Talk:Languages with official status in India/Archive 2

Cleanup tag

This article is totally off track and inaccurate. The Title says : offical Languages of India, but it discusses all languages, not just official ones.

Take the list of Offical languages for Goa is stated as Konkani, Marathi, Portuguese, English. The facts are: Portuguese is non existent, Marathi still has to be added as an official language(the process is underway) English is NOT an official language anywhere in India. It is an associate language.

Next take the entry for Maharashtra: Marathi and Konkani. In Maharashtra Konkani is treaded as a dialect of Marathi and not as an independent language. There are no govt organisation working on Konkani.Konkani is only spoken in pockets on the coast.

This and most messages above point to a very sloppy and misinformed style of writing. The content will be more correct for "Languages in India" than "Official languages of India". either rename this article or clean it up thoroughly.

--Deepak D'Souza 06:23, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

One ore point: India has a list of 22 official languages (including Hindi and English). English is not an official language --Deepak D'Souza 06:30, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Question: states and union territories have Hindi as the principal official language.

I cannot tie up the statement in the heading:

"Out of the 28 states and 7 union territories, only 10 states and 3 union territories have Hindi as the principal official language."

with the tables, which show Hindi as the official language of 12 states

1. Arunachal Pradesh
2. Bihar
3. Chhattisgarh
4. Gujarat
5. Haryana
6. Himachal Pradesh
7. Jharkhand
8. Madhya Pradesh
9. Rajasthan
10. Uttarakhand
11. Uttar Pradesh
12. Delhi

It is also given for the two Union territories

1. Andaman and Nicobar Islands
2. Chandigarh

I can see how two of the states might have Hindi as an official language, but not the principle one. I cannot see how the two union territories listed can equate to the three mentioned in the heading -- Q Chris 11:51, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Isn't Delhi a territory? And Gujarat doesn't have Hindi as its primary language, so that'd about do it, no? john k 16:07, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Repeated removal of other POV

User:Sarvagnya is repeatedly removing cited content which presents other POV in classical languages of India section. I request him to stop doing so. Thanks. Praveen 22:07, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

POV in History section

The article is wrought with several POV statements and uncited material. Let me start by addressing this one in the History section:

However, due to protests from South Indian states where there is low Hindi penetration, the "twin language" system is still in vogue.

I see several issues with this statement:

1. First, the protests were not only in South Indian states. Bengal had its share of violance too, as can be seen from the last paragraph of this article.

2. To say that it's due to the protests that the twin language system is still in vogue, is POV unless citation is provided.

3. "Low Hindi penetration" is weasel. How does one define "low" and "penetration" ? Has there been a published survey of the amount of "Hindi penetration" in all the states and does the South come out as "low" ?

I suggest removing this statement, if it cannot be reworded properly. Lotlil 04:06, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Reorganisation

Hi,

A lot fo this article has very little to do with the topic of "Official languages of India" and belongs instead in Languages of India. For example, the national language debate has nothing to do with which languages are official. The decision to call Sanskrit, Tamil and any other languages "classical" also has no bearing on the official use of the language. The official recognition granted to a language is not the same as the status of a language as an official language, if you see what I am trying to say. The section on "other popular languages" and on the use of Portuguese in Goa etc. also has no bearing at all on their official status.

Apart from that, there are a lot of claims that are wrong. The Consitution does not recognise the languages in the Eighth Schedule as "official languages". They are only entitled to representation on the Official Languages Commission, and their character is to be taken into account in developing Hindi. There are other similar issues with the article. I am prepared to spend the time correcting these problems, but because I am new here I wanted to consult other contributors for their views before I did anything. -- Lexmercatoria 14:46, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Should I say "anishedam anumitam" and conclude that nobody has any objections to my proposed changes? -- Lexmercatoria 15:52, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

