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India is the home of a very large number of languages. In fact, so many languages and dialects are spoken in India that it is often described as a ‘museum of languages’. The language diversity is by all means baffling. In popular parlance it is often described as ‘linguistic pluralism’. But this may not be a correct description. The prevailing situation in the country is not pluralistic but that of a continuum. One dialect merges into the other almost imperceptibly; one language replaces the other gradually. Moreover, along the line of contact between two languages, there is a zone of transition in which people are bilingual.

Thus lan­guages do not exist in water-tight compartments. While linguistic pluralism is a state of mutual existence of several languages in a con­tiguous space, it does not preclude the possibility of inter-connections between one language and the other. In fact, these links have grown over millennia of shared history. While linguistic pluralism continues to be a distinctive feature of the modern Indian state, it will be wrong to assume that there has been no interaction between the different groups.

On the contrary, the give-and-take between the languages groups has been very common, often resulting in systematic borrow­ings from one language to the other. The cases of assimilation of one language into the other are also not uncommon. Let us look at the nature of linguistic diversity observed in India today. According to the Linguistic Survey of India conducted by Sir George Abraham Grierson towards the end of the nineteenth century, there were 179 languages and as many as 544 dialects in the country.

However, this number has to be taken with caution. It may even be misleading in the sense that dialects and languages were enumerated separately, although they were taxonomically part of the same lan­guage. Of the 179 languages as many as 116 were speech-forms of the Sino-Tibetan family, spoken by small tribal communities in the re­mote Himalayan and the northeastern parts of the country.

Even the 1961 census recorded 187 languages. This was despite the fact that the census investigation was far more systematic and the classification was based on modern linguistic criteria. Much of this diversity may be un­derstood properly in the light of some more statistics. For example, 94 out of the 187 languages were spoken by small populations of 10,000 persons or less. In the final analysis, about 97 per cent of the country’s population was found affiliated with just 23 languages.

The diversity of languages and dialects is a reality and it is not the numerical strength of the speakers of a language which is important. The important fact is that there are people who claim a certain lan­guage as their mother tongue. Another related development which contributed to linguistic di­versity was the development of script. Different Indian languages were written in different scripts. This made learning of different languages a difficult exercise. However, with the growth of scripts, written lan­guages have been successful in maintaining their record with the consequence that literary traditions have evolved.

With the develop­ment of a script, oral communication is supplemented by a more powerful form of written communication. In the course of time some of the minor dialect and language groups have lost their identity as they have been assimilated into developed languages. It is a known fact that most of the languages still serve the purpose of oral communica­tion only as speakers of these languages are still illiterate, or preliterate.

It may be assumed that in the beginning various speech communi­ties were confined to their own enclaves, more or less unaware of the existence of other language/dialect groups in the neighbourhood. Sometimes, the boundary between two dialects, or two languages, was knife-edged, as it was described by a hill-line or a river. Within the en­claves, these groups have been communicating through a common language, or dialect, for centuries.

This became the basis of their iden­tity. This traditional association with a language gave them a sense of belonging and thus inculcated in them a feeling of unity with the larger speech community. It may, however, be noted that inter-com­munication through a language or dialect is always limited in space. Individuals in their daily course of life have a limited reach. In situ­ations where the communication is largely oral the sphere of communication is even smaller. Thus, with the passage of time, each speech community gets differentiated from other communities in the neighbourhood.

This process leads to splitting of the spoken language into diverse dialects. The dialect formation is, however, within the same speech area. With the expansion of the speech territory more dialect groups emerge and the distance between them increases. Some­times the outlying dialects are so isolated from the parent language that they acquire linguistic nuances of their own sufficient enough to be recognized as an independent branch. A study of historical linguis­tics reveals that India has gone through all these phases of language development. The present linguistic map of India is naturally a prod­uct of these developments.

Language and Dialect:

The faculty of speech is by far the most distinctive human trait. Hu­man beings use a system of language for communication which distinguishes them from the rest of the animal kingdom. It was through language that communication between the different members of a human group started in the early stages of social evolution.

Lan­guage thus facilitated multiple forms of human cooperation. Eventually, a division of labour emerged, a prototype of which is un­imaginable in the animal world. However, there is no gainsaying the fact that animals also communicate with one another. They also pro­duce vocal sounds although their sounds are simple.

One can differentiate between warning calls, mating calls and those expressing anger or affection. This system of communication is simple as it lacks structure. A structured language was the invention of the human mind, and the most effective tool of communication. In this language words could be replaced easily to change the content of meaning.

In its basic characteristics a human language is essentially a signaling system in which a variety of vocal sounds are employed. These vocal sounds are produced by the peculiar constitution of the human speech organs. There is a combination of the different speech organs— the tongue, glottis, vocal cords and the palate—in producing vocal sounds which are essential elements in human articulation of language.

It appears that in the beginning speakers of a language restricted their communication to relatively small number of vocal sounds out of the many sounds which human beings were capable of making. However, the number of vocal sounds varied from language to language which indicated variations in social evolution and the material conditions of existence. Most languages are satisfied with the use of twenty or thirty such sounds. But there are other languages which have as many as sixty sounds, or even more.

There are others which have less than twenty sounds. These sounds constitute the system of a language. As we know the purpose of a language is communication and a language sooner or later tends to become symbolic, more complex and expressive of abstract ideas. The beginnings of all languages were, however, simple.

There are very specific purposes for which the language is used. The main purpose is, of course, to express oneself, to convey one’s feelings, sometimes to express a desire or pray for help. The human beings also communicate their ideas through body language either alone or in combination with vocal sounds or words.

Even today, the body language continues to be a powerful means of expression. The exchange of ideas, feelings and calls for pray or help continue in the daily course of life of a human being. Thus, an intricate pattern of hu­man cooperation and a feeling of togetherness is evolved. It is obvious that a language needs a group of people among whom communication continues through this language.

This group of people who communi­cate in a certain language may be described as the ‘speech community’. In the course of time, several speech communities are formed, each oc­cupying a chunk of a geographically contiguous space (Fig. 6.1).

Each language eventually expands over a territory, homogeneous in terms of its language structure—vocal sounds, words, sentences and conventionalized symbols. When a language is written in a script it lends to stabilize its distinguishing features and promotes communica­tion over long distances between people.

Origins of Language:

Origins of language are shrouded in mystery. However, it is possible to reconstruct the bits of this history. It is generally agreed that in the history of social evolution language must have arisen with the discov­ery of the art of tool-making. Understandably, the early tool-making communities must have depended on cooperation between different members of the group on a highly organized basis.

This would have been possible through the use of a language. Thus evolution of lan­guage must have progressed hand in hand with the evolution of material cultures. As the history of material cultures shows the change in techniques of tool-making was initially slow, but later on it picked up. Language also evolved with the same pace. Expressions became more and more complex with the passage of time. In fact, at every stage of evolution, there was a direct relationship between material culture and the language in use.

Evidently progress in material cul­tures shows that the functions of brain were becoming more and more complex and with these changes language also became complex. The way languages evolved from vocal sounds to words and sentences re­vealed how they became symbolic as humans tended to express abstract rather than concrete ideas.

It is obvious that in the course of evolution many languages were invented independently at different points of time in different regions of the world. They became further ramified as the social space within which inter-communication continued was always limited (Box 6.1). As a result, new groups were formed and new speech communities came into being.

This is how the ‘families of languages’ developed. It is also understandable that the early languages were oral and writing became possible much later. In the beginning there was no need for maintaining a written record. When such a need arose writing was in­itially mostly pictorial.

The discovery of the script in the history of development of languages must have taken a painstakingly long time during which picture/signs became conventionalized. Our knowledge of the early scripts is still incomplete. For example, the script of the Indus valley (Harappan) civilization continues to pose difficulties. We have not been able to decipher it simply because we are not familiar with the system of language in which communication was conducted by the Harappan people.

India as a Linguistic Area:

Despite the widely perceived linguistic diversity India’s unity as a socio-linguistic area is quite impressive. Several linguists have analyzed the basic elements of India as a socio-linguistic area. Describing lan­guage as an ‘autonomous system’, Lachman M. Khubchandani recognized the major characteristics of the speech forms of modem In­dia. Each region of the country is characterized by the plurality of cultures and languages “with a unique mosaic of verbal experience”. In Khubchandani’s view modem languages of India represent a striking example of the process of diffusion, grammatical as well as phonetic, over many contiguous areas.

However, he considers linguistic plural­ity only as a superficial trait. “Indian masses through sustained interaction and common legacies have developed a common way to interpret, to share experiences, to think.” What has emerged is a kind of organic plurality, although the geographical distribution of speech communities suggests a kind of linguistic heterogeneity.

Some of the basic elements of India’s linguistic unity may be seen in the fuzzy na­ture of language boundaries, fluidity in language identity and complementarity of inter-group and intra-group communication. Khubchandani also emphasized the need of linking languages with the ecology of cultural regions described by him as kshetras.

As a language area India is being put to mutually contradictory linguistic interpreta­tions which confuse the issue. Perhaps a better understanding of the linguistic scene can be developed if the static account of the multiplic­ity of languages is replaced by recognition of the elements of cultural regionalism. Similarly, the issue of linguistic homogeneity which has been argued by several linguists is fraught with complexities. In this context, one can cite the example of the states of the Indian Union carved out on the principle of linguistic homogeneity. The reality is that these states are not necessarily homogeneous in their language composition and cultural attributes.

In an earlier study, Khubchandani examined the evidence on plu­ral languages and plural cultures of India. He dwelt upon the question of language in a plural society. The processes of language modern­ization and language promotion were also analyzed on the basis of a review of the language policies and planning in India. In this work, Khubchandani noted that people in certain regions of India displayed a certain degree of fluidity in their declaration of mother tongue. On this basis, he recognized two zones in which the country could be di­vided: a fluid zone and a stable zone. The fluid zone extended over the north-central region where Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Kashmiri and Dogri are spoken.

The stable zone, on the other hand, incorporates western, southern and eastern regions. People in these regions did not reveal any fluidity in their mother tongue declaration. Reference may also be made to the seminal work of Murray B. Emeneau who analyzed the characteristics of India as a language area. Tracing the history of development of the Indo-Aryan and the Dravidian languages he evaluated the shared experiences of the differ­ent speech communities.

Emeneau defined linguistic area as “an area which includes languages belonging to more than one family but shar­ing traits in common which are found not to belong to other members of (at least) one of the families”.

Geographic Patterning of Languages:

The geographic patterning of languages in the South Asian sub-conti­nent can perhaps be understood in the context of the space relations the region had with other parts of Asia. As already pointed out, the sub-continent marks a southward projection of the Asian landmass into the Indian Ocean. The overland connections with West and Cen­tral Asia, Tibet, China and other regions of Southeast Asia helped the process of infiltration of linguistic influences into the South Asian re­gion.

This is evident from the fact that the languages spoken in the peripheral regions of South Asia, such as Baluchistan, Pak-Afghan bor­derlands, Kashmir, Gilgit, Hunza, Baltistan and Ladakh as well as the hilly parts of Himachal Pradesh and the regions in the Northeast have strong affinity with the languages spoken in the regions beyond the Hindu-Kush Himalayas. The remote Himalayan areas became the abode of Tibeto-Chinese languages. Similarly, the Northeastern re­gion continued to receive influences from the neighbouring parts of Myanmar, Thailand and Indo-China. These regions are now the do­main of the Tibeto-Chinese (Sino-Tibetan) or Tibeto-Burman languages.

The people in the plains of North India from Sind to As­sam acquired different branches of the Indo-European family of languages. The peninsular region continued to retain the Dravidian speech-forms even though the north was completely swayed over by the Indo-European languages. Between the Indo-European and the Dravidian one finds the Austric-speaking tribes nestled in the hills of the mid-Indian region.

The linguistic heterogeneity of India can perhaps be brought to some order when one realizes that these speeches really belong to four language families: Sino-Tibetan (Tibeto-Burman), Austro-Asiatic, Dravidian and Indo-European. In the course of usage over millennia of years these language families have found for themselves niches in the Indian social space in different parts of the sub-continent.

Their geo­graphical patterning throws some light on the routes through which these language families reached India. In fact, despite the vast heteroge­neity, Indian languages experienced parallel trends in linguistic and literary development during the long phases of shared history. This has made India ‘a composite region’ in terms of linguistic attributes (Table 6.1).

Historical Process of Language Diffusion:

The history of Indian languages is not easy to reconstruct. As an over­view of the processes of peopling of India shows, Negroids were the first people to arrive. However, we do not exactly know about their language affiliation. The subsequent waves of migrations were so strong that the Negroids lost their identity completely, leaving behind little traces of either their racial or linguistic past.

The story of the four families of languages may be briefly reca­pitulated here, although it is not easy to establish the chronological sequence in which the speakers of the Austric, Sino-Tibetan and the Dravidian languages came to India. It is almost certain that these fami­lies were already there at the time of the advent of the Indo-Aryan.

This is, however, an established fact that the Sino-Tibetan speech com­munities were Mongoloids racially. The original Sino-Tibetan, the parent of the early Chinese, is supposed to have developed somewhere in western China around 400 B.C. It is also believed that the diffusion of this language eventually affected the regions lying to the south and the southwest of China-Tibet, Ladakh, northeastern India, Myanmar and Thailand. Perhaps, the Vedic Aryans were familiar with this group. They described the Tibeto-Burman-speaking Mongoloids of the Brahmaputra valley and the adjoining regions as Kiratas.

The speakers of the Kirata family of languages are distributed all along the Himalayan axis from Baltistan and Ladakh to Arunachal Pradesh. They occupy the regions surrounding the Brahmaputra val­ley in the northeast from Nagaland to Tripura and Meghalaya. There are striking differences between the languages of the Kirata family dis­tributed over such a vast geographical area. The speakers of the Tibeto-Himalayan branch of the Kirata languages occupy the Himala­yan regions from Baltistan to Sikkim and beyond to Arunachal Pradesh.

The Bhotia group consists of the Balti, Ladakhi, Lahauli, Sherpa and the Sikkim Bhotia dialects. Linguists also recognize a Hi­malayan group consisting of Lahuli of Chamba, Kanauri and Lepcha which is distinguishable on the basis of certain linguistic traits. In the east there is a North-Assam branch including the dialects of Arunachal Pradesh, such as Miri and Mishing. In other parts of the northeast the languages belong to the Assam-Burmese branch and are divided into Bodo, Naga, Kachin and Kuki-Chin groups. The speakers of the Kirata languages came to India in different streams at different points of time. Understandably, the groups in the northwest were unrelated to the groups in the northeast.

