Culture is a central instrument of discovering, integrating and asserting the   national identity of India which truly and inevitably pluralistic. Culture permeates every sphere of human activity, determines and governs life and pattern of Indian society in diverse regions and equality, diverse fields.

 

India is home to several hundred languages. Most languages spoken in India belong either to the Indo Aryan and Dravidian families of la nguages though some Indo-European languages are also spoken and understood.

The Indo - Aryan languages including Hindi, Rajasthani, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, Oriya, Assamese, Sanskrit, Kashmiri, Sindhi and Punjabi  cover  a bout three - four ths   of India’s population.

The languages of the Southern India viz Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam belong to the Dravidian family.of the Indo-European languages, English is the most widely used one.

 

The Indian Constitution, in 1950, declared Hindi in Devanagari Script to be the official language of the union.  It was provided in the Constitution of India that English shall continue to be used for all official purposes of  the Union till January 25, 1965 but the complet e change over to Hindi was not practicable within the stipulated period. So English  in  addition  to  Hindi , continues to be used for all official purposes as an associate official language.

 

22 Major languages are specified in the eighth schedule of the constitution. Those are Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarathi, Hindi, Kananda, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santhali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali and Oriya

 

The language of Parliamentary proceedings and laws

According to the constitution parliamentary proceedings may be conducted  in either Hindi or English in Parliamentary proceedings was to be phased out at the end of fifteen years unless Parliament chose to extend its use, which parliament did through the Official Language Act, 1963 But the constitution laws  including parliamentary enactments and statutory instruments are in English.

 

The Constitution provides that all proceedings in  the Supreme Court of India shall be in English.

 

Languages so far declared to be classical based on the recommendation of a committee of linguistic experts constituted by the Ministry of Culture, Government of India are Tamil (2004), Sanskrit (2005), Kannada and Telugu (2008)