Explainer: What are Classical Languages of India?
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
September 26, 2019
The debate over
languages ceases to stop. After Amit Shah’s statements on Hindi, the Prime
Minister extolled the diversity of languages in India. But what is meant by
Classical languages? How much such languages exist in India? Here is an
explainer.
Discussion on Language has been at thecenter stage of India’s societal discourse over the last few weeks.  While speaking at the ‘Howdy Modi’ event inHouston, Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the diaspora gathered at NRGstadium on Sunday saying that ‘everything is fine’ in eight different Indian languages-Punjabi, Gujarati, Telugu, Kannada, Tamil, Marathi, Bengali and Odia inaddition to Hindi and English. He also stated that languages are an important identity of India’s liberaland democratic society. ‘Our languages are a great identity of our Liberal
and Democratic Society. For centuries hundreds of languages, hundreds of dialects,
have been moving forward in our country with a sense of co-existence and they
still remain the mother tongue of millions of people. This diversity of India is the
very basis of our Vibrant Democracy’ said the Prime Minister.
Recently, Home Minister Amit Shah’s statementson Hindi had triggered discussions across all sections of society including media& social media platforms.
What is the Status of
various languages?
While Hindi and English are the official languages of the CentralGovernment for communication and administrative purposes, no language in Indiahas been conferred the status of the national language. As per Schedule VIII of the Constitution ofIndia, 22 languages have been recognised as Scheduled languages. Also, tilldate, six languages have been conferredthe status of ‘Classical Language’ in India. The first language to be accordedwith that status is Tamil. Tamil was declared classical language back in 2004.In the following year, Sanskrit was accorded with the status. In 2008, Teluguand Kannada were conferred with the status followed by Malayalam in 2013. Odiais the latest addition to the list and received the status in 2014. Theproposal of Maharashtra government to confer Marathi with the status is underconsideration by the Central Government.
4 of the 6 Classical languages are Dravidian
Of the six classical languages, five ofthem are regional languages except for Sanskrit which is not specific to anyregion. Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam are Dravidian languages while Sanskrit andOdia are Indo-Aryan languages.
As per the 2011 Census, 78.1% of totalpopulation has one of the Indo-Aryan languages as mother tongue while 19.6% ofthe total population has one of the Dravidian languages as mother tongue. Thereare 21 and 17 languages under the family of Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languagesrespectively. It has to be noted that not all of these languages are recognizedas scheduled languages in the constitution.
How many people speak
these Classical languages?
As per 2011 census, the percentage of totalpopulation whose mother tongue is recorded as one of these classical languagesis in the following chart. The number of people who reported Sanskrit as mothertongue is only 24,821.  Since this numberis small, the percentage of Sanskrit speakers with respect to the totalpopulation is negligible and hence, it has not been included in the graph.
The data also suggests that 93% of thepeople with mother tongue Kannada are in Karnataka. Similarly, 93% of those whorecorded mother tongue as Malayalam are in Kerala. Tamil Nadu is home to 92.3%of the population whose mother tongue is Tamil and Odisha has 92.5% of thepeople who recorded Odia as mother tongue. In the case of Telugu, 87% of thosewho recorded it as their mother tongue are in Andhra Pradesh & Telangana. Inthe case of Sanskrit, 15.3% of those with Sanskrit as mother tongue are inMaharashtra. 12.3% and 13.6% of the people with mother tongue Sanskrit are inUttar Pradesh and Bihar respectively. Population with Sanskrit as mother tongueare also found in Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Goa and otherstates.
What is the criteria
for conferring the status of Classical Language?
According to the Ministry of Culture, the norms for according status ofclassical language are that the language should have a recorded history of morethan 1500 years with ancient valuable literature recorded in it. Further, thelanguage has to be original and not derived from another speech community. The guidelines of the government areas follows:
Upon receiving the proposal forconsidering a language for the status, the Ministry of Culture refers it to theCommittee on Linguistic Experts through the Sahithya Akademi forrecommendations. The Ministry then forwards the proposal along with therecommendations to the Prime Minister’s Office for further action.
What are the benefits of being conferred the ‘Classical’ status?
The Ministry of Human Resources Development gives away two major international awards every year for scholars ofeminence in Classical Indian Languages. Centre of Excellence for studies inClassical Languages is also set up. MHRD also sends a request to the UniversityGrants Commission to create a certain number of Professional Chairs for theClassical Languages in central universities to begin with. Annually, funds aredisbursed by the Central Government for promotion and development of theselanguages.
The Central
Institute of Indian Languages located in Mysore, Karnataka works for the promotion of Kannada, Telugu,Malayalam and Odia. For the promotion of Tamil, a separateinstitute, Central
Institute of Classical Tamil was established in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. Sanskrit language promotion isdone by the Government through three deemed universities- Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeeth (Tirupati), Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthanand Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeeth in New Delhi.
Funds are allocated to theuniversities/institutes for seminars, book publications, projects, fellowships,scholarships, orientation programmes and workshops. As per the data provided in theanswers in Lok Sabha, the allocation of funds appears to be meagre. The dataalso suggests that Sanskrit gets a lion’s share of these funds.
Presidential Awards in Classical Languages
As per the notification of MHRD on 01 March 2019 inviting recommendations for Presidential Award 2019, 21 awards for scholars of Sanskrit and 32 awards in the category of Classical languages  have been called for, in addition to awards in other languages. The 32 awards in classical languages include 8 each in Classical Telugu, Classical Kannada, Classical Malayalam and Classical Odia. As Tamil was missing from the list, it led to a furore in Tamil Nadu. It was later clarified that the Central Institute of Classical Tamil (CICT) was giving awards for Tamil. However, the information for Tamil awards is available only till 2015-16 on the CICT website.  Honouring Sanskrit scholars started in 1958 and from 2016, awards for the four classical languages were introduced.
Advocate in Chennai filed five writ petitions between 2008 and 2016 with
respect to classical languages
R. Gandhi, an advocate in Chennai filed writ petitions in 2008 in the MadrasHigh Court, one seeking reconstitution of the Committee of Linguistic Experts andthe other challenging the notification of Telugu and Kannada as classicallanguages. In 2014, he filed another petition seeking strict adherence to thecriteria laid down for classifying a language as classical and in 2015, hechallenged the notification of Malayalam and Odia as classical languages. The MadrasHigh Court in 2016 dismissed all these petitions and ordered that all the petitions related to this were closed. TheCourt also added that the petitioner could give his suggestions fordetermination of the type of literature, that can be the bench mark forqualification for consideration as a classical language. These writ petitionsled to the delay in considering the proposal of Marathi.
The concept of classical languages has beena long debated issue since the notion has not been adopted by UNESCO. Therehave been debates around the criteria itself and whether or not each languagesatisfies all the conditions laid down. While the recognition in India is goodfirst step towards promoting these languages, the meagre allocations do not dojustice to the mandate.