LANGUAGE

India is a country of several languages and dialects. The languages belong to four major groups:

• Indo-Aryan,
• Dravidian,
• Sino-Tibetan
• Austro-Asiatic.

About three-fifth of the people speak the Indo-Aryan languages, i.e., Hindi, Sanskrit, Bangla, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Oriya, Assamese, Kashmiri and Urdu. The four major Dravidian languages are Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam, and are spoken in southern India.

• The Constitution of India recognizes 22 languages, as specified in the 8^th Schedule.

Religions

India is a secular state and Indians belong to a number of religious communities. There are Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Zoroastrians, among others. Numerically, Hindus (79.8%) outnumber other communities, followed by Muslims (14.2%) and Christians (2.3%).

The scheduled castes and scheduled tribes together make up about 24.56 % of the population. Scheduled castes 16.48 % and the scheduled tribes 8.08 %. Scheduled castes are most numerous in Uttar Pradesh, followed by West Bengal and Bihar.

There are no scheduled castes in Nagaland, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep. They form the largest proportion in the total population in Punjab (28.31 %) followed by Himachal Pradesh and West Bengal. Among union territories, Delhi has the largest percentage of scheduled castes 19.05 %.

Scheduled tribes form the largest proportion of the total population in Mizoram (94.75 %) and Lakshadweep (93.15 %). There are no scheduled tribes in Delhi, Chandigarh, Pondicherry, Punjab, Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir. They are most numerous in Madhya Pradesh, followed by Maharashtra, Orissa and Jharkhand.

 

India’s Religious Composition 2015

Religion	Population (Crore)	%
Hindus	96.63	79.8
Muslims	17.22	14.2
Christians	2.78	2.3
Sikhs	2.08	1.7
Buddhists	0.84	0.7
Jains	0.45	0.4
Others	0.79	0.7