Languages with legal status in India
The commission was to suggest steps to be taken to progressively promote the use of Hindi as the official language of the country.
[11] The Indian constitution, in 1950, declared Hindi in Devanagari script to be the official language of the union.
Unless Parliament decided otherwise, the use of English for official purposes was to cease 15 years after the constitution came into effect, that is, on 26 January 1965.
The prospect of the changeover, however, led to much alarm in the non-Hindi-speaking areas of India, especially Dravidian-speaking states whose languages were not related to Hindi at all.
[12][13][14][15][16][17] In late 1964, an attempt was made to expressly provide for an end to the use of English, but it was met with protests from states and territories, including Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, West Bengal, Karnataka, Puducherry, Nagaland, Mizoram and Andhra Pradesh.
[18] As a result, the proposal was dropped,[19][20] and the Act itself was amended in 1967 to provide that the use of English would not be ended until a resolution to that effect was passed by the legislature of every state that had not adopted Hindi as its official language, and by each house of the Indian Parliament.
The Government of India is now under an obligation to take measures for the development of these languages, such that "they grow rapidly in richness and become effective means of communicating modern knowledge."
In addition, candidates sitting for an examination conducted for public service are entitled to use any of these languages as a medium to answer the paper.
[44] In contrast, the constitution requires the authoritative text of all laws, including Parliamentary enactments and statutory instruments, to be in English, until Parliament decides otherwise.
Parliament has not exercised its power to so decide, instead merely requiring that all such laws and instruments, and all bills brought before it, also be translated into Hindi, though the English text remains authoritative.
Regional Hindi implementation offices at Bangalore, Thiruvananthapuram, Mumbai, Kolkata, Guwahati, Bhopal, Delhi and Ghaziabad have been established to monitor the implementation of Hindi in Central government offices and PSUs.
Annual targets are set by the Department of Official Language regarding the amount of correspondence being carried out in Hindi.
A Parliament Committee on Official Language constituted in 1976 periodically reviews the progress in the use of Hindi and submits a report to the President.
Similarly, States and local authorities are required to endeavour to provide primary education in the mother tongue for all linguistic minorities, regardless of whether their language is official in that State, and the President has the power to issue directions he deems necessary to ensure that they are provided these facilities.
States have significantly less freedom in relation to determining the language in which judicial proceedings in their respective High Courts will be conducted.
The constitution gives the power to authorise the use of Hindi, or the state's official language in proceedings of the High Court to the Governor, rather than the state legislature and requires the Governor to obtain the consent of the President of India, who in these matters acts on the advice of the Government of India.
However, the only non-Hindi state to seek a similar power—Tamil Nadu, which sought the right to conduct proceedings in Tamil in the Madras High Court—had its application rejected by the central government earlier, which said it was advised to do so by the Supreme Court.
[60][61][62][63][64] In 2010, the Chief Justice of the Madras High Court allowed lawyers to argue cases in Tamil.
[65] At present, as per the Ministry of Home Affairs,[66] there are demands for inclusion of 38 more languages in the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution.
Region B: Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Punjab.
