The Supreme Court recently in the case Varshatai v. State of Maharashtra (2025) has addressed the issue of language, particularly Urdu language when the petitioner came before the Supreme Court praying the Court to direct Municipal Council to not put Sign Board in Urdu language in addition to Marathi language.
The Supreme Court while rejecting the prayer has said that,
Language is not religion. Language does not even represent religion. Language belongs to a community, to a region, to people; and not to a religion.
Language is culture. Language is the yardstick to measure the civilizational march of a community and its people. So is the case of Urdu, which is the finest specimen of ganga-jamuni tahzeeb, or the Hindustani tahzeeb, which is the composite cultural ethos of the plains of northern and central India. But before language became a tool for learning, its earliest and primary purpose will always remain communication.
Coming back to our case, the purpose here for the use of Urdu is merely communication. All the municipal council wanted to do was to make an effective communication. This is the primary purpose of a language, which the Bombay High Court has laid emphasis on.
We must respect and rejoice in our diversity, including our many languages. India has more than hundred major languages. Then there are other languages known as dialects or ‘Mother Tongues’ which also run into hundreds. According to the 2001 Census, India had a total of 122 major languages including the 22 scheduled languages, and a total of 234 mother tongues. Urdu was the sixth most spoken scheduled language of India. In fact, it is spoken by at least a part of the population in all States and Union Territories, except perhaps 13 in our north-eastern States.
In the 2011 Census, the number of mother tongues increased to 270. However, it is to be noted that this number was also arrived at by taking into consideration only those mother tongues which had more than ten thousand speakers. Thus, it would not be wrong to say that the actual number of mother tongues in India would run into thousands. Such is the immense linguistic diversity of India!
The Constitution of India though mentions twenty-two Indian languages in its VIIIth Schedule, which includes both Marathi and Urdu, and significantly, ‘English’ is not a language mentioned in the VIIIth Schedule as it is not an Indian language. With this linguistic diversity, India is the most multilingual country in the world. In such a country, what should be the language for communication and use throughout the country, and what should be the national language became a vexed question during the debate in the Constituent Assembly. We have to keep in mind that language is not just a language, it is also representative of a culture.
That makes a discussion on language both sensitive and delicate and this is where one of our principal Constitutional 14 values of ‘tolerance’ must also come into play. We, the people of India, have taken great pain in resolving the language issue at the Centre, which is our unique achievement considering the linguistic diversity of the nation as we have been mentioning repeatedly.
According to Granville Austin, the Constituent Assembly had almost come to a breaking point while resolving the question of language or what should be the national language[1]. Finally, the members of the Constituent Assembly agreed on ‘Hindi’ to be the “Rajbhasha” i.e. the official language of the Union of India with English to be used for a period of 15 years from commencement of the Constitution, though Parliament was given the powers to extend this period.
Part XVII of our Constitution is on the official language. Article 351 emphasizes on the spread of Hindi language and to develop the language, inter alia, by assimilating the forms and style and expressions used in “Hindustani” and other languages of the VIIIth Schedule and wherever necessary or desirable, by drawing vocabulary, primarily from Sanskrit but also secondarily from other languages.
We must now refer to Article 345 which relates to the Official language of a State:
“345. Official language or languages of a State: Subject to the provisions of articles 346 and 347, the Legislature of a State may by law adopt any one or more of the languages in use in the State or Hindi as the language or languages to be used for all or any of the official purposes of that State: Provided that, until the Legislature of the State otherwise provides by law, the English language shall continue to be used for those official purposes within the State for which it was being used immediately before the commencement of this Constitution.”
This Article empowers State legislatures to adopt Hindi or any other language in use in that State as the official language of that State.
A five-judge Bench of this Court in Uttar Pradesh Hindi Sahitya Sammelan v. State of Uttar Pradesh (2014) 9 SCC 716, had an occasion to consider the Constitutional provisions relating to official languages of the State, when Urdu was adopted as the second language in the State of Uttar Pradesh. The Uttar Pradesh Official Languages Act was enacted in the year 1951, and it made Hindi the official language in the State. 16 In 1989, an amendment was introduced in the Act by which Urdu was made the second official language “for such purposes as may be notified by the State Government from time to time.”
In pursuance of powers conferred under the 1989 amendment to the 1951 Act, the State government issued a notification on 07.10.1989 notifying the use of Urdu as a second language for certain purposes. The Appellant therein challenged the Constitutional validity of the 1989 amendment to the 1951 Act before the Allahabad High Court. The Division Bench which heard the matter delivered a split verdict. As a result, the matter was referred to a third judge, who held that the 1989 Amendment to the 1951 Act did not suffer from any infirmity and was not unconstitutional. The appellant then filed an SLP before this Court, against the decision of the High Court, where the matter was ultimately referred to a Constitution Bench of Five Judges, which upheld the Constitutional validity of the 1989 Amendment, and the addition of Urdu as a second language was held to be valid.
Reference
Varshatai v State of Maharashtra (2025)
[1] GRANVILLE AUSTIN, Language and the Constitution-the half-hearted compromise, THE INDIAN CONSTITUTION: CORNERSTONE OF A NATION, Oxford University Press (2000) at pp. 265- 307