India's Forgotten Tongues: The Anatomy of Language Decline

Languages are disappearing around the world at an unprecedented pace. UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger (2023) estimates that a language dies roughly every two weeks, a quiet death that erases an entire way of viewing and understanding the world. Each time a language dies, we lose more than just the words; we lose a cultural universe of myths, songs, humour, and history.

Illustration by The Geostrata

In India, a country with what is usually described as linguistic diversity, where there are more than 19,500 dialects and mother tongues (Census 2011), the global loss of languages is paradoxical. The country that once spoke in hundreds of different languages is going silent.

From the fading sounds of Saimar spoken in Tripura to the endangered song-like sounds of Toda spoken in Tamil Nadu, the languages of India are dying as we speak, victims of modernity, globalisation, and our shifting aspirations of social evolution.

This article puts India’s loss of languages in the context of the global loss of languages, looking particularly at globalisation and the dominance of English, but also at the contextual sacrifices we accept socially when we accelerate the loss of our languages.

A LINGUISTIC EXTINCTION EVENT

Today, there are over 7,000 languages spoken around the world, but linguists project that half of those will vanish by the end of the century (UNESCO, 2023). David Crystal, an eminent linguist, has referred to this as “a linguistic extinction event,” on par with the scope and significance of biodiversity loss. These are global, aggregate phenomena, not isolated to any one region. Globalisation and urbanisation have incentivised language expansion.

The dominant lingua franca of our current era is English, Mandarin, Spanish, and Arabic, and many smaller language communities are marginalised. Educational frameworks related to the colonial past privileged these languages as the “languages of opportunity,” creating social structures tied to the ability to speak the language or a colonial language.

What results can be described as “linguistic imperialism”: the expansion and domination of one language takes over and expands to other language communities, eroding cultural and epistemic diversity and homogenising the world’s populations.

To cite specific examples, in Australia, there are approximately 800 Aboriginal languages and dialects, many of them surviving solely in archives or desperate attempts at ceremonial usage. Similar situations exist in Latin America with indigenous dialects or in North America with Native American languages.

THE INDIAN PARADOX: A NATION OF MANY, SPEAKING LESS

India has been a historical bastion of linguistic diversity. Currently, the country is experiencing a gradual crisis. The PLSI identified approximately 780 languages currently spoken in India, whilst in the 2001 Census, only 122 languages were tallied with more than 10,000 speakers, of which only 22 languages are included in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India. In the last six decades, over 250 languages have disappeared, and UNESCO lists 197 Indian languages today, ranging in their endangerment status from “vulnerable” to “critically endangered.”

For example, the Saimar language in Tripura has fewer than ten speakers remaining, while the Majhi language of Sikkim, once integral to fishing communities, is no longer transmitted. The Toda language of the Nilgiri Hills, the Birhor of Jharkhand, and the Nahali of Maharashtra are also languishing.

However, the matter is more profound than mere neglect. The issue is not simply that the state has ceased to afford said languages protection; society has stopped valuing them altogether. In rural and urban environments, the move to speak Hindi or English is often voluntary, due to aspiration and convenience.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE DOMINANCE AND THE LEGACY OF COLONIAL MODERNITY

India’s ruling language hierarchy has its genesis in colonial education policy. Thomas B. Macaulay’s Minute on Indian Education (1835) introduced English in a dual role: as a medium of instruction and as a civilisational tool to engender “a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.” 

After independence, India retained most of this order. English fluency at the time signalled intelligence, job prospects, and association with a globalised modernity. Today, English is both a bridge and a barrier connecting India to the world, whilst actively neutralising its indigenous languages, which can’t compete economically.

However, to blame English alone is unhelpful. The real underpinning issue lies in our thinking as a collective group. In middle-class households, speaking one's mother tongue can sometimes be construed as uncouth. Parents will take pride in how their children speak in English fluently, while allowing their native words to quietly wither away. Markets, media, and schools exacerbate this performance, but the product of our society performs that exoticism.

