VI. DEMOGRAPHY

A. Number of Speakers

1. Main Habitat:

The main places of habitat of the Hindi speech community are ………

1. Male/Female: According to the 1991 census, the male-female population (above one lakh) of the Hindi speech community is as follows.

States	Total number of persons	Male	Female 

2. Rural/Urban: According to the 1991 census, the rural and the urban population of the Hindi speakers in the states of ……….. are as follows.

States 	Total number of rural person		Total number of urban person 

2. Decennial Growth:

The decennial growth of the Hindi speech community is present in the following.

	Years	Number of Speakers 

B. Settlement Pattern

The settlement pattern of the speakers of the Hindi speech community is both rural and urban.

DEMOGRAPHY

According to the 1991 census, there are a total of 114 languages and 216 mother tongues, 18 scheduled languages and 96 not specified in the schedule.

Hindi language includes around 48 languages, dialects, or mother-tongues like Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Garhwali, etc. There were 337,272,114 persons who speak Hindi according to 1991 census.

1. 	Hindi			133,435,360
2. 	Agarwali			2
3. 	Ahiri-Hindi			4
4. 	Awadhi			528,281
5.	Baghelkhandi		557,034
6. 	Baigani			3,723
7.	Bairagi			1
8.	Bangaru			115
9.	Bhandauri			1
10.	Bhangari			3	
11.	Bharati			2,118
12.	Bharatpuri			246	
13.	Bhateali Hindi		293
14.	Bhulia			2,704
15.	Bilaspuri			2,875	
16.	Binjhwari			1,277
17.	Braj Bhasha		76,189
18.	Budali			1
19.	Bundelkhandi		22,065
20.	Burgaza			3
21.	Chamari			2,225
22.	Chameali Hindi		2
23.	Chmrali			2
24.	Cherwani			10
25.	Chattisgarhi		2,962,038
26.	Deswali			427
27.	Deswali / Hariani		3,403
28.	Devanagari		342
29.	Dewar Boli			270
30.	Dhamdi			1,560
31.	Dogri Hindi			14
32.	Etawali			3
33.	Gadi Hindi			19
34.	Gahora			52
35.	Gangapari			171
36.	Gaoli			814
37.	Gondani			267
38.	Gouriya			251
39.	Gowro			4,802
40.	Hindi			123,025,489
41.	Hindi Mandeali		496
42.	Hindi Mehlogi		2
43.	Hindi Pahari		5,741
44.	Hindi Punjabi		32
45.	Javalpuri			1
46.	Jamuali Hindi		14
47.	Jati			31
48.	Kahari			738
49.	Kanauji			11
50.	Kanauri Hindi		1
51.	Kankeri			102
52.	Kasmiri Hindi		2
53.	Khariboli			5,989,128
54. 	Kidki			2
55.	Kirari			632
56.	Kosari			249
57.	Koshti-Bundeli		5
58.	Koyri			2
59.	Kurmi-Hindi		1
60.	Laria			45,524
61.	Lodhanti			8
62.	Lodhi			27,393
63.	Maina			14
64.	Manipuri			11
65.	Mali			969
66.	Marari			37,742
67.	Marli			11
68.	Mathuri			2,831
69.	Mehtar			3
70.	Mirzapuri			457
71.	Mundi			2
72.	Muria-Hindi		167
73.	Nagari-Hindi		6,731
74.	Nagpuri			1
75.	Nagwanshi			5
76.	Nepali Hindi		1
77.	Ojhi			1,065
78.	Pachhimi Hindi		942
79.	Pachhimi Hindi pahari  	5 
80.	Pando			6,322
81.	Panki			356
82.	Pardesi			32,423
83.	Pingal			52
84.	Powari			64,078
85.	Purbi			5,264
86.	Raghobansi		2,484
87.	Rewapari			431
88.	Rohtaki			8
89.	Roman- Hindi		3
90.	Seheria			2
91.	Satnami			548
92.	Sirmauri Hindi		107
93.	Sugujia			3,093
94.	Swadeshi			1
95.	Tharu Awadhi		3
96.	Tibia			1
97.	Towargarhi			4
98.	Uttari			12

Official languages: Hindi the national language and primary tongue of 30% of the people, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Assamese, Kashmiri, Sindhi, Sanskrit. Hindisthani a popular variant of Hindu/Urdu, is spoken widely throughout northern India.

Material Census:

Hindi – according to the 1991 Census of India, is the mother tongue of 233,432,285 persons (22% of the entire Indian population), and is spoken as a language (which includes 47 or so mother tongues cobbled up under it) by 337,272,114 persons (42.22% of the entire Indian population). It is also used as a second language by another 6.16% of the population, and as a third language by yet another 2.60% by other language speakers. In total in India, Hindi is known officially to 50.98% of Indian and thus, has the status of the major language of the nation.

Modern India is a multilingual nation. As per her 1961 count of the languages, India has more than 1650 mother tongue, belonging to genetically 6 different language families. They are rationalized into 216 mother tongues and groups into 114 languages by the 1991 Census –

1. Austro-Asiatic (14 languages with a total population of 1.13%)
2. Dravidian (17 languages with a total population of 1.13%)
3. Indo-European – Indo-Aryan (19 languages with the total population of 75.28%)
4. Germanic (1 language, with the total population of 0.01%)
5. Semito-Harmitic (1 language, with the total population of 0.01%) and
6. Tibeto-Burman (62 languages with the total population of 0.95%)

A good number of languages recorded in the Indian Census could not be classified as to their genetic relation, and so are treated as unclassified languages. Hindi belongs to the Indo-Aryan family of languages.

