A Historical Analysis of the Language Controversy in Indian Education – 1614 To 1970

India has a rich heritage in terms of languages and every language spoken, even by the most remote areas, is respected by the Constitution through the likes of Article 29 and Schedule VIII. “History demonstrates that, from times immemorial, India has been a multilingual country, each language having a certain region in which it was supreme, but none of these regions truly constituted unilingual kingdom or principality.” Broadly speaking, there are four major groups of Indian languages:

• Indo-Aryan: Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Oriya, Assamese, Kashmiri, Nepali, Konkani, Punjabi and Urdu.
• Dravidian: Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam and Tulu.
• Mongoloid: Manipuri, Tripura, Garo, and Bodo.
• Tribal Language and Dialects: Gond, Oraon, Santal, Mundari, etc.

In ancient India, Sanskrit was the most prevalent language especially during the period of Aryans who introduced it. There are evidences which show that Sanskrit was spoken by elite while the „low order‟ people used Pali as a means of communication. With the arrival of Islamic rulers, the language became Persian in most of the regions of the then India. At the regional level, local dialects became popular which borrowed words from other main prevalent languages like Persian, Turkish, Arabic, etc. Gradually Urdu developed as a confluence of Persian speaking classes/foreigners and Sanskrit speaking locals.