Similarly, the Kachin and the Kuki-Chin groups followed separate routes of migration. This is why there is a vast variety of dialects within the Kirata family and the roots of lin­guistic heterogeneity go far beyond the Indian borders into the neighbouring parts of Tibet, Myanmar and Indo-China. Anthropologists as well as linguists believe that the Austric-speaking groups came earlier than the Dravidian-speaking communities. The Austric speech communities were already there in the mid-Indian region before the advent of the Dravidian. The present geography of the Austric dialect groups holds some clues to the historical processes of their diffusion into India.

Generally, the Austric family of lan­guages is recognized as consisting of a Mon-Khmer and a Munda branch. The Mon-Khmer speakers belong to two separate groups, viz., Khasi and the Nicobarese, both separated by a distance of more than 1,500 kilometres which spans over an expanse of the Bay of Bengal. There is no clarity among the scholars about the routes taken by the speakers of the Mon-Khmer dialects. The Khasi speakers themselves are surrounded by other Kirata and Arya dialects in the Meghalayan plateau.

The advent of the Dravidian in India is generally associated with a branch of the Mediterranean racial stock which was already there in India before the rise of the Indus valley civilization. In fact, archaeolo­gists believe that they were the builders of the Harappan civilization along with the Proto-Austroloids. The Dravidian speech communities were found over most of the northern and the northwestern region of India before the advent of the Indo-Aryan. However, following the rise of the Indo-Aryan in northwestern India, a linguistic change came and the Dravidian-speak- ing area shrank in its geographical extent.

The present distributions of the Dravidian dialects in different parts of North India, such as Baluchistan, Chhotanagpur plateau and eastern Madhya Pradesh, where Baruhi, Kurukh-Oraon and the Gondi are spoken respectively, suggest the earlier stage of distribution of this family of languages. In fact, Gondi is spoken in many parts of Central India from Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra to Orissa and Andhra Pradesh.

While Dravidian speech forms were in use for many centuries in the pre- Christian era, the literary development in the Dravidian speech community could take place only in the first few centuries after Christ. It is believed that the old Tamil, old Kannada and the old Telugu had already come into being by 1000 A.D. Malayalam ac­quired its form a little later. With the Vedic Sanskrit, a branch of the Indo-European, the Indo- Aryan established itself in northwestern India. It had definite relations with the different Indo-European languages, such as Persian, Arme­nian, Greek, French, Spanish, German and English. An early form of Indo-European seems to have genetic relations with the Hittite speech of Asia Minor.

The linguists have recognized a primitive form of Indo- European in its earlier stage of development. They called it Indo-Hittite. A branch of the Indo-European which had already estab­lished itself in Mesopotamia came to be described by the linguists as Indo-Iranian. It is this Indo-Iranian branch which spread over Iran and the northwestern regions of India by the middle of the second millen­nium B.C. Among the different families of languages spoken in India the Indo-European seems to be the last to arrive. The advent of Indo- European in the South Asian sub-continent brought about a major change in the linguistic affinity of the people of northern India.

The form of Indo-European which was spoken in India came to be known as Indo-Iranian or Indo-Aryan. Its advent in India is seen with the rise of the Vedic Sanskrit. However, the old Sanskrit changed into Prakrit and several speech forms developed in different parts of northern and western India. The region lying between Saraswati and Ganga, encom­passing the upper Ganga-Yamuna doab and adjoining parts of Haryana, to the west of the Yamuna, became the stage for the trans­formation of classical Sanskrit into a Prakrit form. From this early stage of development of Prakrit came the different Indo-Aryan ver­naculars which are now spoken in north-western, north-central, central and eastern parts of India.

The Suraseni emerged in the core re­gion of the midland (Madhyadesa of the Purartas) as the popular language. Its core area extended over western Uttar Pradesh and the adjoining parts of Haryana. A developed form of this parent language is described by the linguists as Western Hindi (Fig. 6.2).

Around the core region of Suraseni other speech forms developed on the west, south and east. These languages formed an outer band around the core language. On the west and the northwest lay the Punjabi and the Pahari dialects. Rajasthani and Gujarati emerged on the southwest. On the east, a form of language, now known as Eastern Hindi, emerged in Kosali (Awadhi). Linguists believe that these outer dialects were all more closely related to each other than any one of them was to the language of the midland.

“In fact, at an early period of the linguistic history of India, there must have been two sets of Indo-Aryan dialects—one the language of the midland and the other the group of dialects forming the outer band.” This first stage was followed by a subsequent phase of expansion. As the population of the midland region increased expansion became a necessity. Thus, on the periphery of the languages of the outer band developed new speech forms which were by and large not related to the language of the midland.

For example, while Punjabi was closely related to the language of the upper doab it got transformed into Lahnda in southwestern Punjab. This language had little relationship with the language of the midland. With increasing distance changes be­came quite pronounced. The geographical distribution of the Indo-Aryan languages may be briefly summarized here as follows: The midland language occupies the Ganga-Yamuna doab and the regions to its north and south. This core region is encircled by different speech forms in eastern Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat.

Further beyond in the west and the northwest, there is a band of outer languages—Kashmiri, Sindhi, Lahnda and Kohistani. The languages of this band may be described as constituting the northwestern group of the outer languages. On the southern pe­riphery lies the Marathi. In the intermediate band are situated languages, such as Awadhi, Bagheli and Chhattisgarhi. On the eastern periphery lie the three dialects of Bihari, viz., Bhojpuri, Maithili and Maghadi. The Bihari is surrounded by Oriya in the southeast and Ben­gali in the east. The languages of the eastern branch of the Indo-Aryan extend further in the east where Assamese occupies the Brahmaputra valley (Fig. 6.3).

Linguists believe that the development of the Indo-Aryan lan­guages completed itself through several phases. The Prakrits developed into two stages: Primary Prakrits and Secondary Prakrits. The Primary Prakrits which were the first to evolve out of the classical Sanskrit were synthetic languages with a complicated grammar.

In the course of time they ‘decayed’ into Secondary Prakrits. “Here we find the languages still synthetic, but diphthongs and harsh combinations are eschewed, till in the latest developments we find a condition of almost absolute fluidity, each language becoming an emasculated collection of vowels hanging for support on an occasional consonant. This weakness brought its own nemesis and from, say 1000 A.D., we find in existence the series of modern Indo-Aryan vernaculars, or, as they may be called Tertiary Prakrits.”

The last stage of development of the Prakrits is known as literary Apabrahmsa. It is supposed that the modern vernaculars are the direct children of these Apabrahmsas. The sequence of change was like this. The Suraseni Apabrahmsa was the parent of Western Hindi and Pun­jabi. Closely connected with it were Avanti, the parent of Rajasthani, and Gaurjari the parent of Gujarati. The other intermediate language —Kosali (Eastern Hindi)—sprang from Ardha-Magadhi Apabrahmsa. The chronological sequence may be roughly reconstructed here (Table 6.2).

The different stages through which the Indo-Aryan languages passed can be depicted as on Figure 6.4.

In a country where so many languages/dialects are spoken, and many of them are used for oral communication only, linguistic classification may not be an easy exercise. The scientific study of Indian languages, their grammar, phonetics and vocabulary which goes back to the nine­teenth century is still ridden with problems.

For one thing, linguists are still unsure of genetic relationships between one language group and the other. Their knowledge of some of the minor languages is pa­thetically inadequate. This leaves the problem of classification always open to revision. A second set of problems arises from the recognition of the major languages and their specification in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution.

There were political compulsions under which some languages were given this special status. The Eighth Schedule mentions eighteen languages; twelve of them have their own territory where they receive maximum state patronage and seem to have great potential for development. The Eighth Schedule also in­cludes languages, such as Sanskrit, Sindhi, Nepali and Urdu. The first three do not have a speech territory as such. The speakers of Urdu, Sindhi and Nepali are distributed across several states.

Minor speech communities, such as Manipuri (with a population of 1.27 million) and Konkani (with a population of 1.72 million) have also been given the status of scheduled languages. The anomaly in this approach is that while some of the minority speech groups have found a place in the Eighth Schedule, major Austric languages, such as Santali (speakers 5.22 million), Bhili (speakers 5.57 million) or Gondi (speakers 2.12 million), have been completely ignored.

The official language policy leaves the issue amenable to political manipulation. Like the Austric languages all small Tibeto-Burman languages have also been excluded from the Eighth Schedule. Hindi, which has the largest number of speakers, is an aggregate of at least fifty different dialect groups. There are at least seven states which recognize Hindi as their official lan­guage. Of the four language families (Tibeto-Burman, Austro-Asiatic, Dravidian and the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European) the most diverse is the Tibeto-Burman as their speakers communicate in 70-80 different languages. Next is the Indo-Aryan with 19 languages grouped under it.

The Dravidian family incorporates 17 different speech com­munities; while the Austro-Asiatic has 14 languages. However, this analysis is incomplete because of the fact that the 1991 census used an eligibility condition for recognizing a language as a mother tongue if it had more than 10,000 speakers at the all-India level.

This resulted in the exclusion of 0.56 million speakers of different minor languages from finding a reference in the census records. There is, therefore, no recognition of these small speech communities. Due to operational difficulties, the 1991 census could not be conducted in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. This resulted in the exclusion of the Dard group of languages (Dardi, Shina, Kohistani and Kashmiri) from the census count.

The compilation of data for the 18 scheduled languages also contributed to the multiple problems of classification. For example, minor speech communities, such as Chakma and Hajong, were clubbed together with Bengali. Secondly, Yerava and Yerukala were amalgamated with Malayalam and Tamil respectively. Such examples are many. It is obvious that the census preferred to ignore the minor dialect groups.

The story of Hindi is equally interesting. For example, 50 dialect groups have been grouped under Hindi with the result that there is no scope for an analytical study of the geographical spread of these dialect groups. In the course of time many speakers of these dialects have tended to declare Hindi as their mother tongue without making refer­ence to the dialect they use.

This is evident from the fact that some 233 million speakers declared Hindi as their mother tongue. Gradu­ally, the stage is not far when many of the distinguished dialect groups, such as Braj Bhasha, Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Magadhi, Maithili and Marwari, will loose their identity at least in the census records. This withdrawal of patronage by the speakers of these dialects is a symp­tom of their eventual decline, if not death. A broad classification scheme of the four language families is given in Table 6.1 (for detailed classificatory schemes, see Tables 6.3-6.6).

Numerical Strength:

Of the four language families Indo-European has by far the largest strength of speakers. In fact, three-fourths of the country’s population claimed one or the other language of the Indo-European family as their mother tongue. The Dravidian family comes next with 22.5 per cent of the total population of the country claiming affinity to it.

The speakers of the other two families—Austro-Asiatic and the Tibeto- Burman—consist of small groups. Their overall proportionate share is low: 1.13 and 0.97 per cent respectively. As already indicated, Austro- Asiatic languages are spoken by a host of tribal groups. This is also true for most of the Tibeto-Burman languages.

Among the languages of the Austro-Asiatic family, Santali is the most outstanding speech community, the numerical strength of its speakers being as high as 5.2 million. Other languages of the Munda branch, such as Ho, or of the Mon Khmer branch, such as Khasi, have a numerical strength of less than one million speakers each. Santali speakers account for 55 per cent of the entire strength of the Austro- Asiatic family. Speakers of the Ho, Khasi and Mundari languages account for 10, 9.6 and 9.1 per cent respectively of all Austric speak­ers.

There are many language groups within the Austro-Asiatic family whose numerical strength is insignificant. Reference may be made to Bhumij, Nicobarese, Gadaba and Juang. However, their declining nu­merical strength shows that conditions are not favourable for their growth. As indicated earlier, the 1991 census adopted a policy of ex­cluding all languages from the census count whose speakers numbered less than 10,000 persons at the all-India level at the time of census enu­meration. This policy was by and large negative to the interests of the tribal languages.

As is evident from Tables 6.3-6.6, there are striking differences in the numerical strength of the languages of the Tibeto-Burman family. The major speech communities include Manipuri/Meithei (1.27 mil­lion), Bodo (1.22 million), Tripuri (0.69 million), Garo (0.67 million), Lushai (0.54 million) and Miri/Mishing (0.39 million). The Manipuri and Bodo groups together account for one-third of the total strength of Tibeto-Burman speakers.

As is generally known, the major Dravidian speech communities consist of Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam. They have been ranked here in descending order of the strength of their speakers. The Dravidian family also includes minor groups, such as Gondi (2.12 mil­lion), Tulu (1.55 million), Kurukh-Oraon (1.42 million), Kui (0.64 million), Koya (0.27 million) and Khond (0.22 million).

Many of them are tribal dialects and have an imminent risk of extinction. Gondi, for example, presents a case of language loss, as its speakers are getting as­similated into the regional languages of the state of their habitation. The same is true for other tribal dialects, unless otherwise they have come under the cover of state protection.

In terms of numerical strength of speakers Hindi is the foremost among the Indo-European languages. With 337.27 million speakers who claimed Hindi, or its different dialects, as their mother tongue, Hindi has no comparison with other languages of the family.

Bengali, Marathi and Urdu which follow in the same order have a numerical strength ranging between 43 and 69 million. Bengali and Marathi ac­count for about 10 per cent each of the total strength of speakers of the Indo-European family. Among the dialects of Hindi, Bhojpuri was claimed by 23,1 million speakers. One can compare Bhojpuri with As­samese (total speakers: 12.96 million) and Punjabi (total speakers; 23.08 million).

The other dialects of Hindi, such as Maithili, Magadhi, Awadhi, Braj Bhasha, Marwari or Chhattisgarhi figure poorly. In fact, the dialect speakers tend to declare Hindi as their mother tongue. The strength of those who declared these dialects as their mother tongue seems to be diminishing with successive censuses. The progress of the languages of the Dard group, namely, Shina, Kohistani and Kashmiri, cannot be monitored since 1991 census was not conducted in Jammu and Kashmir.

As many as 13 of the Indo-European languages have been listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution. They are: Kashmiri (Dard group), Sindhi (northwestern group), Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Nepali, Gujarati (eastern, east-central, central and northern groups), Bengali, Assamese and Oriya (eastern group) and Marathi and Konkani (southern group). While Konkani, with a total strength of 1.76 million speakers, is mentioned in the Eighth Schedule, Santali finds no place, although its speakers numbered at 5.22 million at the 1991 census.

Language Domains:

A generalized study of the domains of various languages spoken in In­dia may be helpful in understanding the historical processes leading to their geographic spread and concentration. It may also be helpful in identifying the basic elements of India’s linguistic geography. It may be worthwhile to recapitulate the historical processes that led to the evolution of language regions in India (Box 6.2).

It is understood that the Indo-Aryan was the last to arrive. It was preceded by Dravidian, Sino-Tibetan and Austric. However, there is no clarity about the chronological sequence in which the different families came to affect the situation in India. This question has been partly answered by the linguists. Which came first? Austro-Asiatic, Sino-Tibetan or Dravidian? The Vedic Aryans had the knowledge of the Tibeto-Bur- man-speaking Mongoloids whom they described as the Kiratas. Yajurveda and Atharvaveda as well as Mahabharata and Manu Samhita also mentioned the Kiratas.

