SOCIO-CULTURAL REGIONALIZATION OF INDIA BASED ON LANGUAGE.

SOCIO-CULTURAL REGIONALIZATION OF INDIA BASED ON LANGUAGE

India is a country with economic, caste, ethnic, religious, and linguistic diversities. Language is the vehicle of culture (Herskovits 1968). It is the most recognizable part of the culture (Hofstede, 2001). India has amazing linguistic heterogeneity as more than 200 languages are spoken by different groups (Hasnain 2003).

In India there are 1,652 languages out of which 350 are recognized as ‘major languages’ and 18 are the official languages (Chaudhary 2004 p.8). A single ethnic area may have many languages, as in Nagaland which has 19 languages and dialects (Deol 1995 p.25). The first language of most people is the scheduled language attributed to them but about 38 million people speak “mother-tongues” which, are not included in the Indian constitutions' scheduled language groups (Stern 2003 p.20). Hindi is spoken by about 400 million people, English by only the elites, and Sanskrit which has great cultural, religious, and sentimental significance is hardly spoken by anyone. The languages spoken by the Indian population can be divided into four language families:-

1. Austric family (Nishad)

2. Dravidian family (Dravid)

3. Sino-Tibetan family (Kirat)

4. Indo-European family (Aryan)

There is a great diversity in the languages included in these four language families. Around seventy-three percent of people speak Aryan languages, twenty percent speak Dravidian languages, 1.38 percent speak Austric languages and 0.85 percent speak Sino-Tibetan languages. The Austric family mainly includes languages spoken by the central Indian tribal belt: Santhals, Munda, Ho, Koraku, etc.

The Sino-Tibetan family languages are spoken mainly by the tribal belts of the North-East. The Dravidian family comprises languages like Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Gondi, etc. which are spoken by the people in Southern India. The languages in the Indo-Aryan language family are spoken by the majority of the population. This language family includes languages like Marathi, Konkani, Rajasthani, Gujarati, Marwari, Mewati, Hindi-Urdu, Chattisgarhi, Bengali, Maithili, Punjabi, Kumayuni and Garwahli, etc. The English language was introduced by the British in the country. It is spoken by a minority of people who are elites and who lead India towards modernization (Stern 2003).

Indian linguistic regions are extremely heterogeneous and diverse. For our discussion, it has been divided based on four geographical regions: Northern, Central, Southern, Western, and, Eastern.

 

1) Northern Zone  This comprises of region between the Himalayas in the north and the Vindhya ranges in the south. This region includes states like Punjab (including western Punjab now in Pakistan), Kashmir, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, part of Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Bengal, Assam, etc. In this area, the languages derived from Sanskrit are spoken by the majority of the population and the languages are Sindhi, Punjabi, Kashmiri, Hindi, Bihari, Bengali, Asami, and Nepali. North India is dominated by the Proto-Australoid racial elements (Hasnain 2003). The main languages spoken in this region belong to Indo-European or the Aryan language. Punjabi identity is mainly defined by language.

 

2) Central and Western  Zone:- This zone comprises regions between the northern and southern zones and includes states like Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Kathiawar, Maharashtra, and Orissa. The main languages spoken here are Rajasthani, Hindi, Gujarati, Kathiawadi, Marathi, and Uriya are spoken which are of Sanskrit origin, so there is a close affinity to the northern zone. But within this region, there are large segments of people who speak Dravidian and Austro-Asiatic languages. As this Zone lies between northern, southern, and eastern zones it is influenced by all these regions though not uniformly. In Rajasthan, Kathiawad, and Gujarat only Sanskritic languages are spoken. The Western region of India comprises regions like Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Maharashtra.

In Maharashtra majority of the people speak the Sanskritic language, while many people in the east speak Dravidian languages and Marathi includes many words of Dravidian origin. In Orissa more than one-fourth of the population is tribal and the languages spoken here belong to all three linguistic families in India.

3) Southern Zone: This region encompasses those parts of southern and central India where the languages of the Dravidian family are spoken and can be divided into five regions: Karnataka where the Kannada language is spoken; Andhra Pradesh or Telingana, where Telugu is spoken; Tamil Nadu where the language is Tamil; Kerala or Malabar where the Malayalam is spoken; the region from north of Andhra Pradesh through Bastar and Western Orissa into Southern Bihar where several mixed languages are spoken. The Dravidian languages are related in both form and history (Trautmann 1993).

4) Eastern Zone: This zone comprises regions of regions in the east and northeast where languages belonging to the Austro-Asiatic family of languages are spoken. The Eastern region is dominated by the Mongoloid race (Hasnain 2003 p.153). The Sino-Tibetan family languages are spoken mainly by the tribal belts of the North-East but Bengali which belongs to the Indo-Aryan language family is predominately spoken in West Bengal