The present day nomenclature/term of Hindi language includes 49 mother tongues, creating a statistical majority. It is amazing to see how the statistical majority of Hindi speakers is achieved. Different mother tongues are combined to make a linguistic majority. If this kind of clustering is not done, the linguistic demography of Hindi will be different. It is the mother tongue of 22% of the population; it has 20.22% of mother tongues clustered under it as a language. It is used as a second language by 6.16%, and as a third language by 2.60%, totaling to 50.98% of the entire population of India. Hindi crosses the magic figure of the definition of majority, a language with more than 50% of the population of India, in the 1991 census.

	1. Hindi with other Mother Tongues	  	20.22
	2. Hindi Mother Tongues 			22.00
	3. Hindi Bilingual				6.17
	4. Hindi Trilingual				2.60
	5. Urdu					5.17 

• Hindi is mainly a rural language with 78.61% of its speakers residing in the rural areas, and only 21.39% of Hindi speakers are urbanites.
• If we take communicability of Hindi in India as the sole criterion, we have to take into consideration that Urdu and Hindi are mutually intelligible speech forms for centuries together and they have a common core of phonology, syntax and a major vocabulary share. They are separated only by two script forms and of late, since a century or so, by two religions. There were times when the religion was not in picture as a separator. Technological developments make script a minor issue due to easy convertibility of a language from one script to another script. So, if we will take Indian Urdu and Hindi together as one entity for all communicative purposes and add the statistics of Urdu speakers to Hindi itself. Then in that case Hindi is communicable to 15% of the population of the country.
• Multilingualism in Hindi: There are two dimensions to the situation – Hindi speakers being multilingual in other languages, and other language speakers being multilingual in Hindi. The rate of bilingualism and trilingualism in the country in on the increase from decade to decade. The same was in 1961-9.70%, in 1971-3.04%, in 1981-13.34% and in 1991-19.44%. However, speakers of Hindi are least bilingual (11.04%), and least trilingual (2.98%) in any other language(s). Their bilingual and trilingual profile, thus, is far below the national average of 19.44%. However one finds an increase of bilingualism among Hindi speakers in 1981 from 4.76% to 11.01% in 1991. But, among other language speakers, Hindi has spread substantially. The following statistics of the 1991 census for the bilingual and trilingual speakers clearly reveal this situation. Multilingualism among other minor languages is widespread and normally it is in the language of the state or the union territory where their speakers mainly reside.

Multilingualism of Major Indian language speakers in Hindi.

Sl.No.	Language		Multilingualism	Bilingualism	Trilingualism
1	Kashmiri		52.52		42.16		10.36
2	Sindhi		50.61		40.74		09.91
3	Punjabi		36.25		30.75		05.50
4	Nepali		35.46		23.25		12.21
5	Marathi		25.79		23.79		02.00
6	Konkani		24.75		08.58		16.47
7	Manipuri		24.31		10.02		14.29
8	Gujarati		23.95		22.13		01.78
9	Urdu		20.61		16.60		04.01
10	Malayalam		19.07		02.69		16.38
11	Assamese		16.93		08.82		08.11
12	Oriya		11.36		04.56		11.36
13	Telugu		08.01		03.28		04.73
14	Kannada		08.98		03.89		05.09
15	Bengali		06.64		03.99		02.65
17	Tamil		01.56		00.70		00.86


Sl. No.		State			Hindi % (1991)

1		AN Islands			17.62
2		Andhrapradesh		02.77
3		Arunachalpradesh		07.31	
4		Assam			04.62
5		Bihar			80.86
6		Chandigarh		61.07
7		Dadra & NH		05.05
8		D & Diu		 	3.59
9		Delhi			81.74
10		Goa			03.17
11		Gujarat			02.94
12		Haryana			91.00
13		Himachalpradesh		88.87
14		Jammu & Kashmir		17.32
15		Karnataka			01.97
16		Kerala			-
17		L Dweep			-
18		Madhyapradesh		85.55
19		Maharastra		07.81
20		Manipur			01.31
21		Meghalaya			02.19
22		Mizoram			01.28
23		Nagaland			03.36
24		Orissa			02.40
25		Pondicherry		-
26		Punjab			07.29
27		Rajasthan			89.56
28		Sikkim			04.87
29		Tamilnadu			-
30		Tripura			01.66
31		Uttarpradesh		90.11
32		West Bengal		06.58

Hindi as a language specified in the Eighth Schedule (Scheduled languages):

Hindi is the official language of India and the medium of official discourse. The number of speakers who returned the language as their mother tongue in the 1991 Census of India is 337,272,114. This includes the various dialects and sub-dialects of Hindi. According to the census, out of 10,000 persons, 4,022 are Hindi speakers. Out of the total population 39.85% returned Hindi as their mother tongue.

Most of the speakers of Scheduled and Non-scheduled languages use Hindi as a second language because Hindi is the common language of communication and official discourse.

Following is the distribution of 10,000 persons by language – India, States and Union Territories – 1991.

The comparative strength of Hindi in 1971, 1981 and 1991 is given below :

Distribution of Hindi in Indian States and Union Territories – 1991 census:

Following is the distribution of the dialects of Hindi and the number of persons who returned the dialect as their mother tongue.