LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 26:3 March 2026
ISSN 1930-2940

Editors:
         Selvi M. Bunce, M.A., Ph.D. Candidate
         Nathan Mulder Bunce, M.A., Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         T. Deivasigamani, Ph.D.
         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Honorary Managing Editor & Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

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Language Policy of Karnataka Historical Evolution and Contemporary Challenges (Dedicated to my teacher Prof. M.S.Thirumalai)

Prof. B. Mallikarjun

Introduction
Linguistic landscape of Karnataka

Karnataka is one of the states positioned in the southern parts of the Union of India. It came into existence in the present form because of the reorganization of the states on the linguistic lines, by the unification of 20 Kannada speaking geographical administrative units of the British on Nov 1, 1956, based on the language used by majority of speakers and geographic contiguity. Like India, Karnataka also is a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-lingual pluralistic state. The linguistic demography of Karnataka presents a rainbow combination of mother tongues, and it is one of the most multilingual states in the country. As far as multilingualism is concerned there is no parallel to Karnataka in India, so are the issues of language use in education, administration, judiciary, mass communication etc., in the state. This multilingualism is unique not only because of coexistence of many languages but also because more people are having competence to use more languages other than their mother tongue. The Census of India 1971 recorded 166 mother tongues in Karnataka. The Census of India 2001 provides a list of 146 mother tongues along with their population. According to 2011 Census (since no census is conducted in 2021) of the number of speakers of the 18 languages in the state are: Kannada-4,06,51,090; Urdu-66,18,324; Telugu-35,69,400; Marathi-20,64,906; Tamil-21,10,128; Tulu-15,95,038; Konkani-7,88,294; Malayalam-7,74,057; Hindi-20,13,364; Kodava / Coorgi-1,10,508; Guajarati-1,14,616; Bengali-87,963; Tibetan-27,544; English-23,227; Odia-64,119; Nepali-19274; Punjabi-25981; Sindhi- 16,954 and 4 mother tongues are Lamani/Lambadi-9,74,622; Marwari-1,00,214; Banjari-25,373; Yerava-26536. First three of them are part of Hindi language and the last one is chunk of the Malayalam language as per the census records.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Prof. B. Mallikarjun
Reader cum Research Officer (Retired),
Central Institute of Indian Languages
Mysuru-570006, INDIA
and
Former Director, Centre for Classical Kannada,
Central University of Karnataka,
Kadaganchi, Kalburgi District – 585311, Karnataka, INDIA
mallikarjun56@gmail.com

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