Hindi was the fastest growing language in India in the 10 years between 2001 and 2011, closely followed by Kashmiri, Gujarati, Manipuri and Bengali, according to a Business Standard report that cited a new census data.

Sanskrit remains the least spoken among the scheduled languages with 24,821 speakers despite an increase of 76 per cent from 2001. While the Hindi language topped the growth chart at 25.19 per cent, adding close to a 100 million speakers, Kashmiri (22.97 per cent), Gujarati (20.4 per cent), Manipuri (20.07 per cent), and Bengali (16.63 per cent) came second, third and fourth, according to new census data.

With 520 million speakers, Hindi remains the most spoken language and Bengali the second most spoken, at 97 million speakers.

Tamil and Malayalam speaking population has fallen across most North Indian states by -5 per cent and -10 per cent, respectively. On the other hand, the states saw over 33 per cent increase in the number of Hindi, Bengali, Assamese and Odia speakers, hinting at a reverse migration from earlier years when people from the two southern states migrated in large numbers to the north, a Times of India report said yesterday (28 June).

The most number of English speakers are from Maharashtra (104,000) followed by Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. There are now 260,000 people who consider English as their mother tongue; up from 226,000 in 2001, an increase of 14.67 per cent.

Two scheduled languages have seen a fall in the number of people calling them as their mother tongues. While Urdu declined by 1.58 per cent and Konkani by 9.54 per cent. Marathi with 83 million speakers displaced Telugu (81 million) to become the third most common mother tongue after Hindi and Bengali.

Language Growth

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