Austro-Asiatic Languages:

The domain of the Austro-Asiatic languages lies in the mid-Indian re­gion and extends from Maharashtra to West Bengal. The two outliers of this domain—Khasi and Nicobarese—have their enclaves in Meghalaya and Nicobar Islands respectively. The two pockets are separated by a vast expanse of the sea. Santali is the foremost among the Munda languages. The Santali speakers are mainly concentrated in Bihar, West Bengal and Orissa. About one-half of them live in Bihar, 35 per cent in West Bengal and 13 per cent in Orissa. The Santals living in Assam, numbering 135,000, also declared Santali as their mother tongue at the 1991 census.

Another significant language of the Munda branch is Munda/Mundari. Of the 1.27 million speakers of Mundari, 54 per cent live in Bihar, 31 per cent in Orissa and only 6 per cent in West Bengal. The domain of the Ho language lies in Bihar and Orissa. Two-thirds of all Ho speakers are confined to Bihar and the remaining one-third to Orissa. The territories of the Kharia, Korku and Savara languages extend over Bihar, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh. However, the Savara speakers are mostly confined to Orissa.

Tibeto-Burman Language:

The territory of the Tibeto-Burman languages is by and large conter­minous with the Himalayas and extends from Baltistan and Ladakh in Jammu and Kashmir to Arunachal Pradesh. It extends further to en­compass other northeastern states. The Bhotia and the Himalayan groups of the Tibeto-Burman family are confined to Jammu and Kash­mir, Himachal Pradesh, hilly Uttar Pradesh and Sikkim. The Tibetan speakers, however, have a wider spread as they are distributed over many states in India. The Tibetans are of course in exile in India and live in camps and colonies especially created for them in several states. Notable among the languages of the North Assam branch of the Tibeto-Burman family are Miri/Mishing and Adi.

More than 97 per cent of the Adi speakers are confined to Arunachal Pradesh. The Miri/Mishing speakers, on the other hand, are confined to Assam. Of the languages of the Bodo group, Bodo is largely specific to Assam where 97 per cent of its speakers live. The domains of the Garo and Tripuri lie in Meghalaya and Tripura respectively.

About 80 per cent of the Garo speakers are confined to Meghalaya whereas 17 per cent of them are based in Assam. About 93 per cent of the Tripuri speakers are confined to Tripura, although in recent years a section of their population has also moved out to Mizoram and Assam. The Bodo group also includes Karabi/Mikir and Rabha dialects.

Their speakers are mostly concentrated in Assam and Meghalaya. However, a small proportion of Rabha speakers is also found in the northern districts of West Bengal. Likewise, the Koch is confined to Meghalaya and Assam, Dimasa to Assam and Nagaland, and Lalung is specific to Assam alone. Most of the speech territory of the Naga group of languages is shared between Nagaland and Manipur. While Ao, Angami, Lotha, Pochury, Phom, Yimchingure and Khiemnungan are exclusive to Na­galand, Kabui and Tangkhul are specific to Manipur. On the other hand, Khezha and Mao are spoken both in Manipur and Nagaland. However, a small proportion of their speakers are also located in As­sam.

The Kuki-Chin languages are confined to the states of Manipur and Mizoram. Manipuri (including Meitei) has its domain in the cen­tral valley of Manipur where 87 per cent of its speakers live. A section of the Manipuri population (about 10 per cent) has also moved out to Assam. Manipuri speakers were also enumerated in Tripura, Nagaland and other parts of the northeast, although in small numbers. Lushai is confined to Mizoram. Manipur presents a case of linguistic plurality. In fact, the state is the home of many speech communities belonging to both the Naga and Kuki-Chin groups.

Notable among these dia­lects are Thado, Paite, Halam, Hmar, Kabui, Tangkhul, Gangte, Khezha, Kom, Kuki, Liangmei, Lushai, Mao, Maram, Maring, Vaiphei, Zeliang, Zemi and Zau. Lakher has its domain in Mizoram only. Migration in recent years has taken the Kuki speakers to other parts of the northeast, such as Assam, Nagaland and Tripura. Manipur may be chosen as an example to illustrate the territorial­ity of minor language groups in a contiguous geographical space. The people of Manipur exhibit a complex pattern of ethnic diversity, where each ethnic or dialect group tends to concentrate in a mono­lithic world of its own.

Broadly speaking, the population of Manipur consists of two different groups:

(a) Palaeo-Mongoloids consisting of

(i) The Meiteis, and

(ii) The hill tribes; and

(b) Immigrants mostly con­sisting of Palae-Mediterraneans further sub-divided into

(i) The Pangals (Muslim settlers), and

(ii) The Mayangs or Kols. Each of these groups can be further sub-divided on the basis of language/dialect and racial attributes.

While the Meiteis, Pangals and Mayangs are plain-dwellers, the tribes, such as Kuki-Chins and Nagas are hill-dwellers. The ethno- lingual situation in Manipur suggests that geographical factors have promoted the emergence of homogeneous dialect territories. Each dia­lect is confined to a pocket where people communicate in a given dialect. These monolithic dialect territories are contiguous. This lin­guistic plurality has survived the onslaught of time.

In his doctoral thesis Hemkhothang Lunghdim examined the pat­terns of communication in the multi-speech area of Manipur. The presence of as many as 29 major speech communities in Manipur has contributed to a type of ethno-centrism for the survival of speeches or Patois coupled with other socio-cultural differences.

Ethnic groups have often indulged in competition resulting in inter-ethnic conflicts. In any case ethnic groups strive for the preservation of their dialects even if it results in diminishing interaction between different dialect groups. Over time linguistic plurality has resulted in bilingualism or multilingualism. Many tribes have adopted elements of Meitei-Lon for mutual inter-communication (Box 6.3).

Dravidian Languages :

As is generally known, the four southern states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala are the home of the major Dravidian languages, viz., Telugu, Kannada, Tamil and Malayalam. The speakers of these languages have also moved out to other states, particularly the neighbouring states of the south in the recent past. The geographical spread of these languages is evident from Table 6.7.

Evidently, these languages display a high degree of concentration in their home states. The highest degree of concentration is seen in the case of Malayalam, followed by Tamil. On the other hand, the lowest degree of concentration is revealed in the case of Telugu. There are several minor speech communities within the Dravidian family. Notable among them are: Yurukala, Yerava, Tulu, Coorgi, Gondi, Malto and Kurukh-Oraon. The Kurukh-Oraon and Malto are confined to Bihar. They belong to the northern branch of the Dravidian family.

Gondi, which is classified as a language of the central Dravidian branch, is the traditional dialect of the Gonds. However, recent census data show a steep decline in the numerical strength of the Gondi speakers. At the 1991 census, the Gondi-speaking population numbered just 2.12 million. This is an indication of the loss of language due to assimilation into the dominant regional lan­guages. More than 90 per cent of the Gondi (mother tongue) speakers live in Madhya Pradesh (70 per cent) and Maharashtra (21 per cent). The remaining population is found in Andhra Pradesh and Orissa. In other states, their number is too small.

Indo-European Languages:

Both in terms of numerical strength and the territorial extent the Indo-European languages surpass all other language families in India. The speech territory extends from Rajasthan in the west to Assam in the east and from Jammu and Kashmir in the north to Goa in the south. In fact, the domain of the Indo-European family extends be­yond the borders of Rajasthan on the west and continues over adjoining Pakistan. Notable among the languages of this family are Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Urdu, Gujarati, Oriya, Punjabi and As­samese. Keeping in view their importance as many as 13 of the Indo-European languages have been included in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution.

While Hindi and Urdu are spoken across many states, including southern states, other languages, such as Ben­gali, Marathi, Gujarati, Oriya, Punjabi and Assamese, are specific to their own states. For example, while Bengali is specific to West Ben­gal, Marathi and Gujarati have their domain in Maharashtra and Gujarat respectively. The dominance of Hindi is evident from the fact that there were 337 million speakers who claimed it as their mother tongue in the 1991 census. About 81 per cent of the total population of Bihar, 91 per cent of Haryana and 89 per cent of Himachal Pradesh claimed affinity to Hindi.

The respective percentages for Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh were 89 and 90. The story of the Hindi-speaking population is rather complicated. There are no less than 50 dialects which are grouped under Hindi. The speakers of these dialects de­clared them as their mother tongue in the same way as millions of others accepted Hindi as their mother tongue without making any ref­erence to the dialect used by them.

These dialects are actually regional variants of a spoken language of which the standardized form written in the Devnagri script is the official Hindi. Three-fifths of all Hindi speakers are concentrated in the two northern states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Of the remaining, about 17 per cent live in Madhya Pradesh and 12 per cent in Rajasthan. The rest of the Hindi- speaking population is found in Haryana, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra and West Bengal (Fig. 6.5).

In terms of numerical strength Bengali comes next to Hindi. While its speakers are heavily concentrated in West Bengal, a sizeable proportion of Bengali speakers is also found in the neighbouring states of Assam, Bihar and Tripura. Marathi is next to Bengali. About 93 per cent of its speakers live in Maharashtra alone. However, Marathi is also spoken by a section of population in Karnataka as well as Madhya Pradesh. Urdu holds the fourth rank among the Indo-Aryan languages. Its core region overlaps with that of the Hindi.

While the domain of Punjabi lies in Punjab, it is widely spoken over the entire northwestern region, particularly Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and northern Rajasthan. Its ter­ritorial extent is wider as Punjabi is spoken in the neighbouring Punjab in Pakistan. Within India migration processes have taken Pun­jabi-speaking population to different parts of the country (Fig. 6.7).

In the east, almost 99 per cent of the Assamese speakers are confined to Assam. The domain of the Assamese is surrounded on the north, east, south-east and the south by Tibeto-Burman and Austric languages. There is a slight spill-over of the Assamese population into the neigh­bouring states of Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya (Fig. 6.8).

In fact, they mainly live in the littoral region in the neighbourhood of Goa. Some speakers of the Konkani have also dispersed to other neighbouring states, such as Kerala and Gujarat as well as the union territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli. Since the 1991 census was not conducted in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, the home of the Kashmiri language, it is difficult to describe the patterns of geographic distribution of the Kashmiri speakers.

Outside the state a population of 56,000 persons returned Kashmiri as their mother tongue. The Nepali-speaking population is distributed in a number of states, mostly in the neighbourhood of Ne­pal. Of the 2.07 million Nepali speakers, more than 40 per cent are concentrated in West Bengal and another 21 per cent in Assam. A small proportion (12.35 per cent) of the Nepali speakers is also found in Sikkim. They are scattered all over the northeast although in small numbers. The domain of Sindhi lies in the Sind province of the neigh­bouring state of Pakistan. The present Sindhi-speaking population in India, however, consists of population displaced in the wake of Parti­tion in 1947.

Initially, the Sindhis came to the neighbouring regions of Rajasthan and Gujarat. Later, they dispersed to other western and northern states. At the 1991 census, about two-thirds of all Sindhi speakers in India were enumerated in Gujarat and Maharashtra. Of the remaining one-third, the two states of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh shared together 15 per cent each. A small proportion of Sindhi speak­ers are also found in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh.

Language Scene in Tribal Areas:

The language scene in tribal areas of India deserves a mention. During the 50 years since independence, the tribes have been exposed to di­verse influences—economic, political and socio-cultural. The scene in northeastern India is somewhat different. There, the tribes have been empowered to manage their own political affairs.

In other regions of India a certain number of seats have been reserved for the tribes to en­sure their representation in the state and the national legislative bodies. These measures have paved the way for their rehabilitation in the national polity. However, a majority of Indian tribes lives in the mid-Indian region where their participation in the political processes is nominal.

Their traditional habitats lie divided between several states. They do not have much of a say in policy formulation. This has left an imprint on their traditional culture, language and social struc­ture. Language seems to have suffered the most.

First, the developmental processes initiated since independence seem to have contributed towards the disintegration of tribal economies, and their communitarian way of life. The tribes have lost their hold on the for­est resources and have been forced to depend on the market forces. In fact, the free market economy has encircled completely the petty tribal commodity trade.

Secondly, expansion of primary education has brought tribal children face to face to a new cultural situation. In the course of schooling they have been exposed to the regional lan­guages of the states of their habitation. This has paved the way for their becoming bilingual. The ultimate effect is on their traditional dialects which are on the way to decline and eventual death.

It has been noted that the Indian tribes display a very high degree of diversity in their language affinity. Despite the relative isolation of the tribal communities there have been contact areas in which give- and-take between the tribal and non-tribal languages has continued throughout history.

The geographic patterning of tribal languages sug­gests that along the zone of contact between them and the non-tribes progressive interaction has resulted in the fusion of linguistic elements on either side. This is evident from the fact that while the tribes communicate mainly in the Nishada, Kirata and Dravidian languages, they have also adopted several speech-forms of the Indo-Aryan family. The incidence of bilingualism and multilingualism among the tribes has in­creased phenomenally.

One may develop an understanding of the linguistic plurality ob­served in tribal areas by selecting the case of Austric-speaking tribes. In India, the Austric-speaking tribes are grouped into Mon-Khmer and Munda branches of languages. We have already seen that the Munda- speaking zone extends over a vast area from the Aravallis in the west to the Raj Mahal hills in the east.

Language Shift:

A striking feature of the language scene in tribal areas is the growing shift in language affinity of the tribal communities. This fluid situ­ation in which the tribes are losing their linguistic identity and are being identified with languages spoken by other tribes or the dominant regional languages of the states in which they have been living is observed in many parts of India.

An evaluation of the census data reveals gaps between the numerical strength of the ethnic tribals, say the Mundas, Santals and the Gonds and those sections of the Munda, Santal and Gond population who declared their own dialects as their mother tongue, say at the 1961 census. This lack of conformity between ethnic identity and language affinity reveals the process of language shift in a significant way. There can be several plausible explanations for this phenomenon. It may be assumed that by 1961 a major shift in the linguistic/dialectal affinity of the Indian tribes had already taken place in certain regions of the country. The 1961 census may, however, be taken as a benchmark.

It may be assumed that as tribal/non-tribal interaction was growing, a section of the tribal population shifted to other dialects/ languages with which it has no traditional affinity. This shift to the dominant languages of the regions of their habitation indicated a process of language shift and assimilation into the regional languages. The language shift was, however, not necessarily from a tribal to a non-tribal dialect. In fact, several tribal groups shifted over to the other tribal dialects as contacts between them were growing fast.

