Abstract:
Language is one of the prominent resources that should be planned for the sociopolitical
wellbeing of a multilingual and multiethnic country. This study intends to examine the
consequences of adopting multiple language policy in such a country. India is a multilingual
and multiethnic country where several hundreds of mutually unintelligible languages and
dialects are spoken. Therefore India has been chosen as the sample of this study. Attempts have
been made to examine the consequences of multiple official languages policy India, citing
official records on the subject as the sources of data. Indian government has declared a number
of regional official languages for each of the regional states while adopting Hindi and English
as the official languages of the whole country. All judicial, administrative, and educational
matters in regional states are carried out in the respective regional languages. Hindi and English
function as the languages of the central government and facilitate communication between
central government and regional states. This language policy has drawn success in maintaining
the sociopolitical wellbeing of the country, but not in securing the future of regional languages.
The long lasted predominance of Hindi and English has threatened the status and the future of
the regional languages. Therefore one can hardly say that this multiple language policy has
done justice to the conservation of those languages. Thus it is clear that multiple language
policy cannot be regarded as the best solution to all the language related issues in a multilingual
and multiethnic country.
