India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South
Asia.

It is the seventh-largest country by area,

The most
populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world

.

Indian cultural history spans more than 4,500 years.

Languages spoken in the Republic of India belong to several language families, the major ones being the Indo-Aryan languages spoken by 78.05% of Indians and the Dravidian languages spoken by 19.64% of Indians,^[5][6] both families together are sometimes known as Indic languages.^[7][8][9] Languages spoken by the remaining 2.31% of the population belong to the Austroasiatic, Sino–Tibetan, Tai–Kadai, and a few other minor language families and isolates.^[10]: 283 As per the People’s Linguistic Survey of India, India has the second highest number of languages (780)

 

According to the most recent census of 2011, after thorough linguistic scrutiny, edit, and rationalization on 19,569 raw linguistic affiliations, the census recognizes 1369 rationalized mother tongues and 1474 names which were treated as ‘unclassified’ and relegated to ‘other’ mother tongue category.^[50] Among, the 1369 rationalized mother tongues which are spoken by 10,000 or more speakers, are further grouped into appropriate set that resulted into total 121 languages. In these 121 languages, 22 are already part of the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India and the other 99 are termed as “Total of other languages” which is one short as of the other languages recognized in 2001 census.^[51]