As a result they lost their own traditional dialects. The 1961 census data on linguistic affinity of the tribal communities as revealed in their declaration of a particular language as their mother tongue makes it possible to analyze the following dimensions of language shift among the tribes:

(a) Tribes speaking a dialect with which they are traditionally identified. For example, Santals declaring the Santali as their mother tongue or Gonds declaring Gondi as their mother tongue. This reveals that the tribes in certain regions of the country display continuity in their language affinity. We may call it a case of language retention.

(b) Tribes declaring a regional language as their mother tongue. For example, Santals declaring Bengali as their mother tongue in West Bengal, or Gonds declaring Oriya as their mother tongue in Orissa. This shows the ongoing process of language shift indicating that the tribal communities are getting assimilated into

the dominant regional languages. Tribal regions where the process of regional development has brought tribes face to face to non-tribes have witnessed this phenomenon more significantly.

(c) Tribes on the periphery of their traditional areas have a tendency to declare as their mother tongue a language which is spoken by a dominant tribal group or the official language of a neighbouring state. This process indicates that the tribes are getting exposed to other tribal/regional languages. As a result they are getting assimilated into these languages (Table 6.8).

Language Retention:

While collection of data on mother tongues may replate with prob­lems, the position as recorded by the 1961 census was that one-half of the tribal population of India retained their own dialects as mother tongues. This was an evidence of language retention. The situation, however, varied from tribe to tribe and from region to region.

The geographic patterning of the tribes still claiming affinity to their own tribal dialects revealed three major formations:

(a) Areas of tribal fastness in which tribes were by and large living in a state of exclusivity. For example, in Mizoram, Manipur, Meghalaya, Tripura, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, West Bengal, Rajasthan, and Himachal Pradesh, 70-100 per cent of tribes retained their traditional dialects as their mother tongue.

(b) Areas of tribal-non-tribal inter-mingling, where tribes were living in a state of varied degrees of exposure to non-tribal economic and cultural influences. One can cite the case of Assam, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Mysore (now Karnataka) where 25-60 per cent of tribes retained their own language.

(c) Areas where tribes have been assimilated into dominant cultures of the regions of their habitation. In these areas less than 10 per cent of the tribal population claimed affinity with their own traditional tribal dialect (Table 6.9).

A number of doctoral theses, written under the direction of this writer at the Centre for the Study of Regional Development of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, explored these questions at length. In two of these theses the question of language shift and retention as registered among the Austric-speaking tribes of the mid-Indian region was examined.

These studies revealed that the Santals and Korkus by and large preferred to retain their traditional dialect.’ On the other hand, there were other Austric-speaking tribes who displayed a ten­dency of shift to the regional languages. The language shift was the highest among the Savaras. The Kharias, Mundas and the Hos fol­lowed.

Studies also revealed that the Bhils of Rajasthan, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh preferred to claim regional language as their mother tongue. A study of the household-level data generated through field- work from Wanera Para, Umedgarhi, Nai Abadi and Regania villages of Bagidora tehsil of Banswara district, as well as from Banswara town, revealed that the Bhils by and large maintained Bhili as their mother tongue.

On the other hand, the Korkus of Punasa, Richhi and Udaipur villages of Khandwa district tended to switch over to the re­gional languages. In fact, they declared Nimadi as their mother tongue. However, no generalizations can be made about Korkus on this basis as in other villages they continue to retain their own dialect and declare it as their mother tongue at the successive censuses.

Another finding of this research is that tribes living in rural areas have a greater affinity with their traditional dialects as compared to the tribes in urban areas. In regions of tribal concentration, for exam­ple, tribes enjoyed a certain degree of isolation which helped them retain their language and culture.

Their stay in cities and towns, on the other hand, diluted their cultural identity and their language was the first casualty. Investigations at the household level confirmed the language shift among the Mundas of Ranchi town and the Korkus of Khandwa tehsil, East Nimar district. On the contrary, the Bhils of Banswara district, the Santals of Santal Parganas, the Korkus of Khalwa tehsil (East Nimar district) and the Mundas of the rural parts of Ranchi district have continued to retain their language.

The study noted a strong correlation between language shift and a number of as­sociated factors, such as urbanization, proportion of Hinduized tribes, and the proportion of non-primary workers. Literacy also revealed a high positive correlation with language shift. In fact, the school-going tribal children were receiving education through the medium of re­gional languages.

Obviously, schooling became a powerful instrument of bilingualism and/or language shift. In terms of exposure of the mid- Indian tribes to regional languages, Bhils stand first, followed by Mundas, Korkus and Santals. In any case, loss of language is sympto­matic of the loss of cultural identity.

While the incidence of bilingualism among the Indian tribes is very high,’ it does not mean that they have always retained their traditional languages. This is un­derstandable in view of the fact that most of the tribes are getting exposed to external influences, particularly at the schools and the mar­ket places. Interaction at these places is possible through a common language, generally a regional language or pidgin, such as the Sadan/Sadari in Ranchi, which is adopted by the tribes for day-to-day communication. Back at their homes, their own dialect reigns su­preme. This may not be true for the displaced tribals whose number is increasing day by day.

Related Articles:

• Linguistic Diversity in India
• Classification of Tribal Groups of India – Essay

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• What Languages Are Spoken In India?

• Hindi is the most spoken language in India with 41% of the population being first language speakers, but the other 59% of the population speak over 30 different languages.
• Due to their long history, Tamil, Sanskrit, Malayalam, Odia, and Telugu have been designated classica languages.
• Most Indian languages are classified into one of four groups: Afro-Asiatic, Dravidian, Indo-Aryan, and Sino-Tibetan.

With more than 1.35 billion people, the Republic of India has the second-highest population in the world. It also boasts the seventh-highest landmass with 1.27 million square miles (3.29 million square km). The Census of India of 2001 recognizes 122 major languages and 1599 other languages spoken in the country. Contrary to the popular belief, India has no national language as the Constitution of the country does not grant this title to any language spoken in the country. As per the Official Languages Act, 1963, Hindi and English are official languages in the Indian Government. Several other languages have official status at the state level. Hindi is the most spoken language in the country followed by Bengali and Marathi. Below is the list of some of the most popular languages of India:

1. Hindi - 528 million speakers

Following Mandarin, Spanish, and English, Hindi is the fourth most common first language in the world, spoken by about 41% of people in India. A descendent of Sanskrit, Hindi has been influenced by several languages over the centuries, including Dravidian tongues, Arabic, Portuguese, English, Persian, and Turkic. There are several dialects that differ between east and west variations of the language.

In recent years there has been a push to make Hindi the most-spoken language within India's borders by measures that included changing the numerals on rupee notes to Devanagari script, which is used to write Hindi in addition to several other native languages, and milestone signage on highways in Tamil Nadu, where other languages are more prevalent, were changed from English to Hindi.

2. Bengali - 97 million speakers

Also known as Bangla by native speakers, Bengali is the official language of Bangladesh, and most spoken in the Indian states of West Bengal, lower Assam and Tripura. Spoken by 8% of Indian citizens, Bengali holds the title as the fifth most-spoken first language in the world. Like Hindi, it evolved from Sanskrit, as well as Pali and Prakrit with influences from many other languages including Persian, Portuguese, Dutch, French, and English. It is now divided into eight disparate groups depending on geographical location. 

3. Marathi - 83 million speakers

Purported to be more than 1,300 years old, Marathi is spoken by about 7% of Indian people and is the official language of states in the western regions of the country including Goa and Maharashtra. Like other Indian languages, Marathi descended from Sanskrit and is made up of at least 42 regional dialects, some of which resemble eastern Hindi in sound and structure. Its roots can also be found in Indian languages like Konkani, Goanese, Deccan, Gowlan, Ikrani, and Varhadi-Nagpuri.

4. Telugu - 81 million speakers

Telugu, a Dravidian language, is found mainly in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and Yanam, as well as the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Chattisgarh, and Odisha. Its earliest-known inscriptions appear on coins from 400 BCE, which contain some Telugu words, and the first inscription written entirely in the language was created in 575 AD. It is presumed this was made by Renati Cholas, who was known for writing royal proclamations in the language rather than traditional Sanskrit.

5. Tamil - 67 Million Speakers

Like Telugu, Tamil has Dravidian roots and is spoken by close to 6% of Indian citizens, as well as being an official language in Singapore and Sri Lanka and a recognized minority language in countries like Malaysia, Mauritius, and South Africa. It is notable as one of the oldest languages in the modern world, with a literary history dating back at least 2,000 years. It is commonly spoken in southern India, primarily in the state of Tamil Nadu and the Indian Union Territory of Puducherry. Its earliest-known transcriptions date back to 500 BCE with literature appearing in about 300 CE in its original form, Old Tamil.

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• Incredible India Essay

Paragraph on India

India is known for its incredible diversity, rich culture, and deep-rooted heritage. From the snow-capped Himalayas in the north to the tropical beaches in the south, India offers a vast landscape filled with history, tradition, and vibrant festivals. This paragraph gives a brief insight into what makes India unique and captivating.

Essay on Incredible India

‘Atithi Devo Bhava’ - the most famous saying means guests are like God and it is the spirit of the Indian tradition and culture when they welcome their guests. It truly reflects the rich cultural heritage and warm hospitality of the people of India. With a civilization of more than five thousand years old, India is a country with an amazing wealth of diversity. India stretches from the eternal snows of the Himalayas in the north to the peninsulas of the south from the arid desert of the west to the humid deltas of the east from the dry heat and cold of the central plateau to the cool forest foothills and the golden beaches. Thus, it offers an incredible choice of destinations for a visiting tourist to relish and enjoy.

India’s civilization is more than five thousand years old. India has the largest constitution and the biggest democracy in the world. India is a country that takes pride in having diverse religions, languages, races, cultures, flora and fauna, etc. The second most populated country in the world after China has twenty-nine states, twenty-two languages, many religions and many rivers flowing through it like the famous Ganges, the Indus, the Brahmaputra, etc. Its diversity is the essence of the country.  

The Lotus flower is the National flower of India. Tiger is the National Animal and the elegantly beautiful Peacock is the National Bird. India has given birth to religions such as Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism. One can find many multiple foreign religions that are flourishing in the country like Islam, Christianity and Zoroastrianism. Each religion influences shaping the culture and architecture of the country, for example, Goa has a Portuguese culture with churches all across the city. Similarly, many towns in the state of Uttar Pradesh boast of an Islamic influence. 

The Sun temple, the Khajuraho temples and many more are all the ancient Hinduism imprints of the country. With this large diversity in religion, India celebrates numerous festivals each year like Holi, Diwali, Eid, Christmas, Guru Nanak Birthday, etc. Each festival celebrated by different religions paints the entire country in its bright shades of colours. India’s constitution recognises twenty-two languages. These languages further have sub-languages. The state recognises Hindi as the official language of the country to bind the prolific linguistic diversity into one. 

India is also proud of its geographical diversity. Where a northern state like Jammu and Kashmir is all Himalayan mountainous regions, the state of Rajasthan is all desert regions. The states of Kerala and Goa are coastal areas and Delhi, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and many other states are all plains.

Racial diversity is another feather in India’s cap. We all know about the Indo-Aryan race migration but besides that, we have the Mongoloid race in the Northeast, the Dravidian race in the South and a fraction of the Iranian race too as India is home to a considerable population of Zoroastrians.

India is also a land of diverse climatic conditions. The four seasons of summer, autumn, winter, and spring prevail throughout the year in most parts of the country. Places like Cherrapunji and Mawsynram receive maximum rainfall throughout the year. Then we have the Himalayan region in the north of the country, which serves as a border as well as a natural barrier to the bitterly cold Siberian winds. The coastal areas like Mumbai, Daman Diu and Kolkata have tropical warm climates throughout. 

The Indian Ocean on the South, the Arabian Sea on the West, and the Bay of Bengal on the Eastbound mainland of India. The country is bordered by Pakistan to the west, Bhutan, the People’s Republic of China and Nepal to the North, and Bangladesh and Burma to the East. 

Diversity can also be observed in food habits and clothing. We have many cuisines like North Indian cuisine, Mughlai cuisine, South Indian cuisine, etc. Gujarati food is vegetarian whereas Bengali food mainly comprises fish curries. People hailing from North India eat mainly wheat and those in the South are rice-consuming people.

Besides all this variation, all Indians sing the same National Anthem, rejoicing together when the country wins a cricket match. Even the history of Independence has proved that people of all different cultures and religions participated in the country’s freedom struggle.

This unity in diversity is the hallmark of India’s uniqueness. The very fact that India absorbs all this variation into itself is very mesmerising.

Paragraph on India in 200 Words

India is a land of immense diversity and rich cultural heritage, making it one of the most unique countries in the world. Spanning over 3.2 million square kilometres, India is the seventh-largest country by land area and the second-most populous, with over 1.4 billion people. The nation is home to a multitude of languages, with 22 officially recognised languages and countless dialects spoken across its vast regions. India's religious landscape is equally diverse, with major religions like Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism, and Jainism coexisting harmoniously.

Geographically, India offers a wide variety of landscapes, from the snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas in the north to the sun-soaked beaches of Goa and Kerala in the south. The country is also home to the Thar Desert in the west and the fertile plains of the Ganges in the east. India’s cultural diversity is reflected in its festivals, such as Diwali, Eid, Holi, and Christmas, which are celebrated with great enthusiasm nationwide.

India’s economy is one of the fastest-growing in the world, driven by advancements in technology, manufacturing, and services. Despite the challenges it faces, India's blend of ancient traditions and modern aspirations continues to shape its identity as a vibrant and resilient nation.

Short Paragraph on India

India is a country of immense diversity, known for its rich culture, vibrant traditions, and deep-rooted history. From the towering Himalayas in the north to the serene backwaters of Kerala in the south, India's landscape is as varied as its people. The country is home to multiple languages, religions, and festivals, all coexisting in harmony. This unity in diversity makes India a unique and fascinating nation, where tradition meets modernity in a blend that captivates the world.

10 Lines about India

India is the seventh-largest country in the world by land area.

It is the second-most populous country, with over 1.4 billion people.

India is known for its rich cultural heritage and diverse traditions.

The country has 22 officially recognised languages and hundreds of dialects.

India is home to several major religions, including Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, and Sikhism.

The Taj Mahal, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, is located in India.

India has a diverse geography, from the Himalayas to deserts and tropical beaches.

The Indian economy is one of the fastest-growing in the world.

India is known as the birthplace of yoga and Ayurveda.

The nation celebrates a wide range of festivals, including Diwali, Eid, Holi, and Christmas.

Test your Knowledge on the Topic

Write a paragraph describing your favourite festival, including why it is special to you and how it is celebrated.

Write a paragraph explaining why education is important for personal and societal development.

Write a paragraph about a memorable day you spent at the beach, describing the activities you enjoyed and the overall experience.

Find out if you got them all right from the answers below.

