In 1963, a constitutional amendment, The Official Languages Act, allowed for the continuation of English alongside Hindi in the Indian government indefinitely until legislation decides to change it.

In addition, the Government of India has awarded the distinction of classical language to Kannada, Malayalam, Odia, Sanskrit, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu.

[19] Three contact languages have played an important role in the history of India in chronological order: Sanskrit,[20] Persian[21] and English.

[25][26] Some in Maharashtra, West Bengal, Assam, Punjab and other non-Hindi regions have also started to voice concerns about imposition of Hindi.

Its history of existence spans from 1500 to 2000 years according to most eminent scholars including Padma Vibhushan awardee Suniti Kumar Chatterji.

Culturally Persianized, they, in combination with the later Mughal dynasty (of Turco-Mongol origin), influenced the art, history, and literature of the region for more than 500 years, resulting in the Persianisation of many Indian tongues, mainly lexically.

Bangla on the other hand has retained its Sanskritic roots while heavily expanding its vocabulary with words from Persian, English, French and other foreign languages.

[43] However, the results were skewed due to ambiguities in distinguishing between "dialect" and "language",[43] use of untrained personnel and under-reporting of data from South India, as the former provinces of Burma and Madras, as well as the princely states of Cochin, Hyderabad, Mysore and Travancore were not included in the survey.

Ethnologue, produced by the Christian evangelist organisation SIL International, lists 435 tongues for India (out of 6,912 worldwide), 424 of which are living, while 11 are extinct.

Separate figures for Hindi, Urdu, and Punjabi were not issued, due to the fact the returns were intentionally recorded incorrectly in states such as East Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, PEPSU, and Bilaspur.

The most widely spoken languages of this group are Hindi,[n 1] Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Bhojpuri, Awadhi, Odia, Maithili, Punjabi, Marwari, Kashmiri, Assamese (Asamiya), Chhattisgarhi and Sindhi.

[86]: 212 [87] As the date for changeover approached, however, there was much alarm in the non-Hindi-speaking areas of India, especially in Kerala, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, West Bengal, Karnataka, Puducherry and Andhra Pradesh.

[85] The wording of the text proved unfortunate in that while Nehru understood that "may" meant shall, politicians championing the cause of Hindi thought it implied exactly the opposite.

[85] In the event, as 1965 approached, India's new Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri prepared to make Hindi paramount with effect from 26 January 1965.

[85][26] As a result, the proposal was dropped,[90][91] 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 Eighth Schedule and the Seventy-First Amendment provided for the inclusion of Sindhi, Konkani, Meitei and Nepali, thereby increasing the number of official regional languages of India to 18.

[92] The individual states, the borders of most of which are or were drawn on socio-linguistic lines, can legislate their own official languages, depending on their linguistic demographics.

[158][159] After the partition of India (1947), refugees from East Pakistan were settled in Tripura, and Jharkhand and the union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

It exhibits diglossia, with the literary and standard form differing greatly from the colloquial speech of the regions that identify with the language.

Assamese is unusual among Eastern Indo-Aryan languages for the presence of the /x/ (which, phonetically, varies between velar ([x]) and a uvular ([χ]) pronunciations).

It is also spoken by large minorities in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Malaysia, Singapore, Mauritius and throughout the world.

[204] As Malayalam began to freely borrow words as well as the rules of grammar from Sanskrit, the Grantha alphabet was adopted for writing and came to be known as Arya Eluttu.

[226] In 2003, Maithili was included in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution as a recognised regional language of India, which allows it to be used in education, government, and other official contexts.

[citation needed] Earliest known manuscripts are often subjected to debates and disputes, due to the conflicting opinions and assumptions of different scholars, claiming high antiquity of the languages.

[256] The Press Information Bureau (PIB) selects 14 Indian official languages, which are Dogri, Punjabi, Bengali, Oriya, Gujarati, Marathi, Meitei (Manipuri), Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam, Konkani and Urdu, in addition to Hindi and English, out of the 22 official languages of the Indian Republic to render its information about all the Central Government press releases.

[c][257][258] The Staff Selection Commission (SSC) selected 13 Indian official languages, which are Urdu, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Konkani, Meitei (Manipuri), Marathi, Odia and Punjabi, in addition to Hindi and English, out of the 22 official languages of the Indian Republic, to conduct the Multi-Tasking (Non-Technical) Staff examination for the first time in its history.

[259][260] The Union Government of India selected Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Malayalam, Meitei (Manipuri), Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Odia, Urdu, Punjabi, and Konkani, 13 out of the 22 official languages of the Indian Republic, in addition to Hindi & English, to be used in the recruitment examination of the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF).

Political analysts consider this as a major factor in bringing DMK to power and leading to the ousting and nearly total elimination of the Congress party in Tamil Nadu.

[264] Strong cultural pride based on language is also found in other Indian states such as Assam, Odisha, Karnataka, West Bengal, Punjab and Maharashtra.

In 2009 and 2016, Yogi Adityanath, the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh and former MP from Gorakhpur, raised the issue of Bhojpuri's recognition in the Lok Sabha.