New Delhi: Written in the Devanagari script, Hindi is the official language of the Government of India.
It is also one of the 22 scheduled languages of the Republic of India.
Hindi is the lingua franca of the so-called Hindi belt in the country.
Outside India, it is an official language which is known as Fiji Hindi in Fiji, and is a recognised regional language in Mauritius, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, and Suriname.
It is the fourth most-spoken first language in the world, after Mandarin, Spanish and English. Part XVII of the Indian Constitution deals with official language. Under Article 343, the official language of the Union has been prescribed, which includes Hindi in Devanagari script and English.
At the state level, Hindi is the official language of the following Indian states: Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Uttarakhand.
“Each state may also designate a ‘co-official language,’” says language expert Dr Ravi Kishan Batra.
In Uttar Pradesh, for instance, depending on the political formation in power, this language is generally Urdu, Batra says.
“Similarly, Hindi is accorded the status of official language in union territories such as Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu and the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi.”
India has 23 constitutionally recognised official languages.
Hindi and English are the official languages used by the central government.
The state governments use respective official languages.
“In broad sense, Hindi is an ethnic rather than a linguistic concept. It is that part of the Indo-Aryan dialect continuum that lies within the cultural Hindi belt in the northern plains of India,” says Delhi-based linguist Dr Ajit Sharma.
“These languages are the so-called regional languages of the Hindi area, sometimes less
accurately called Hindi dialects.”
The Hindi belt or Hindi heartland is a loosely defined linguistic region in north-central India where varieties of Hindi in the broadest sense are widely spoken.
“Hindi belt is sometimes also used to refer to those Indian states whose official language is Hindi and have a Hindi-speaking majority, namely Bihar, Chandigarh, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh,” explains Sharma.
Hindi is the most widely spoken language in northern parts of India.
The Indian census takes the widest possible definition of Hindi as a broad variety of “Hindi languages”.
According to a 2001 census, even though 45 per cent of the Indian population know Hindi, only 25 per cent declared Hindi as their native language or mother tongue.