1. Paragraph on My Favourite Festival

My favourite festival is Diwali, the festival of lights, which is special to me because it brings together family, friends, and communities in a joyful celebration. The festival signifies the victory of light over darkness and good over evil, filling the atmosphere with hope and positivity. We decorate our homes with vibrant rangolis, light oil lamps, and burst fireworks. The night sky dazzles with colours, and the air is filled with the aroma of delicious sweets. The best part is spending quality time with loved ones, exchanging gifts, and sharing laughter, making Diwali a festival of warmth and togetherness.

2. Paragraph on the Importance of Education

Education is crucial for both personal and societal development, as it empowers individuals with the knowledge, skills, and values needed to navigate life effectively. On a personal level, education opens doors to opportunities, enabling people to pursue their dreams and achieve success. It fosters critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving abilities, essential for making informed decisions. For society, education is the foundation of progress, promoting equality, reducing poverty, and encouraging social harmony. Educated individuals contribute positively to their communities, driving innovation, and helping build a more just and prosperous world.

3. Paragraph on a Memorable Day at the Beach

One of my most memorable days was spent at the beach during a family vacation last summer. The sun was shining brightly, and the sound of the waves crashing against the shore was incredibly soothing. We spent the day building sandcastles, playing beach volleyball, and collecting seashells along the shore. The highlight of the day was swimming in the clear, cool water and feeling the gentle sea breeze on my face. As the sun began to set, the sky turned into a beautiful canvas of orange and pink hues, making the evening even more magical. The day ended with a beachside bonfire, where we roasted marshmallows and shared stories under the starlit sky. It was a day filled with fun, relaxation, and unforgettable moments.

Takeaways from this Page

You learned how to describe your favourite festival, highlighting its significance, personal importance, and the ways it is celebrated.

You gained insights into why education is essential for both personal growth and societal progress, emphasising its role in opening opportunities, fostering critical thinking, and driving social development.

You explored how to vividly describe a memorable experience at the beach, focusing on sensory details, activities, and the overall atmosphere of the day.

FAQs on Incredible India Essay

1. Why is India known as the land of unity in diversity

India is known as the land of unity in diversity because, despite its vast array of cultures, languages, religions, and traditions, people have coexisted peacefully for thousands of years. Different communities such as Bengalis, Gujaratis, Punjabis, and Tamilians live together with a sense of solidarity, respecting each other's customs and celebrating festivals together.

2. What does the slogan "Atithi Devo Bhava" mean in the context of tourism in India?

"Atithi Devo Bhava" means "The Guest is God." This ancient Indian philosophy reflects the country's tradition of treating guests with the utmost respect and hospitality. In the context of tourism, it underscores the importance of welcoming visitors warmly, enhancing India’s reputation as a hospitable destination.

3. What is the geographical diversity of India?

India’s geographical diversity includes a wide range of physical features such as the snow-capped Himalayas in the north, deserts like Rajasthan in the west, lush forests, a lengthy coastline, and fertile plains like the Indo-Gangetic region. The country experiences varied climates, from the hot plains to the cold Himalayas.

4. How does cultural diversity manifest in India?

India’s cultural diversity is evident in the distinct traditions, languages, and festivals across different regions. The South, North, and Northeast of India each have unique cultural practices, with every state contributing to the country’s rich cultural tapestry. This diversity makes India one of the most culturally varied countries in the world.

5. What is the linguistic diversity in India?

India is home to a vast linguistic diversity, with over 1652 languages and dialects reported in the 1961 census. According to the 2001 Census, there are 122 major languages in India, belonging to five language families. These languages are taught in schools, used in media, and spoken across the country, highlighting India's linguistic richness.

6. How does the concept of "Atithi Devo Bhava" reflect Indian hospitality?

The concept of "Atithi Devo Bhava" reflects Indian hospitality by emphasising the importance of treating guests with the same respect and care as one would treat a deity. This principle is deeply ingrained in Indian culture and is a cornerstone of how Indians welcome and care for visitors.

7. What are some examples of geographical diversity in India?

Examples of India’s geographical diversity include the cold Himalayan mountains in the north, the arid deserts of Rajasthan in the west, the fertile plains of Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, and the coastal regions of Kerala and Goa. Each region has its unique climate and physical characteristics.

8. How many states and languages are there in India?

India comprises 29 states and has recognised 22 official languages. Additionally, there are hundreds of dialects spoken across the country, making India one of the most linguistically diverse nations in the world.

9. Which countries border India?

India shares its borders with Pakistan to the west, Bhutan, China, and Nepal to the north, and Bangladesh and Burma (Myanmar) to the east. The country is also surrounded by the Indian Ocean to the south, the Arabian Sea to the west, and the Bay of Bengal to the east.

10. Why is the phrase "Atithi Devo Bhava" significant in Indian culture?

The phrase "Atithi Devo Bhava" is significant in Indian culture as it embodies the tradition of hospitality and respect towards guests. This saying highlights the importance of treating visitors with great care and reverence, a practice that has been a part of Indian culture since ancient times.

The English Paradigm in India

Essays in Language, Literature and Culture

• © 2017
• Shweta Rao Garg 0 ,
• Deepti Gupta 1

DA-IICT, Gandhinagar, India

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Punjab University, Chandigarh, India

• Provides an interdisciplinary perspective on the role English studies can play in the affirmation of India's national and cultural identity
• Weaves together contributions from the fields of literature, culture, gender, politics to assess what constitutes modern Indian identity
• Considers the very relevant question of women and gender in contemporary India
• Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

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About this book

This collection pulls together a wide range of perspectives to explore the possibilities and the boundaries of the paradigm of English studies in India. It examines national identity and the legacy of colonialism through a study of comparative and multi ethnic literature, education, English language studies and the role ICT now plays in all of these fields. Contributors look at how the issue of identity can be addressed and understood through food studies, linking food, culture and identity. The volume also considers the timely and very relevant question of gender in Indian society, of the role of the woman, the family and the community in patriarchal contemporary Indian society. Through the lens of literature, culture, gender, politics, this exciting volume pulls together the threads which constitute modern Indian identity. 

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Introduction

The Latin American Nation and Its Cultural Inscriptions: Archives of Promise or Lament?

• English Studies in India
• Indian English
• Literature of the Indian Diaspora
• Cultural Studies in India
• Food and culture
• Multiethnic literature of America, Australia
• Comparative Literature
• Gender studies
• ICT intervention
• Instance of Negative Interaction
• Consuming Tamil Identity
• Debating, Challenging or Accepting Patriarchy
• Gendered Spirituality in Phaniyamma
• Resisting Patriarchy Without Separatism
• Diasporic Indian Women Writers

Table of contents (20 chapters)

Front matter.

• Shweta Rao Garg, Deepti Gupta

Comparative Literature in India in the Twenty-first Century

• Avadhesh Kumar Singh

Confronting the Canon Contrapuntally: The Example of Edward Said

• Fakrul Alam

Debating, Challenging or Accepting Patriarchy? Assessing Indian Women’s Role in Society and Creative Writing

• Somdatta Mandal

Social Imagination and Nation Image: Exploring the Sociocultural Milieu in Regional Indian Short Stories Translated in English

• Ishmeet Kaur Chaudhry

Idli, Dosai, Sambar, Coffee: Consuming Tamil Identity

• G. J. V. Prasad

Curfewed Night in Elsinore: Vishal Bhardwaj’s Haider

• Shormishtha Panja

Interrogating Gendered Spirituality in Phaniyamma and The Saga of South Kamrup

• Jaiwanti Dimri

Resisting Patriarchy Without Separatism: A Re-Reading of Shashi Deshpande’s The Dark Holds No Terrors

• Suraj Gunwant, Rashmi Gaur

Cultural Assimilation and the Politics of Beauty in Postwar American Fiction by Ethnic Women Writers

• Nilanjana Ghosal, Srirupa Chatterjee

Agha Shahid Ali and Contemporary World Poetry

• M. L. Raina

Critique of Normality in Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree

• Sanjoy C K, Gurumurthy Neelakantan

The Personal Is Political: Slavery, Trauma, and the White Man’s Legacy

Women in diaspora, stranded on the no-man’s land: a study of selected works of chitra banerjee divakaruni.

• Deepti Gupta, Sumeet Brar

Food Images and Identity in the Selected Writings of Three Indian American Women Writers

Shweta Rao Garg

Resistance, Resilience, Survival: Role of Family and Community in Jack Davis’s No Sugar

• Hem Raj Bansal

Mediation of Multimodal Word Literature and Indirect Translation: Analysing The Adventures of Tintin

• Urjani Chakravarty

Institutional Discourses, Technology-Mediated Practices and Pedagogy: A Critical Perspective

• Atanu Bhattacharya, Preet Hiradhar

Building Reputational Bridges Over Crises Situations

• Asha Kaul, Avani Desai

Editors and Affiliations

Deepti Gupta

About the editors

Bibliographic information.

Book Title : The English Paradigm in India

Book Subtitle : Essays in Language, Literature and Culture

Editors : Shweta Rao Garg, Deepti Gupta

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5332-0

Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan Singapore

eBook Packages : Literature, Cultural and Media Studies , Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)

Copyright Information : The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

Hardcover ISBN : 978-981-10-5331-3 Published: 02 October 2017

Softcover ISBN : 978-981-13-5368-0 Published: 12 December 2018

eBook ISBN : 978-981-10-5332-0 Published: 18 September 2017

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XX, 317

Topics : Comparative Literature , Cultural Studies , Asian Culture , Culture and Gender

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Essay on Importance of English Language in India

Students are often asked to write an essay on Importance of English Language in India in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Importance of English Language in India

Introduction.

English language is a significant tool in India. It helps in connecting different states with diverse languages.

In Indian schools, English is a primary medium of instruction. It aids in understanding complex subjects.

English proficiency opens up job opportunities. Many multinational companies require English speaking employees.

Global Connection

English helps Indians connect globally. It bridges the cultural gap and promotes international relations.

250 Words Essay on Importance of English Language in India

English language, a vestige of the British colonial rule in India, has morphed into a crucial part of India’s socio-economic fabric. Its importance is underscored by its role in fostering communication, enhancing employability, and promoting global integration.

Medium of Education and Communication

English serves as a bridge language in India’s multilingual milieu. It is the medium of instruction in many educational institutions, facilitating the dissemination of global knowledge. Furthermore, it enables inter-state communication, easing social interactions and business transactions.

Employability and Professional Growth

Proficiency in English is often a prerequisite for lucrative jobs in India. It enhances employability, as many multinational corporations and industries prefer employees with good English skills. It also aids in professional growth, as it enables access to a vast array of international literature and research.

Global Integration

English aids in integrating India with the global community. It enables Indians to partake in global discourse, be it in politics, science, or culture. It also bolsters India’s soft power by facilitating cultural exports, like Bollywood and literature.

Despite the criticisms of English as a symbol of colonial legacy, its importance in contemporary India is undeniable. It serves as a tool for education, professional growth, and global integration. As India strides towards becoming a global power, the role of English as a facilitator of this journey will only become more significant.

500 Words Essay on Importance of English Language in India

The legacy of british colonialism.

The British colonial period in India, spanning over two centuries, left an indelible imprint on the linguistic landscape of the country. English was introduced as the language of governance, education, and law. Post-independence, while India chose to recognize multiple regional languages, English was retained as an associate official language, reflecting its deep-rooted influence.

English as a Global Link Language

In the era of globalization, English has emerged as the universal language of communication. For a diverse country like India, with over 1,500 dialects, English serves as a common platform for interaction, enabling Indians to communicate not just within the country but also with the rest of the world. It facilitates international diplomacy, trade, and cultural exchange, thus positioning India as a significant player on the global stage.

English and Education

English and socio-economic mobility.

English proficiency is often perceived as a marker of social status and economic prosperity. It plays a vital role in the service sector, particularly in the burgeoning fields of information technology, outsourcing, and tourism. Knowledge of English can significantly enhance employability, thereby contributing to individual and national economic growth.

English and Digital India

The digital revolution in India has further underscored the importance of English. With a majority of online content being in English, digital literacy is closely tied to English proficiency. It enables Indians to participate in the global digital economy, access e-governance services, and engage with global communities.

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India Essay in English 10 lines, 100 Words – For Students & Children

• Entrance Exams
• November 6, 2023

India Essay in English – India, often referred to as the “Land of Diversity,” is a country that boasts a rich and complex history, an astonishing variety of cultures, languages, and traditions, and a promising future as one of the world’s fastest-growing economies. India’s culture celebrates pluralism, with numerous languages and religions coexisting harmoniously.

Here you will find the India Essay in 10 lines, 100, 500, 1000 Words. This essay explores the multifaceted facets of India, from its geography and culture to its remarkable achievements and challenges. Despite challenges, India continues to evolve and thrive.

10 Lines About India Essay

India is a diverse and culturally rich nation known for its centuries-old history and traditions. With a population of over a billion people, it’s the world’s largest democracy. India is famous for its iconic landmarks like the Taj Mahal and vibrant festivals like Diwali and Holi. Here are some points about India in easy and understand way:

• India, located in South Asia, is known for its rich cultural heritage and history.
• The Indian flag consists of three colors: saffron, white, and green, with the Ashoka Chakra, a blue wheel, at its center.
• New Delhi serves as the capital city of India, while Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chennai are other major urban centers.
• India is the world’s second-most populous country, with a population of over 1.3 billion people.
• Hindi and English are the official languages of India, but the country is incredibly linguistically diverse, with over 19,500 languages spoken.
• Indian cuisine is famous for its flavorful dishes, such as curry, biryani, and samosas, which are cherished worldwide.
• Cricket is the most popular sport in India, with a massive following among children and adults alike.
• India boasts an array of iconic landmarks, including the Taj Mahal, a symbol of eternal love, and the Himalayas, the world’s highest mountain range.
• Festivals like Diwali, Holi, and Eid are celebrated with great enthusiasm, featuring vibrant colors and lights.
• India has a rich historical and cultural legacy, with influential figures like Mahatma Gandhi, Rani Lakshmibai, and Aryabhata leaving a lasting impact on the world.

Also See – Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav Essay in English – 10 Lines, 100 / 1000 Words

Short Essay about India in 100 Words

India, my beloved motherland, is a haven of honesty, diversity, and welcoming hearts. Its cultural tapestry weaves people of unique traditions and languages into a harmonious fabric. While Hindi is the mother tongue, countless languages flourish, fostering religious unity. India’s natural beauty and historic sites beckon the world, from the Himalayas to spiritual practices like Yoga. The philosophy of Sanatan Dharma upholds our unity in diversity. As a republic, India empowers its citizens to shape its destiny. Pilgrims from across the globe flock to experience the magnificence of temples and heritage sites. India’s heartwarming spirit and global significance make it a cherished treasure.

Essay on My country India in 500 Words

In this essay, we embark on a journey to explore the intricate tapestry of a nation known for its diversity, culture, and rich heritage. “My Country India” is not just a geographical entity; it’s an experience, a reflection of history, culture, and unity.

