Why does the Census of India focus on mother tongues? How does it make linguistic minorities invisible?

The Census of India may tell you a lot of things about the country, but if you want to know how many languages are spoken, you will have to look elsewhere. The reason? The census lists languages that are specified as mother tongue by more than 10,000 people. This criterion has come in for criticism at many levels. Why should the decennial official survey focus on mother tongue?
And what explains the huge jump — 76% — in people who list Sanskrit as their mother tongue in 10 years flat? Equally importantly, why should the census disregard the mother tongues of minorities, spoken by less than 10,000 people? Here’s a closer look at these riddles in Census 2011.

When the language report of Census 2011 was released in June 2018 — a bit late, considering the next census is due in 2021 — it listed the number of speakers of 22 scheduled languages (those in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution) and of 99 nonscheduled languages, including English, Tulu and Khasi, all of which have more than 10,000 people calling them their mother tongues.



Around 528 million people, or 44% of the population, listed Hindi as their mother tongue, while the other top scheduled languages — Bengali, Marathi, Telugu and Tamil — accounted for over a quarter of the population. Around 96.7% of the population listed one of the 22 scheduled languages as their mother tongue and 3.1% named one of the non-scheduled languages. However, the mother tongues listed by 0.2% of the population were lumped under “Other Languages”.

In percentage terms, it may look insignificant, but in absolute terms it is not: these are the languages spoken by nearly 2 million people. “The requirement of 10,000 speakers for languages is very problematic. It is a big number for endangered languages.… Officially, you are making linguistic minorities invisible,” says Hany Babu MT, a linguist who teaches at the University of Delhi. The criterion of 10,000 speakers has been in place since the 1971 Census.

India, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), has 197 endangered languages, the highest in the world. These include Nihali, a language that reportedly has 2,000-2,500 speakers in central India, and Mra, with around 350 speakers in Arunachal Pradesh. But you won’t find them in the census report.



Speaking Terms
The census takes into account the second and third languages of speakers but its stress on “mother tongue” is tricky. It defines mother tongue thus: “Mother tongue is the language spoken in childhood by the person’s mother to the person. If the mother died in infancy, the language mainly spoken in the person’s home in childhood will be the mother tongue. In case of doubt, the language mainly spoken in the household may be recorded.”

Babu believes that the census should consider people’s level of proficiency in different languages instead of their mother tongue. DG Rao, director of the Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) in Mysuru, says migration further problematises the census’ yardstick of mother tongue. For instance, someone born to a Telugu-speaking couple in New Delhi may be more fluent in Hindi and English than in Telugu, but will still list Telugu as her mother tongue. “Census data collection is a mechanical job, not a linguistic exercise,” says Rao.



Sanskrit High
There is another curious number: in 10 years, between 2001 and 2011, Sanskrit, which is the least spoken of the 22 scheduled languages, recorded the highest jump — 76%. It is the mother tongue of 24,821 people. Maharashtra has topped the states where Sanskrit is spoken, with a nearly tenfold jump in the number of people calling Sanskrit their mother tongue — from 408 in 2001 to 3,802 in 2011. Uttar Pradesh, which topped the list in 2001, saw its Sanskrit speakers fall by more than half — to 3,062.

Language experts say the reason for this is the way the census is conducted. Enumerators ask questions and record answers as given by respondents. An enumerator is not meant to investigate or verify with follow-up questions. In the case of language, too, census enumerators record what people specify as their mother tongue, without asking any further questions. There is a possibility that someone lists a language as their mother tongue for reasons other than that they grew up speaking it.

Ganesh Devy, a cultural activist who headed the mammoth, non-governmental People’s Language Survey of India (PLSI), questions the veracity of the Maharashtra data. “I’ve spent so much time in Maharashtra and I’ve rarely seen anyone claiming Sanskrit to be their mother tongue… Sanskrit is a great language and proving its greatness does not need a falsehood.” Shrikant Bahulkar, a renowned Sanskrit scholar in Pune, says while he knows of a few families that converse in Sanskrit, the number of such people could not be what the census claims. “This kind of propaganda of Sanskrit does not lead you anywhere.”

Another Sanskrit scholar, who was in Pune at the time of Census 2011, calls Sanskrit the default language of conversation with his wife and son. “So we gave Sanskrit as the mother tongue for all us,” he says, requesting anonymity. While Sanskrit could be the mother tongue for his son as he grew up speaking it, it is not, technically, for the parents, since they spoke Konkani and Marathi in their childhood.

The scholar says Samskrita Bharati, which is affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, has been instrumental in promoting Sanskrit around the country. “They conduct courses and ask people to call Sanskrit their mother tongue.” Gajanan Ambhore, who works with Samskrita Bharati in Maharashtra, disputes this. “We tell people to speak to their kids in Sanskrit, but it obviously cannot become the parents’ mother tongue.”

Samskrita Bharati has courses ranging from 10 days to six months, the latter being a correspondence course and, according to Ambhore, has around 1,000 takers every year in Maharashtra. He says there is no reason to be surprised at the number of Sanskrit speakers in Maharashtra. While it is hard to disprove the census figures, it is also not wise to ignore those who question the mother tongue status.

“Calling a language your mother tongue and it actually being your mother tongue are two different things,” says Bahulkar. Madhav Deshpande, a professor of Sanskrit at the University of Michigan, says the declaration in the census reflects the dedication of a person to the study and acquisition of Sanskrit and their emotional bond to it, rather than the language being acquired from their mother. “As a linguist, however, I am not certain if the label of mother tongue for Sanskrit reflects reality.”

Questions sent to Manoj Kumar, deputy registrar general (language) at the Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, went unanswered.

100 Years Ago
It was almost a century ago that George Abraham Grierson, an Irish linguist and civil servant, conducted the first government survey to list the languages in British India. Between 1898 and 1928, he identified 179 languages and 544 dialects. The attempt to update Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India (LSI) is ongoing, with reports for only a few states like Odisha, Sikkim and Rajasthan out yet.



There is non-governmental evidence too: People’s Language Survey of India, carried out between 2010 and 2013, identifies 780 languages, while Ethnologue, a global database, says in its 2019 report that there are 453 living languages in India, out of 7,111 in the world. India has the fourth highest number of languages in the world, according to that report, with Papua New Guinea topping the list with 840. But an official survey does carry more weight.

In the census figures, while Sanskrit speakers went up many times, Urdu and Konkani are the only scheduled languages to report a fall in the number of speakers between 2001 and 2011. Konkani speakers fell by 9.3% and Urdu speakers by 1.5%.

The rise and fall in the number of speakers of languages need to be analysed. It is also cause for celebration or worry. This is especially so in a country where language has been a politically fraught issue: from anti-Hindi agitations — which started in the Madras Presidency in the 1930s and peaked in 1965 in what had by then become Madras State — and the reorganisation of states along linguistic lines to the recent protests against Hindi signage in metro stations in Karnataka. India cannot afford to shy away from a scientific approach in estimating how many languages are spoken in the country. It is also important that the census reflects, and not dismisses, the languages spoken by those at the very margins of society.