Census 2011 and the count of languages
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The 2011 census lists 270 mother tongues against 1,652 in 1961; the gap is mostly a change in how names are classified and cut off, not lost speech.
The language tables of Census 2011 came out in June 2018. They list 121 languages, 22 of them in the Eighth Schedule and 99 outside it, and those 22 are the mother tongue of 96.71 per cent of the people. The 270 mother tongues in the tables are those with 10,000 or more speakers.
The fall from 1,652 in 1961 looks like a catastrophe, and it is mostly a change in classification. The 1961 census printed every name returned, including 530 it could not classify and 103 from outside India. Since 1971 the tables print only names with at least 10,000 speakers, and many others are folded into larger headings. On the same cut-off the count rises: 208 in 1961 and 270 in 2011. The closer match for 1,652 is 2011's 1,369 rationalised mother tongues.
The classification itself is a political choice. Bhojpuri and Rajasthani count as mother tongues under Hindi, which is how Hindi reaches its total. Small languages do die, but this table cannot show it: the census measures names returned, and the number moves when the rules do.
- language
- political