India: The Land of Unity in Diversity

India, my beloved homeland, is a tapestry of diversity, culture, and history. As the seventh-largest country in the world by land area and the second-most populous nation, it stands as a remarkable entity in the global landscape. India is not just a nation; it’s an experience, a journey through time and tradition.

The Bengal Tiger, a symbol of strength and beauty, serves as our national animal, representing the rich wildlife and natural beauty that grace our land. Every year, on the 15th of August, India celebrates its Independence Day, marking the hard-fought freedom from British colonial rule. The tricolored Indian flag, known as the Tiranga, adorns the occasion, with its saffron, white, and green bands and the Ashok Chakra in navy blue at its center.

The ‘Lion Capital of Ashoka’ stands as our national emblem, a relic from our illustrious past. The national motto, ‘Satyameva Jayate,’ meaning ‘truth alone triumphs,’ reflects the guiding principles that shape our nation.

On the 26th of January, India observes Republic Day, commemorating the day when our constitution came into effect in 1950. This marked a significant milestone, solidifying India’s status as a sovereign nation capable of self-governance.

India’s true strength lies in its diversity. With a population exceeding 1.3 billion people, it is a melting pot of languages, cultures, and religions. From Buddhism to Jainism, Islam to Hinduism, India embraces a wide array of faiths. The diverse cuisine and clothing styles that vary from one region to another beautifully exemplify the concept of ‘Unity in Diversity.’ Each region offers a unique blend of flavors and fabrics, a testament to the rich cultural tapestry that defines India.

India shares its borders with several countries, including Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, and Bangladesh. It also shares its maritime borders with Sri Lanka and the Maldives. This geographic diversity influences the nation’s way of life and culture, making it a dynamic and ever-evolving entity.

Saffron, white, and green harmoniously come together to form the Indian national flag, a symbol of unity in a country defined by diversity. The Ashok Chakra at the center is a navy blue 24-spoke wheel, symbolizing virtue and righteousness. This emblematic representation of India is a constant reminder of its heritage and values.

In conclusion, India is not merely a nation; it is a vibrant tapestry woven from diverse threads of culture, religion, and tradition. Its strength lies in its unity despite differences, and its resilience is evident in its journey from colonial rule to a thriving democracy. With its rich history, stunning natural landscapes, and a populace that embraces both its heritage and progress, India remains a source of inspiration for the world, a country where diversity is celebrated and unity prevails. India is more than just a country; it is a celebration of life itself.

Write an Essay on India

India, often referred to as the “Land of a Thousand Contrasts,” is a nation of unparalleled diversity and rich heritage. With a history dating back thousands of years, India has been a cradle of civilizations, the birthplace of different religions, various languages, cuisines, and traditions, all harmoniously coexisting.

Title: India – A Multifaceted Nation

Introduction:

India, a land of immense diversity and cultural richness, is a country that captivates the imagination of people worldwide. This essay explores the multifaceted aspects of India, with a focus on its geography, history, culture, society, and global presence.

Geographical Diversity:

• Geographic Extent: India is a vast subcontinent, stretching from the snow-capped Himalayan mountains in the north to the tropical coastlines in the south. It covers an extensive range of landscapes, from arid deserts to fertile plains and lush forests.
• Rivers and Water Bodies : India boasts a network of significant rivers, including the sacred Ganges, Brahmaputra, and many others. These rivers not only provide water for agriculture but also have cultural and religious significance.

Historical Significance:

• Ancient Civilizations: India’s history dates back thousands of years and includes the ancient Indus Valley Civilization, which thrived in the 3rd millennium BCE. It has been a cradle of various ancient civilizations and empires.
• Colonial Era: The British colonial rule from the 18th to the mid-20th century left an enduring impact on India’s political and social landscape, paving the way for the struggle for independence.
• Independence and Republic: India’s journey to independence, led by Mahatma Gandhi, culminated in the establishment of the Indian Republic on August 15, 1947.

Cultural Diversity:

• Linguistic and Religious Diversity: India is home to a multitude of languages, dialects, and religions. Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Islam, Christianity, and various other faiths coexist harmoniously.
• Festivals and Traditions: India celebrates a plethora of festivals such as Diwali, Holi, Eid, Christmas, and regional celebrations, showcasing its rich cultural tapestry.
• Arts and Architecture: India is renowned for its classical and folk dance forms, music, art, and architectural marvels, with the Taj Mahal being an iconic symbol of India’s architectural heritage.

Society and Values:

• Family Values : Indian society places a strong emphasis on family values, and joint families, where multiple generations live together, are prevalent in many parts of the country.
• Hospitality and Respect: The Indian tradition of “Atithi Devo Bhava” (the guest is God) reflects the warmth, politeness, and respect for visitors in Indian culture.

National Anthem and Song

• National Anthem: “Jana Gana Mana” serves as India’s national anthem, uniting the nation with its evocative lyrics.
• National Song: “Vande Mataram,” a passionate ode to the motherland, resonates with the spirit of India.

National Symbols of India

Representing the Nation

• The Lion Capital of Ashoka: This sculpture serves as India’s national emblem, reflecting its historical heritage.
• National Motto: India’s guiding motto is “Satyameva Jayate,” which means “truth alone triumphs.”
• National Emblem: Lion of Sarnath (Symbolizes India’s commitment to peace and goodwill)
• National Animal: Tiger (Symbolizes grace, strength, and power)
• National Bird: Peacock (Symbolizes beauty, majesty, and pride)
• National Flower: Lotus (Symbolizes purity, wealth, richness, knowledge, and serenity)
• National Tree: Great Banyan Tree (Considered immortal and sacred, integral part of Indian myths and legends)

Global Presence:

• Economic Growth: India is one of the world’s fastest-growing major economies, with a thriving IT industry and a diverse industrial base.
• Diplomatic Relations: India’s international presence is influential as the world’s largest democracy, playing a vital role in global diplomacy, and maintaining relations with neighboring countries.

Challenges and Opportunities

Addressing Socioeconomic and Environmental Issues

• Socioeconomic Challenges: India faces issues such as poverty, income inequality, and limited access to healthcare and education.
• Environmental Concerns: Environmental challenges, including air pollution and deforestation, threaten sustainable development.

Natural Beauty and Landmarks

From the Taj Mahal to Serene Backwaters

• Iconic Monuments: India boasts world-famous landmarks like the Taj Mahal, a white marble mausoleum symbolizing love, and the Himalayas, the world’s highest mountain range.
• Natural Scenery: The country’s landscapes are diverse, from lush forests to serene backwaters, making it a visual paradise.

Spiritual and Philosophical Traditions

Exploring Spiritual Practices and Philosophy

• Spiritual Practices: India is renowned for its spiritual and philosophical traditions, including Yoga and meditation, which have gained global popularity.
• Contributions to Philosophy: Ancient Indian scholars like Aryabhata made significant contributions to fields like mathematics and astronomy.

Conclusion:

India, a multifaceted nation, is a land of unparalleled diversity, culture, history, and societal values. Its vast geographical extent, rich heritage, warm-hearted people, and global influence make it a unique and captivating country. As India continues to evolve, it remains a land of endless opportunities, growth, and enduring cultural richness.

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India Essay

India is the seventh-largest country and most populous democracy in the world. It is located in South Asia and was officially declared as the Republic of India after its independence from British rule. India has unique topographical features – plains of central India, rain forests of the north east, icy cold Himalayan region and dry arid desert in west, among others. The cultural, linguistic and religious diversity of India is as much diverse as its geography.

Indian culture differs from place to place and is a union of several different cultures, spread across the length and breadth of the continent. Although there are 22 Languages imbibed in the Constitution of India, there are more than 1900 dialects or mother tongues are spoken throughout the nation. This huge cultural and linguistic diversity of India is one of its most distinguished features.

Long and Short Essay on India in English

India is one of the famous countries of the world. Every citizen of India must know about it means its history, struggle, culture and other important things.

Students are generally given this topic in their schools to write some paragraphs or full essay in the class tests or main exams.

Here we have given below long and short essay on India, which are well written essay on India to help students under various word limits.

They can select anyone of these India essay according to the words limit:

India Essay 1 (100 words)

India is a famous country all over the world. Geographically, our country is located to the south of Asia continent. India is a high population country and well protected from all directions naturally. It is a famous country for its great cultural and traditional values all across the world. It contains a mountain called Himalaya which is biggest in the world.

It is surrounded by the three big oceans from three directions such as in south with Indian Ocean, in east with Bay of Bengal and in west with Arabic sea. India is a democratic country ranks second for its population. The national language of India is Hindi however almost fourteen nationally recognized languages are spoken here.

India Essay 2 (150 words)

India is a beautiful country and famous all over the world for its unique cultures and traditions. It is famous for its historical heritages and monuments. Citizens here are very polite and understanding in nature. It was a slave country earlier to the 1947 under the British rule.

However, after many years of hard struggles and sacrifices of the great Indian freedom fighters, India got freedom from the British rule in 1947. Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru became the first Prime Minister of India and hoisted the Indian flag when India got freedom and he proclaimed that “When the world sleeps, India will wake to life and freedom”.

India is a democratic country where its public are authorized to take decisions for the betterment of the country. India is a famous country for the saying “Unity in Diversity” because people of many religions, castes, culture and tradition live together with unity. Most of the Indian heritages and monuments have been added to the world heritage sites.

India Essay 3 (200 words)

India is my mother country and I love it very much. People of India are very honest and truthful in nature. People of various unique traditions and culture live here together without any problem. The mother-tongue of my country is Hindi however many languages are spoken here by the people of different religions without any boundation. India is a great country of natural beauty where great people took birth from time to time and did great works. Indians are very heart-touching in nature and they heartily welcome their guests from other countries.

In India Indian philosophy of life is followed which is called as Sanatan Dharma and has become the main factor to maintain unity in diversity here. India is a republic country where its citizens have power to take decision about country.

There are many natural sceneries, places, monuments, historical heritage of the ancient time, etc which attracts people’s mind from every corner of the world. India is very famous for its spiritual works, Yoga, martial arts, etc. A huge crowd of pilgrims and devotees come here to see and enjoy the beauty of famous places, temples and other world heritage sites in India.

India Essay 4 (250 words)

My country India is a land of Shiva, Parvati, Krishna, Hanuman, Buddha, Mahatma Gandhi, Swami Vivekananda, Kabir, etc. It is a country where great people took birth and did great works. I love my country very much and salute it. It is famous for its biggest democracy and oldest civilization of the world. It is the second most populous country of the world after the chain.

It is a country where courteous people of many religions and cultures lives together. It is a country of great warriors such as Rana Pratap, Shivaji, Lal Bahadur Shashtri, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel, Subhash Chandra Bose, Bagat Singh, Lala Lajpet Rai and so many.

It is a rich country where great people took birth in the field of literature, art and science such as Rabindranath Tagore, Sara Chandra, Premchand, C.V. Raman, Jagadish Chandra Bose, APJ Abdul Kalama, Kabir Das, etc. Such great people of India were the proud of my country. All the great leaders of the country came from villages and led the country to go ahead.

They fought for many years and sacrificed their lives to make India an independent country from the British rule. It is a country where famous rivers and oceans are run regularly such as Ganges, Yamuna, Godavari, Narmada, Brahmaputra, Krishna, Kavery, Bay of Bengal, Arabic sea, etc. India is a beautiful country surrounded by the oceans from three sides. It is a country where people are very intellectual and spiritual and believe in God and Goddess.

India Essay 5 (300 words)

India is my motherland country where I took birth. I love India and have proud of it. India is a big democratic country which ranks second in population after China. It has rich and glorious past. It is considered as the country of old civilization of the world. It is a land of learning where students from many corners of the world come to study in the big universities.

It is famous for its various unique and diverse culture and tradition of people of many religions. Some people in the abroad as well follow the Indian culture and tradition because of being attractive in nature. Various invaders came and steal the glory and precious things of India. Some of them made it a slave country however various great leaders of the country became successful in making my motherland free of biritshers in 1947.

The day our country got freedom means 15 th of August is celebrated every year as Independence Day. Pt. Nehru became the first prime minister of India. It is a country rich in natural resources yet inhabitants here are poor. It is growing continuously in the field of technology, science and literature because of the eminent people like Rabindra Nath Tagore, Sir Jagdish Chandra Bose, Sir C.V.Raman, Shri H. N. Bhabha, etc. It is a peace loving country where people of many religions follow their own culture and tradition as well as celebrate their festivals without any interference.

There are many glorious historical buildings, heritages, monuments and sceneries which attracts people’s mind from different countries every year. Taj Mahal is a great monument in India and symbol of eternal love and Kashmir as the heaven on the earth. It is a country of famous temples, mosques, churches, Gurudwaras, rivers, valleys, fertile plains, highest mountain, etc.

India Essay 6 (400 words)

India is my country and I proud to be an Indian. It ranks as the seventh largest country of the world as well as second most populated country of the world. It is also known as Bharat, Hindustan and Aryavart. It is a peninsula means surrounded by oceans from three sides such as Bay of Bengal in east, Arabian Sea in west and Indian Ocean in south. The national animal of India is tiger, national bird is peacock, national flower is lotus and national fruit is mango.

The flag of India has tricolor, saffron means purity (the uppermost), white means peace (the middle one having an Ashok Chakra) and green means fertility (the lowest one). Ashok Chakra contains equally divided 24 spokes. The national anthem of India is “Jana Gana Mana”, the national song is “Vande Mataram” and national sport is Hockey.

India is a country where people speak many languages and people of different castes, creeds, religions and cultures live together. That’s why India is famous for common saying of “unity in diversity”. It is well known as the land of spirituality, philosophy, science and technology. People of various religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Islam, Christianity and Judaism lives here together from the ancient time.

It is famous country for its agriculture and farming which are the backbones of it from the ancient time. It uses it own produced food grains and fruits. It is a famous tourist’s paradise because it attracts people’s mind from all over the world. It is rich in monuments, tombs, churches, historical buildings, temples, museums, scenic beauty, wild life sanctuaries, places of architecture, etc are the source of revenue to it.

It is the place where Taj Mahal, Fatehpur Sikri, golden temple, Qutab Minar, Red Fort, Ooty, Nilgiris, Kashmir, Kajuraho, Ajanta and Ellora caves, etc wonders exist. It is the country of great rivers, mountains, valleys, lakes and oceans. The national language of India is Hindi. It is a country where 29 states and UTs. It has 28 states which again have many small villages.

