Tip: click on any red marker for details on endangered languages in a particular region of India.
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Cultural invisibility – India’s 600 potentially endangered languages | Linguistic Survey of India (official website) >>
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“To be taught in a language other than one’s own has a negative effect on learning. [Starting a child’s education in the mother tongue] allows teachers and students to interact naturally and negotiate meanings together, creating participatory learning environments that are conducive to cognitive as well as linguistic development.”- UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report 2016 quoted “Why is India obsessed with English-medium education – when it goes against scientific consensus?” by Shoaib Daniyal (Scroll.in 6 August 2020 | Learn more >>
Table of the number of endangered languages with the states that they are spoken in according to India Today | Learn more >>
| Indian states | No. of languages | Endangered Languages |
| Andaman and Nicobar Islands | 11 | Great Andamanese, Jarawa, Lamongse, Luro, Muot, Onge, Pu, Sanenyo, Sentilese, Shompen and Takahanyilang |
| Manipur | 7 | Aimol, Aka, Koiren, Lamgang, Langrong, Purum and Tarao |
| Himachal Pradesh | 4 | Baghati, Handuri, Pangvali and Sirmaudi |
| Odisha | 3 | Manda, Parji and Pengo |
| Karnataka | 2 | Koraga and Kuruba |
| Andhra Pradesh | 2 | Gadaba and Naiki |
| Tamil Nadu | 2 | Kota and Toda |
| Arunachal Pradesh | 2 | Mra and Na |
| Assam | 2 | Tai Nora and Tai Rong |
| Uttarakhand | 1 | Bangani |
| Jharkhand | 1 | Birhor |
| Maharashtra | 1 | Nihali |
| Meghalaya | 1 | Ruga |
| West Bengal | 1 | Toto |
The Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore, has been working for the protection and preservation of endangered languages in India under a central scheme […]
Central Institute of Indian Languages (Official website): https://www.ciil.org
Source: International Mother Language Day: 42 Indian languages heading towards extinction, India Today, 21 February 2018
URL: https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/gk-current-affairs/story/international-mother-language-day-42-indian-languages-heading-towards-extinction-1174384-2018-02-21
Date visited: 21 July 2020
“[T]he Constitution gives equal respect to all communities, sects, lingual and ethnic groups, etc. The Constitution guarantees to all citizens freedom of speech (Article 19), freedom of religion (Article 25), equality (Articles 14 to 17), liberty (Article 21), etc.” – Supreme Court judgment quoted by The Hindu in “India, largely a country of immigrants” >>
In Marginalised but not Defeated, Tarun Kanti Bose (a seasoned public interest journalist) “documents the hard and difficult struggle to implement the Forest Rights Act, how the oppressed adivasis have united into forest unions, how they are now entering into new thresholds of protracted struggles and victories in a non-violent manner. […] A must for all young journalists, social science students, editors, civil society groups and the academia.” | Read the full book review here:
https://countercurrents.org/2023/05/book-review-marginalised-but-not-defeated >>
Learn more about “The world’s largest democracy“, its Constitution and Supreme Court and linguistic heritage, and why Democracy depends on Accountability in the face of Modernity and Globalization >>
India’s endangered languages
“Kolami, Koya, Gondi, Kuvi, Kui, Yerukala, Savara, Parji, Kupia. Do these names ring a bell? No, right? They are all native tribal tongues that have immensely contributed to enrich the language and culture of Telugu people. But these languages are dying due to a plethora of reasons — lack of practice, absence of education, poverty-stricken state of the speakers. The UNESCO lists 191 languages of India as endangered. And as Eduardo Hughes Galeano, the literary giant of the Latin America puts it, “Every two weeks, a language dies. The world is diminished when it loses its human sayings, just as when it loses its diversity of plants and beasts.”
Source: Times of India (Feb 21, 2017
URL: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/hyderabad/the-dying-tongues-of-telangana-and-andhra/articleshow/57253816.cms
One language dies every 14 days. By the next century nearly half of the ~7,000 languages spoken on Earth will likely disappear. But what is lost when a language falls silent? […]
Concluding his ambitious marathon Peoples’ Linguistic Survey of India (PLSI) which took four years of field work preceded by nearly 15 years of conceptualization and planning, Prof Ganesh Devy, the Sahitya Akademi award winner, literary critic and founder of the Tribal Academy at Tejgadh declares that out of 1,600-odd languages listed in the 1961 survey of India, they have been able to trace not more than 850 languages during their survey. The survey was initiated by Vadodara-based Bhasha Research and Publication Centre founded by Prof Devy.
Source: “The fight for survival: language and identity” by Association for Language Learning (Derby, UK)
URL: https://www.all-languages.org.uk/features/fight-survival-language-identity/
Date Visited: 24 September 2022
Learn more about India’s endangered languages >>
Up-to-date reports by Indian journalists and commentators
List of Indian magazines and web portals covered by the present Custom search engine
To search Indian periodicals, magazines, web portals and other sources safely, click here. To find an Indian PhD thesis on a particular tribal community, region and related issues, click here >>
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Adivasi Academy & Museum of Adivasi Voice at Tejgadh
Adverse inclusion | Casteism | Rural poverty
Anthropology | eBooks, eJournals & reports | eLearning
Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) Mysore
Colonial policies | Denotified Tribe vs. “criminal tribe“ | Imprisonment & rehabilitation
eBook | Adivasi Stories from Gujarat – Bhasha Research and Publication Centre (Vadodara)
eBook | Background guide for education
Endangered language | PeoplesLinguisticSurvey.org
Ganesh [G.N.] Devy | Publications | Lecture “A View of Higher Education in India”
History | Colonial policies | Freedom Struggle | Independence
Human Rights Commission (posts) | www.nhrc.nic.in (Government of India)
India’s Constitutional obligation to respect their cultural traditions
Languages and linguistic heritage
Literature and bibliographies | Literature – fiction | Poetry
Multilingual education is a pillar of intergenerational learning – Unesco
Museum & Society – A re-evaluation of Adivasi Heritage by Prof. Ganesh Devy
People’s Linguistic Survey of India | Volumes (PLSI) | PeoplesLinguisticSurvey.org
Scheduled Tribes | Classifications in different states
Video clips taken at Tejgadh and related information
Video | “Nations don’t make us human – languages make us human”: Ganesh Devy
Video | Tribes in Transition-III: “Indigenous Cultures in the Digital Era”