The Hindi Language

About Hindi Language

Hindi Language is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India.

Hindi Language Spread

Hindi is the fourth most-spoken first language in the world, after Mandarin, Spanish and English.

It is the single largest spoken language in India among the 22 scheduled languages in the eighth schedule of the Indian constitution.

According to the 2011 Census, 43.6% of Indian population have Hindi as their mother tongue. And over 11% reported Hindi as their second language.

Official Language Status

As per the Article 343, Hindi Language, written in the Devanagari script, is one of the two official languages of the Government of India, along with English.

Hindi Language is an official language in 9 states and 3 union territories and an additional official language in 3 other states.

Fiji, a country in Oceania also recognized Hindi Language as an official language.

Central Hindi Directorate

It works under the Ministry of Education and responsible for promotion of Standard Hindi. It also regulates the use of Devanagari script and Hindi spelling in India.

It was established under the Article 351 of the Constitution of India which states that it is the duty of the Union government to promote the spread of the Hindi Language

Hindi Language: Post Independence Debate

Roots of the Debate: Since Hindi Language was the spoken of large parts of North India, it was chosen as the official language of India because of the necessity of finding a unifying force in a country with diverse languages, scripts, and dialects.

However, large parts of the non-Hindi speaking regions of the country were unhappy with the idea.

The agreement: There followed several discussions and debates in the Constituent Assembly over the national and official languages of India.

Finally, a compromise was reached wherein English along with Hindi was made the official language of India for a period of 15 years.

Resistance over Hindi: When the 15-year period came to an end, protests broke out over the fear of imposition of Hindi in large parts of non-Hindi speaking India, particularly in Tamil Nadu.

The resistance resulted in the Centre passing the Official Languages Act, which stated that English would continue to be upheld as official language along with Hindi Language.