It is a chief agricultural country famous for producing sugarcane, cotton, jute, rice, wheat, cereals etc crops. It is a country where great leaders (Shivaji, Gandhiji, Nehru, Dr. Ambedkar, etc), great scientists (Dr. Jagadeeshchandra Bose, Dr Homi Bhabha, Dr. C. V Raman, Dr. Naralikar, etc) and great reformers (Mother Teresa, Pandurangashastri Alhavale, T. N. Sheshan) took birth. It is a country where diversity exists with strong unity and peace.

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I Love My India Essay: 100 and 500+ Words in English for School Students

• Updated on  
• Apr 22, 2024

My country, India, is known for its rich cultural diversity, scenic locations, and beautiful monuments and is home to one of the oldest human civilizations; the Indus Valley Civilizations. As proud Indians, we constantly aspire to the wonders that this vast and diverse nation offers us. From its rich cultural heritage to its remarkable achievements and unique charm, India keeps on captivating people from all walks of life. Let us delve deep into some fascinating and inspiring culture, traditions and developments via our I Love My India Essay, to learn more about this unique nation. 

Table of Contents

• 1 I Love My India Essay 100 Words
• 2.1 Contribution and Celebration For the World 
• 2.2 Aiming for the 3rd Largest Economy
• 2.3 Caring For a Bright Future
• 2.4 Conclusion

I Love My India Essay 100 Words

Also Read: Essay on Good Habits for Children: List of Healthy Habits

I Love My India Essay 500+ Words

India, the land of diversity and unity, holds a special place in my heart. As a proud Indian, I deeply love my country, which has shaped my identity and built me a sense of pride and responsibility. Since ancient civilizations, the country has been a constant source of inspiration and affection. 

Moreover, the global community is the world´s largest democracy. Further, it has championed the values of pluralism, non-violence and peaceful coexistence worldwide.

Contribution and Celebration For the World 

India is a land of remarkable history and wisdom. India’s vibrant festivals and age-old cultural values attract a large number of tourists from all over the world. India gave ‘Zero’ to the world of science and mathematics and is the largest exporter of petroleum products.

Gautam Buddha, Vardhamana Mahavira, Ashoka the Great, and several other great scholars were born on Indian soil. Today, Indian thinkers, scientists, and innovators have also pushed the boundaries of human knowledge and capabilities. From advancements in space technology to the fields of information technology and medicine, the nation transformed into a prominent player on the global stage. 

Also Read: Essay on Viksit Bharat

Aiming for the 3rd Largest Economy

As of 2022, India’s nominal GDP is $3.93 trillion. It stands at fifth place in the list of global GDPs. However, the Indian government is determined to make India the third-largest economy in the next five years. This was because of the rapid industrialisation after independence and the introduction of Liberalisation, Globalisation and Privatisation in 1991-92.

Caring For a Bright Future

As a resident of the country, I look forward to the future with lots of hope and excitement for achieving the paths that India will chart. Our young people, who are the future and the driving force behind the nation’s progress, are prepared to take India to new heights. 

Initiatives like Skill India and Start-Up India are empowering the next generation to become their leaders, innovators, and change-makers. They are equipped with the tools and resources that they need to thrive.

Further, I am particularly passionate about the people of India regarding their socio-economic backgrounds, access to quality education and healthcare and the opportunities for personal as well as professional growth. 

By investing in the well-being and development of our citizens, we can step ahead into a more equitable and inclusive society. This will further help people chase their dreams and contribute towards the nation’s collective progress. 

My love for the nation is deep and deep-rooted. I admire the country for its incredible history, the liveliness of its present, and the boundless potential of its future. As I reflect on the journey of this remarkable country, I am filled with pride, gratitude and commitment to being a responsible and engaged citizen. 

Together we all can build on the legacy of our ancestors, embrace the diversity that makes us strong, and work towards a future where India will shine with the hope of progress, unity and global influence. 

Also Read: Essay on Indian Heritage for Students 

Ans: India is a country with diversity in South Asia. It has a rich cultural heritage and stunning natural beauty. 2. The country is special because of its world´s largest democracy, with over 1.3 billion people. This makes the country the second-largest population in the world. 3. India is rich with 22 official languages and its leadership in technology and innovation.  4. The country has many monuments in UNESCO heritage sites like the Taj Mahal, Ancient Cave Paintings, and towering monuments. All these monuments are perfect examples of architecture and historical wonders. 5. Indian cuisine is well-known for its various flavours according to the region, spices, and tradition of cooking. 6. The landscapes of India range from snow-capped mountains in the north to tropical beaches in the south. 7. India faces challenges like poverty and environmental issues. With such adversity, India remains inspiring and dedicated to progress. 8. Many travellers explore India, for its deep spirituality, through yoga, meditation, and ancient traditions. 9. India plays a major role in the global economy with its growing middle class and consumer market and attracts significant foreign investment. 10. Overall, India is a remarkable and popular country that attracts people from all over the world with its ancient history and modern elements.

Ans: India is very special because of its multiple languages, incredible history, wonderful architecture and natural landscapes.

Ans: India has 22 officially recognised languages in the world. 2. India is the second largest producer of tea after China.  3. India is the home of the Taj Mahal, which is one of the most recognisable monuments in the world. 4. The Indian startup scene is incredible and has produced over 100 unicorn companies.  5. India is the birthplace of yoga, ayurveda, and medicine. 

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Essay on India in English for Children and Students

Table of Contents

Essay on India : India is the seventh-largest country and the most populous democracy in the world. It is located in South Asia and was officially declared the Republic of India after its independence from British rule. India has unique topographical features – plains of central India, rain forests of the northeast, icy cold Himalayan region, and dry arid desert in the west, among others. India’s cultural, linguistic, and religious diversity is as diverse as its geography.

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Indian culture differs from place to place and is a union of several different cultures spread across the length and breadth of the continent. Although there are 22 Languages imbibed in the Constitution of India, more than 1900 dialects or mother tongues are spoken throughout the nation. India’s huge cultural and linguistic diversity is one of its most distinguished features.

Long and Short Essay on India in English

India is one of the most famous countries in the world. Every citizen of India must know about its history, struggle, culture, and other important things.

Students are generally given this topic in their schools to write some paragraphs or full essays in the class tests or main exams.

Here we have given below long and short essays on India, which are well-written essays to help students under various word limits.

They can select anyone of these India essays according to the words limit:

Essay on India 100 words

India is a famous country all over the world. Geographically, our country is located to the south of the Asia continent. India is a high population country and well protected from all directions naturally. It is a famous country for its great cultural and traditional values all across the world. It contains a mountain called Himalaya, which is the biggest in the world.

Three big oceans surround it in three directions: the south with the Indian Ocean, the east with the Bay of Bengal, and the west with the Arabic sea. India is a democratic country that ranks second in its population. The national language of India is Hindi however, almost fourteen nationally recognized languages are spoken here.

Essay on India 150 words

India is a beautiful country and famous all over the world for its unique cultures and traditions. It is famous for its historical heritages and monuments. Citizens here are very polite and understanding in nature. It was a slave country earlier to 1947 under British rule.

However, after many years of hard struggles and sacrifices of the great Indian freedom fighters, India got freedom from British rule in 1947. Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru became India’s first Prime Minister, hoisted the Indian flag when India got freedom, and proclaimed, “When the world sleeps, India will wake to life and freedom.”

India is a democratic country where its public is authorized to take decisions for the betterment of the country. India is a famous country for the saying “Unity in Diversity” because people of many religions, castes, cultures, and traditions live together in unity. Most of the Indian heritages and monuments have been added to the world heritage sites.

Essay on India 200 words

India is my mother country, and I love it very much. The people of India are very honest and truthful in nature. People of various unique traditions and cultures live here together without any problem. The mother tongue of my country is Hindi however many languages are spoken here by people of different religions without any foundation. India is a great country of natural beauty where great people took birth from time to time and did great works. Indians are heart-touching in nature and heartily welcome guests from other countries.

In India, the Indian philosophy of life is called Sanatan Dharma and has become the main factor in maintaining unity in diversity here. India is a republic country where its citizens have the power to take decisions about the country.

There are many natural sceneries, places, monuments, historical heritage of ancient time, etc., which attracts people’s minds from every corner of the world. India is famous for its spiritual works, Yoga, martial arts, etc. A huge crowd of pilgrims and devotees come here to see and enjoy the beauty of famous places, temples, and other world heritage sites in India.

Essay on India 250 words

My country India is a land of Shiva, Parvati, Krishna, Hanuman, Buddha, Mahatma Gandhi, Swami Vivekananda, Kabir, etc. It is a country where great people took birth and did great work. I love my country very much and salute it. It is famous for its biggest democracy and oldest civilization in the world. It is the second most populous country in the world after the chain.

It is a country where courteous people of many religions and cultures live together. It is a country of great warriors such as Rana Pratap, Shivaji, Lal Bahadur Shashtri, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel, Subhash Chandra Bose, Bhagat Singh, Lala Lajpat Rai, and so many.

It is a rich country where great people took birth in literature, art, and science, such as Rabindranath Tagore, Sara Chandra, Premchand, C.V. Raman, Jagadish Chandra Bose, APJ Abdul Kalama, Kabir Das, etc. Such great people of India were proud of my country. All the great leaders came from villages and led the country to go ahead.

They fought for many years and sacrificed their lives to make India an independent country from British rule. It is a country where famous rivers and oceans are run regularly, such as the Ganges, Yamuna, Godavari, Narmada, Brahmaputra, Krishna, Kavery, Bay of Bengal, Arabic sea, etc. India is a beautiful country surrounded by the oceans from three sides. It is a country where people are very intellectual and spiritual and believe in God and Goddess.

Essay on India 300 words

India is my motherland country where I took birth. I love India and have proud of it. India is a big democratic country that ranks second in population after China. It has a rich and glorious past. It is considered the country of old civilization in the world. It is a land of learning where students from many corners come to study in the big universities.

It is famous for its various unique and diverse cultures and tradition of people of many religions. Some people abroad as well follow Indian culture and tradition because of being attracted to nature. Various invaders came and steal the glory and precious things of India. Some of them made it a slave country; however various great leaders of the country became successful in making my motherland free of Britishers in 1947.

The day our country got freedom means the 15 th of August is celebrated every year as Independence Day. Pt. Nehru became the first prime minister of India. It is a country rich in natural resources, yet the inhabitants here are poor. It is growing continuously in technology, science, and literature because of eminent people like Rabindra Nath Tagore, Sir Jagdish Chandra Bose, Sir C.V.Raman, Shri H. N. Bhabha, etc. It is a peace-loving country where people of many religions follow their own culture and tradition as well as celebrate their festivals without any interference.

There are many glorious historical buildings, heritages, monuments and sceneries which attract people mind from different countries every year. Taj Mahal is a great monument in India and a symbol of eternal love and Kashmir as the heaven on the earth. It is a country of famous temples, mosques, churches, Gurudwaras, rivers, valleys, fertile plains, highest mountain, etc.

Essay on India 400 words

India is my country, and I am proud to be an Indian. It ranks as the seventh largest country in the world as well as the second most populated country in the world. It is also known as Bharat, Hindustan, and Aryavart. It is a peninsula means surrounded by oceans on three sides as Bay of Bengal in the east, the Arabian Sea in the west, and the Indian Ocean in the south. The national animal of India is a tiger, the national bird is a peacock, national flower is the lotus, and the national fruit is mango.

The flag of India has a tricolor, and saffron means purity (the uppermost), white means peace (the middle one having an Ashok Chakra), and green means fertility (the lowest one). Ashok Chakra contains equally divided 24 spokes. The national anthem of India is “Jana Gana Mana,” the national song is “Vande Mataram,” and the national sport is Hockey.

India is a country where people speak many languages, and people of different castes, creeds, religions, and cultures live together. That’s why India is famous for the common saying of “unity in diversity.” It is well known as the land of spirituality, philosophy, science, and technology. People of various religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Islam, Christianity, and Judaism have lived together in ancient times.

It is a famous country for its agriculture and farming, which are the backbones from ancient times. It uses its own produced food grains and fruits. It is a famous tourist paradise because it attracts people from all over the world. It is rich in monuments, tombs, churches, historical buildings, temples, museums, scenic beauty, wildlife sanctuaries, places of architecture, etc., which are its source of revenue.

It is where Taj Mahal, Fatehpur Sikri, golden temple, Qutab Minar, Red Fort, Ooty, Nilgiris, Kashmir, Khajuraho, Ajanta and Ellora caves, etc., wonders exist. It is a country of great rivers, mountains, valleys, lakes, and oceans. The national language of India is Hindi. It is a country where 29 states and UTs. It has 28 states which again have many small villages.

It is a chief agricultural country famous for producing crops of sugarcane, cotton, jute, rice, wheat, cereals, etc. It is a country where great leaders (Shivaji, Gandhiji, Nehru, Dr. Ambedkar, etc.), great scientists (Dr. Jagadeeshchandra Bose, Dr. Homi Bhabha, Dr. C. V Raman, Dr. Naralikar, etc.) and great reformers (Mother Teresa, Pandurangashastri Alhavale, T. N. Sheshan) took birth. It is a country where diversity exists with strong unity and peace.

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Watch CBS News

Details emerge after doctor raped and murdered in India as thousands protest

August 15, 2024 / 6:32 AM EDT / CBS/AFP

Thousands took to the streets of Kolkata early Thursday to condemn the rape and murder of a local doctor , demanding justice for the victim and an end to the chronic issue of violence against women in Indian society.

The discovery of the 31-year-old's brutalized body last week at a state-run hospital has sparked nationwide protests, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi demanding swift punishment for those who commit "monstrous" deeds against women.

Large crowds marched through the streets of Kolkata in West Bengal to condemn the killing, with a candlelight rally at midnight coinciding with the start of India's independence day celebrations on Thursday.

The protesters in Kolkata, who marched under the slogan "reclaim the night", called for a wider tackling of violence against women and held up handwritten signs demanding action.

"We want justice," read one sign at the rally. "Hang the rapist, save the women," read another.

"The atrocities against women do not stop," midnight marcher Monalisa Guha told Kolkata's The Telegraph newspaper.

"We face harassment almost on a daily basis," another marcher, Sangeeta Halder, told the daily. "But not stepping out because of fear is not the solution."

"Monstrous behavior against women"

Modi, speaking in New Delhi on Thursday morning at independence day celebrations, did not specifically reference the Kolkata murder, but expressed his "pain" at violence against women.

"There is anger for atrocities committed against our mothers and sisters, there is anger in the nation about that," he said.

"Crimes against women should be quickly investigated; monstrous behavior against women should be severely and quickly punished," he added. "That is essential for creating deterrence and confidence in the society."

Doctors are also demanding swift justice and better workplace security in the wake of the killing, with those in government hospitals across several states on Monday halting elective services "indefinitely" in protest.

Protests have since occurred in several other hospitals across the country, including in the capital.

