages) is the mother tongue of at least 1 crore Indians. Except for Sanskrit, each of the 21 scheduled languages was reported as the mother tongue by at least 10 lakh people.

Sanskrit is the only language to have been reported by a negligible set of people of  about 25,000.

Major Dravidian Languages Lose Their Share

As is the case with population growth rates, the percentage of Indians who reported one of the four major Dravidian languages as their mother tongue has gone down significantly since 1971. The four major Dravidian languages (Telugu, Tamil, Kannada & Malayalam) were reported as the mother tongue by 23 percent of Indians in the 1971 census. It has come down to 18.89 percent in the 2011 census. In terms of proportion, the major Dravidian languages lost close to 18 percent in these 40 years. On the other hand, the percentage of Indians who reported Hindi as their mother tongue increased from 36.99 percent in 1971 to 43.63 percent in 2011, owing to the higher population growth rate of the Hindi-speaking states.

Among the four languages, Malayalam, Telugu and Tamil have seen significant reduction in their share. Malayalam, which was reported as the mother tongue by 4 percent of Indians in 1971 is now down to 2.88 percent. Telugu on the other hand decreased from 8.16 percent in 1971 to 6.7 percent in 2011.

(This article was first published on Factly and has been republished here with permission.)