This linguistic hierarchy is agonising to point out, but it means that language death in India is neither solely a vestige of colonialism, nor that in India, but also a socially constructed choice that reflects our aspirations, insecurities, and standards of prestige.

TECHNOLOGY, MEDIA, AND THE DIGITAL DIVIDE

The digital revolution presents us with both challenges and advantages. While global platforms accelerate the dominance of English and diminish indigenous content, it is noteworthy that, in certain instances, technologies are also evolving as tools of revitalisation. 

In India, for example, the Bhashini initiative, which is part of the National Language Translation Mission, aims to develop open-source AI data sets to translate Indian languages across digital platforms and represents a substantial step towards direct inclusion. Similarly, the Endangered Languages Project by Google and community-based AI recordings in northeastern India show that technology can both document and retain languages that are nearing extinction. With that said, technology will only be meaningful if we are able to demonstrate to our communities clear and intentional value for linguistic diversity.

THE GLOBAL REFLECTION: LANGUAGE DEATH OUTSIDE OF INDIA

The Indian experience is a representation of a global situation. In Australia, over 90% of Aboriginal languages are classified as endangered. In North America, Native American Languages like Lakota now survive only through the forms of immersion programs in the community. Across Africa, hundreds of indigenous languages have been marginalised by colonialism or globalisation.

However, not all stories end in silence. The Māori revival in New Zealand, the revitalisation of Hebrew in Israel, and the Cymraeg language strategy in Wales are evidence that both state policy and public engagement can actually reinstate downtrends. Each one implies that language death is not inevitable; only apathy is.

INDIA'S POLICY RESPONSE: BALANCING REVIVAL AND REALITY

There are signs that India is beginning to acknowledge the ongoing crisis. The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 focuses on multilingualism and mother-tongue-based education as the national motto. The Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) records endangered dialects and languages. Importantly, Anvita Abbi, a linguist, suggests that documentation and preservation of the languages must involve the land's communities. Without such ownership and involvement, documentation becomes a record of extinction.

On a positive note, local initiatives like Adivasi Bhasha Sammelans in Odisha, or Santhali Ol Chiki script and agamous re-invention provide examples of how community-driven and community-engaged revival can indeed work. Many of these efforts, however, are small and do not have sufficient funding, especially when the national and state languages and policies are focused primarily on Hindi and English as part of the ontological agenda.

If we truly want to preserve the diversity of languages we have in India, we need to shift the way India imagines its own linguistic diversity. Linguistic diversity should not be seen as a burden, but rather as a type of cultural capital; it is a living record of collective memory.

WHY IT MATTERS: THE EXPENSE OF LOSING A LANGUAGE

Every language embodies an identity, history, and wisdom. Anthropologist Wade Davis characterises them as “old-growth forests of the mind.” When a language ceases to exist, it is not merely the words that disappear, but entire ways of viewing and thinking about the world.

Research (Nettle & Romaine, 2000) reveals that areas with high levels of linguistic diversity also tend to have biodiversity hot spots; this means that often when we lose a language, we are also losing environmental knowledge. Psychologically, communities that have lost their language often experience cultural displacement and generational alienation. Therefore, language revitalisation is not simply a nostalgic pursuit but a form of resistance and reaffirmation of self in a homogenised world.

The death of language comprises more than just language; it entails who we have become as a society. India's problem is not simply what colonialism foisted upon us; it is what we have fallen out of touch with due to modernity. In our anxiousness to be global, we have grown linguistically utterly rootless.

Therefore, saving a language is more than saving; it is about participation; it is in the daily act of becoming a speaker, a teacher, and a listener. Every endangered word is simply another losing light in the constellation of human wisdom, and every languishing discourse a challenge to non-remembrance.

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BY MUSKAN GUPTA

TEAM GEOSTRATA

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