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Nobody hates the Hindi language. In fact, it is the most widely used language in India, apart from being the mother tongue of about 43.63 per cent of the total population of the country, as was revealed by the Census Report of 2011. Hindi as a mother tongue being in the first spot, Bengali comes second with 8.3 per cent of Indians declaring it as their mother tongue, followed by Marathi with 7.09 per cent. Telugu, the fourth most popular language in India in terms of the number of people who had declared it as their mother tongue. It, however, showed a declining trend from 2001 Census to 2011 Census, from 7.19 per cent to 6.93 per cent. Gujarati, the mother tongue of majority of people of Gujarat, from where Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah come, is spoken as mother tongue by 4.74 per cent of people in the country, thus occupying the sixth spot. Urdu comes next with 4.34 per cent people declaring it as their mother tongue. Assamese, declared mother tongue by 1.26 per cent people, stands at the 12th spot and Bodo with 0.12 per cent speakers stands at the 21st position.
Taking a closer look at the language break-up of the population of India as counted in the Census of 2011, one would find that people only in 12 out of the 35 states and Union Territories – that include Andhra Pradesh and Telangana as undivided as in 2011 – had overwhelmingly chosen Hindi as their first choice for communication. According to analysts, among the rest, while a few chose Hindi as their second or third language of communication, a majority chose English. The Census data of 2011 also shows that most states, leaving aside a few in northern and central India, do not primarily speak Hindi, but have definitely adopted the language as a secondary language. More significantly, most states of southern and northeastern India are not Hindi-speaking states, and have adopted English as their secondary language. It is a fact that over 96 per cent of the population in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Delhi and Himachal Pradesh speak Hindi.
The Census data of 2011 also shows that the share of Hindi-speaking people in Gujarat is significantly lower than most other states. The southern and north-eastern states – with the exception of Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim – have the lowest proportion of Hindi-speaking population, among all States. What one must also remember is that, according to the Census data of 2011, Hindi was not the first choice of language in as many as 23 states and Union Territories. In 16 states, a very low percentage of people had chosen Hindi as a second or third choice. The Census data had also clearly shown that only 0.6 per cent of people in Kerala are native speakers of India, which is the lowest among all states and Union Territories. What however was noteworthy about the analysis of the language data of the Census of 2011 is that Maharashtra, Punjab and Sikkim substantially lower proportion of people declaring Hindi as their mother tongue, but have higher than average general Hindi speakers.
Going through the language data of Census 2011, one would also find that out of every 10,000 people in India, as many as 9,672 speak one of the 21 Scheduled languages barring Sanskrit, while the remaining 328 speak one of the other non-Scheduled language. The break-up of number of persons speaking some of the Scheduled languages as their mother tongue among every 10,000 population makes interesting reading – Hindi (4,363), Bengali (803), Marathi (686), Telugu (670), Tamil (570), Urdu (419), Gujarati (458), Kannada (361), Odia (310), Malayalam (288), Punjabi (274), Assamese (126), Maithili (112), Santhali (61), Kashmiri (56), Nepali (24), Sindhi (23), Dogri (21), Konkani (19), Manipuri (15), and Bodo (12).
This however does not mean people who have various mother tongues other than Hindi dislike Hindi. In fact it is also the mostly commonly used language among most people whose mother tongue is different, with purposes varying from place to place, need to need. But then, nobody in this country would love any other language to be imposed on him or her just because some individual has suddenly discovered that India needs a language that unifies.