"Doctors nationwide are questioning what is so difficult about enacting a law for our security," Dhruv Chauhan, from the Indian Medical Association's Junior Doctors' Network, told the Press Trust of India news agency. "The strike will continue until all demands are formally met."

The Telegraph on Thursday praised the "spirited public protests" across India.

"Hearteningly, doctors and medical organizations are not the only ones involved," it said in an editorial. "The ranks of the protesters have been swelled by people from all walks of life."

Police accused of mishandling case

Indian media have reported the murdered doctor was found in the teaching hospital's seminar hall, suggesting she had gone there for a brief rest during a long shift.

An autopsy has confirmed sexual assault, and in a petition to the court, the victim's parents have said that they suspected their daughter was gang-raped, according to Indian broadcaster NDTV.  

Though police have detained a man who worked at the hospital helping people navigate busy queues, officers have been accused of mishandling the case.

Kolkata's High Court on Tuesday transferred the case to the elite Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to "inspire public confidence."

In the early hours of Thursday, a mob of some 40 people angry at authorities' handling of the case stormed the grounds of the R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital, the site of the murder.

The men smashed property and hurled stones at police, who fired tear gas in response, authorities said.

West Bengal lawmaker Abhishek Banerjee, from the Trinamool Congress party, condemned the "hooliganism and vandalism," but said "the demands of the protesting doctors are fair and justified."

History of sexual violence in India

Sexual violence against women is a widespread problem in India. An average of nearly 90 rapes a day were reported in India in 2022, according to  data  from the National Crime Records Bureau.

That year, police  arrested 11 people  after the alleged brutal gang rape and torture of a young woman that included her being paraded through the streets of Dehli. Also in 2022, a police officer in India was arrested after being  accused of raping  a 13-year-old girl who went to his station to report she had been gang-raped.

In March 2024, multiple Indian men were arrested after the  gang rape of a Spanish tourist  on a motorbike trip with her husband.

For many, the gruesome nature of the attack has invoked comparisons with the horrific 2012 gang rape and murder  of a young woman on a Delhi bus.

The woman became a symbol of the socially conservative country's failure to tackle sexual violence against women.

Her death sparked huge, and at times violent, demonstrations in Delhi and elsewhere.

Under pressure, the government introduced harsher penalties for rapists, and the death penalty for repeat offenders.

Several new sexual offences were also introduced, including stalking and jail sentences for officials who failed to register rape complaints.

• Sexual Violence

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• 14 August 2024

Has your paper been used to train an AI model? Almost certainly

• Elizabeth Gibney

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

You have full access to this article via your institution.

Academic publisher Wiley has sold access to its research papers to firms developing large language models. Credit: Timon Schneider/Alamy

Academic publishers are selling access to research papers to technology firms to train artificial-intelligence (AI) models. Some researchers have reacted with dismay at such deals happening without the consultation of authors. The trend is raising questions about the use of published and sometimes copyrighted work to train the exploding number of AI chatbots in development.

Experts say that, if a research paper hasn’t yet been used to train a large language model (LLM), it probably will be soon. Researchers are exploring technical ways for authors to spot if their content being used.

AI models fed AI-generated data quickly spew nonsense

Last month, it emerged that the UK academic publisher Taylor & Francis, had signed a US$10-million deal with Microsoft, allowing the US technology company to access the publisher’s data to improve its AI systems. And in June, an investor update showed that US publisher Wiley had earned $23 million from allowing an unnamed company to train generative-AI models on its content.

Anything that is available to read online — whether in an open-access repository or not — is “pretty likely” to have been fed into an LLM already, says Lucy Lu Wang, an AI researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle. “And if a paper has already been used as training data in a model, there’s no way to remove that paper after the model has been trained,” she adds.

Massive data sets

LLMs train on huge volumes of data, frequently scraped from the Internet. They derive patterns between the often billions of snippets of language in the training data, known as tokens, that allow them to generate text with uncanny fluency.

Generative-AI models rely on absorbing patterns from these swathes of data to output text, images or computer code. Academic papers are valuable for LLM builders owing to their length and “high information density”, says Stefan Baack, who analyses AI training data sets at the Mozilla Foundation, a global non-profit organization in San Francisco, California that aims to keep the Internet open for all to access.

How does ChatGPT ‘think’? Psychology and neuroscience crack open AI large language models

Training models on a large body of scientific information also give them a much better ability to reason about scientific topics, says Wang, who co-created S2ORC, a data set based on 81.1 million academic papers. The data set was originally developed for text mining — applying analytical techniques to find patterns in data — but has since been used to train LLMs.

The trend of buying high-quality data sets is growing. This year, the Financial Times has offered its content to ChatGPT developer OpenAI in a lucrative deal, as has the online forum Reddit, to Google. And given that scientific publishers probably view the alternative as their work being scraped without an agreement, “I think there will be more of these deals to come,” says Wang.

Information secrets

Some AI developers, such as the Large-scale Artificial Intelligence Network, intentionally keep their data sets open, but many firms developing generative-AI models have kept much of their training data secret, says Baack. “We have no idea what is in there,” he says. Open-source repositories such as arXiv and the scholarly database PubMed of abstracts are thought to be “very popular” sources, he says, although paywalled journal articles probably have their free-to-read abstracts scraped by big technology firms. “They are always on the hunt for that kind of stuff,” he adds.

Proving that an LLM has used any individual paper is difficult, says Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye, a computer scientist at Imperial College London. One way is to prompt the model with an unusual sentence from a text and see whether the output matches the next words in the original. If it does, that is good evidence that the paper is in the training set. But if it doesn’t, that doesn’t mean that the paper wasn’t used — not least because developers can code the LLM to filter responses to ensure they don’t match training data too closely. “It takes a lot for this to work,” he says.

Robo-writers: the rise and risks of language-generating AI

Another method to check whether data are in a training set is known as membership inference attack. This relies on the idea that a model will be more confident about its output when it is seeing something that it has seen before. De Montjoye’s team has developed a version of this, called a copyright trap, for LLMs.

To set the trap, the team generates sentences that look plausible but are nonsense, and hides them in a body of work, for example as white text on a white background or in a field that’s displayed as zero width on a webpage. If an LLM is more ‘surprised’ — a measure known as its perplexity — by an unused control sentence than it is by the one hidden in the text, “that is statistical evidence that the traps were seen before”, he says.

Copyright questions

Even if it were possible to prove that an LLM has been trained on a certain text, it is not clear what happens next. Publishers maintain that, if developers use copyrighted text in training and have not sought a licence, that counts as infringement. But a counter legal argument says that LLMs do not copy anything — they harvest information content from training data, which gets broken up, and use their learning to generate new text.

AI is complicating plagiarism. How should scientists respond?

Litigation might help to resolve this. In an ongoing US copyright case that could be precedent-setting, The New York Times is suing Microsoft and ChatGPT’s developer OpenAI in San Francisco, California. The newspaper accuses the firms of using its journalistic content to train their models without permission.

Many academics are happy to have their work included in LLM training data — especially if the models make them more accurate. “I personally don’t mind if I have a chatbot who writes in the style of me,” says Baack. But he acknowledges that his job is not threatened by LLM outputs in the way that those of other professions, such as artists and writers, are.

Individual scientific authors currently have little power if the publisher of their paper decides to sell access to their copyrighted works. For publicly available articles, there is no established means to apportion credit or know whether a text has been used.

Some researchers, including de Montjoye, are frustrated. “We want LLMs, but we still want something that is fair, and I think we’ve not invented what this looks like yet,” he says.

Nature 632 , 715-716 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-02599-9

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India: Authorities must protect protesters demanding justice after rape and murder of Kolkata doctor

Responding to the violent attacks yesterday by an unidentified gang on protesters who were demonstrating against the heinous rape and murder of a doctor in Kolkata in India, Aakar Patel, Chair of Board at Amnesty International India said:

“The shocking attack and intimidation of peaceful protesters who were only demanding justice for the brutal rape and murder of a doctor in Kolkata is despicable.

“The authorities have an obligation to facilitate the exercise of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and to protect protesters from abuse, including from non-State actors, such as unwarranted interference or violence by other members of the public or counterdemonstrators. Leaving unaddressed these attempts to hinder the ability of the population to exercise their rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly will only increase the frustration and anger towards the authorities.

Undue delays in the investigation will further the climate of fear, impunity and uncertainty. Aakar Patel, Chair of Board at Amnesty International India

“We urge the authorities to ensure that those responsible for the attack on peaceful protesters are held accountable and brought to justice in fair trials. Meanwhile, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), as the leading agency on the case, must conduct a swift, thorough, impartial and independent investigation into the horrific rape and murder of the female doctor at RG Kar Medical college and hospital in Kolkata. Undue delays in the investigation will further the climate of fear, impunity and uncertainty.”

Background:

On 9 August, a 31- year-old trainee doctor was raped and murdered at the RG Kar Medical college and hospital in Kolkata, capital city of the state of West Bengal in eastern India. The events sparked a wave of protests across the country.

On 13 August, the Kolkata High Court transferred the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), citing the lack of significant progress and possibility of destruction of evidence. The court also noted serious lapses on the part of the hospital administration.

On 14 August, unidentified people attacked staff members who were protesting peacefully and vandalized parts of the government-run RG Kar Medical college and hospital.

A protesting doctor, who witnessed the attacks, told Amnesty International that a group of people assaulted several protestors including medical professionals, who suffered minor injuries. Police officers at the hospital were unable to stop the attacks and emergency phone calls by protesters for further backup went unanswered.

Since then, more protests calling for a swift investigation and a new law against violence against doctors have been held around the country.

Essay on Indian Culture for Students and Children

500+ words essay on indian culture.

India is a country that boasts of a rich culture. The culture of India refers to a collection of minor unique cultures. The culture of India comprises of clothing, festivals, languages, religions, music, dance, architecture, food, and art in India. Most noteworthy, Indian culture has been influenced by several foreign cultures throughout its history. Also, the history of India’s culture is several millennia old.

Components of Indian Culture

First of all, Indian origin religions are Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism . All of these religions are based on karma and dharma. Furthermore, these four are called as Indian religions. Indian religions are a major category of world religions along with Abrahamic religions.

Also, many foreign religions are present in India as well. These foreign religions include Abrahamic religions. The Abrahamic religions in India certainly are Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Besides Abrahamic religions, Zoroastrianism and Bahá’í Faith are the other foreign religions which exist in India. Consequently, the presence of so many diverse religions has given rise to tolerance and secularism in Indian culture.

The Joint family system is the prevailing system of Indian culture . Most noteworthy, the family members consist of parents, children, children’s spouses, and offspring. All of these family members live together. Furthermore, the eldest male member is the head of the family.

Arranged marriages are the norm in Indian culture. Probably most Indians have their marriages planned by their parents. In almost all Indian marriages, the bride’s family gives dowry to bridegroom. Weddings are certainly festive occasions in Indian culture. There is involvement of striking decorations, clothing, music, dance, rituals in Indian weddings. Most noteworthy, the divorce rates in India are very low.

India celebrates a huge number of festivals. These festivals are very diverse due to multi-religious and multi-cultural Indian society. Indians greatly value festive occasions. Above all, the whole country joins in the celebrations irrespective of the differences.

Traditional Indian food, arts, music, sports, clothing, and architecture vary significantly across different regions. These components are influenced by various factors. Above all, these factors are geography, climate, culture, and rural/urban setting.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Perceptions of Indian Culture

Indian culture has been an inspiration to many writers. India is certainly a symbol of unity around the world. Indian culture is certainly very complex. Furthermore, the conception of Indian identity poses certain difficulties. However, despite this, a typical Indian culture does exist. The creation of this typical Indian culture results from some internal forces. Above all, these forces are a robust Constitution, universal adult franchise, secular policy , flexible federal structure, etc.

Indian culture is characterized by a strict social hierarchy. Furthermore, Indian children are taught their roles and place in society from an early age. Probably, many Indians believe that gods and spirits have a role in determining their life. Earlier, traditional Hindus were divided into polluting and non-polluting occupations. Now, this difference is declining.

Indian culture is certainly very diverse. Also, Indian children learn and assimilate in the differences. In recent decades, huge changes have taken place in Indian culture. Above all, these changes are female empowerment , westernization, a decline of superstition, higher literacy , improved education, etc.

To sum it up, the culture of India is one of the oldest cultures in the World. Above all, many Indians till stick to the traditional Indian culture in spite of rapid westernization. Indians have demonstrated strong unity irrespective of the diversity among them. Unity in Diversity is the ultimate mantra of Indian culture.

FAQs on Indian Culture

Q1 What are the Indian religions?

A1 Indian religions refer to a major category of religion. Most noteworthy, these religions have their origin in India. Furthermore, the major Indian religions are Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism.

Q2 What are changes that have taken place in Indian culture in recent decades?

A2 Certainly, many changes have taken place in Indian culture in recent decades. Above all, these changes are female empowerment, westernization, a decline of superstition, higher literacy, improved education, etc.

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‘Kantara,’ ‘Aattam,’ ‘Uunchai,’ ‘Ponniyin Selvan’ Among Winners at India’s National Film Awards

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Anand Ekarshi’s Malayalam-language “Aattam” (“The Play”) was named best film on Friday at India ‘s National Film Awards. The film also won editing for Mahesh Bhuvanend and original screenplay for Ekarshi.

Sooraj R. Barjatya won best director for Bollywood film “ Uunchai ,” starring Amitabh Bachchan. Neena Gupta won supporting actress for the film.

Rishabh Shetty’s Kannada-language “ Kantara ” won the award for ‘best film providing wholesome entertainment,’ while Shetty also won best actor.

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Arpita Mukherjee and Rahul V. Chitella won the dialogue award for “Gulmohar,” which also won best Hindi-language film and scored a special mention for lead Manoj Bajpayee.

Ravi Varman won best cinematography for Mani Ratnam’s “ Ponniyin Selvan : Part 1,” which also won best Tamil-language film, background score for A.R. Rahman, and sound design for Anand Krishnamoorthy.

“K.G.F: Chapter 2” won best Kannada-language film and Anbariv for action choreography, while “Karthikeya 2” won best Telugu-language film.

Pritam won best composer for Ayan Mukerji’s Bollywood film “Brahmastra,” for which Arijit Singh won male singer. The same picture also won best film in the animation, visual effects, gaming and comic category for VFX team Jaykar Arudra, Viral Thakkar and Neelesh Gore.

Bombay Jayashree won the female singer for Malayalam-language film “Saudi Vellakka.”

Somnath Kundu won best makeup for Bengali-language film “Aparajito” and Ananda Addhya won production design for the film.

Joshy Benedict’s “A Coconut Tree” won best animation film.

The award for best book on cinema went to “Kishore Kumar: The Ultimate Biography” by Anirudha Bhattacharjee and Parthiv Dhar.

The awards were delayed due to the COVID pandemic and are presented to films released in 2022.

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