OK, I have now done this. I hope everybody agrees that it is an improvement. The section on classical languages was moved to the article Languages of India, which is where it belongs. I don't know what to do with the section on "other popular languages of India". It doesn't belong here, since none of them are official in any way. If anyone wants to put it in any other article, you can find it at this link -- Lexmercatoria 11:46, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Since it seems what I did was original research, I have reverted the article to the version as it stood before I intervened. The article is riddled with factual inaccuracies, but due to the paucity of secondary sources I will not try to fix them. I have added an appropriate tag. -- Lexmercatoria 23:20, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't think the right path to further wikifying this article, is through reversion to a less encyclopedic version. Rather since the main issue with the article is the lack of secondary sources, we should concentrate our efforts on locating such sources. Of course, we will be highly dependent upon your access to Indian law books, journals etc where such issues are more likely to be addressed with sufficient accuracy. Thanks. Abecedare 00:11, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

This issue is in a rather peculiar position. Because it is not an issue which is likely to be litigated, the standard commentaries on the Constitution don't discuss it. At the same time, because it is so obvious, it isn't the type of thing academic journals will publish. So locating secondary sources to support what I'd written isn't feasible.

There may, however, be something in political science or other social science journals, even though they will not analyse rules in this detail. What we will need to do is completely set aside what I've done so far, start by taking a look at whatever is available in journals and other secondary sources, and write a fresh article based only on that. This, in a nutshell, is why I undid my changes. I'm not planning to abandon the article. -- Lexmercatoria 00:22, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree with your analysis of the problem, but not necessarily with the solution. I would recommend that we search for secondary sources (in political and social science publications, as you say), and then replace/supplement the primary sources as and when we locate secondary publications. In the meantime, the current text of the article can serve as a guideline for what "facts" we need to get properly sourced. I don't see how reverting to a less encyclopedic version, which anyway was largely unsourced (except for the single issue of Tamil being declared a classical language) serves the reader or the wikipedia ideal. Abecedare 00:41, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment - First of all, this "no primary sources" or "primary sources will be allowed only if supplemented with a secondary/tertiary source" is taking wiki policies and guidelines too literally.. to the extent of being detrimental to article quality. Secondary sources as we have seen display wide differences in the way they treat the subject. Some even have taken the liberty to call Hindi the "national" language, which we all know is "factually incorrect". I would at this point like to point out WP:IAR here. There is no need to follow wiki policies and guidelines even when they are so patently detrimental to article quality. Lex's rewriting of this article is to be appreciated without any qualifications. For the first time in the article's history, it is 'looking' and 'reading' like an encyclopedia article. This nitpicking by some who claim to follow wiki P&G to the tee is proving detrimental to article quality and seems like a bad faith attempt to me. Sarvagnya 04:11, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Secondary Sources

I am collecting secondary sources (appropriate for this page) in the collapsible box below. Some of the links may not be accessible for everyone, but I will add relevant quotes from the. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:17, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Expand to see secondary sources, including 1) Mallikarjun, B. 2004. "Fifty Years of Language Planning for Modern Hindi-The Official Language of India.", Language in India. 2) Mallikarjun, B. 2004. "Indian Multilingualism, Language Policy, and the Digital Divide" Language in India. 3) Annamalai, E. 2004. "Nativization of English in India and its effect on multilingualism." Journal of Language and Politics.

1 Mallikarjun, B. (November 2004). Fifty Years of Language Planning for Modern Hindi–The Official Language of India, Language in India, Volume 4, Number 11. ISSN 1930-2940. Quote 20: "Once the Constitution of India came into force on January 26, 1950, the status of Hindi was greatly enhanced. Hindi in Devanagari script and the international form of Indian numerals form the Official language of the Union. Among the Indian languages, Hindi is the most highly empowered language which constitutionally/legally has multiple status - an official language of the Union; official language of 13 states and union territories; the major regional language in 9 states where it is a majority language, and an important minority language in 18 states and union territories. Also it is a language of deliberations of the Parliament of India and state legislatures in the states in which it is recognized as an official language. Apart from this, the Constitution also provides that, with mutual consent, any two states or the states and the Union can use it as a language for their inter- communication. It is the majority language of the country and also a Scheduled Language since it is in the VIIIth Schedule of the Constitution. It is the only language about whose development the Constitution has given direction, and hence it has the constitutional right for development." 2 Mallikarjun, B. (April 2004). "Indian Multilingualism, Language Policy, and the Digital Divide", Language in India, Volume 4, Number 4, ISSN 1930-2940. Quote 21: "Normally for any policy extension initiated by the government, the government wants a list of languages. It will start with Hindi the official language of the Union at the first instance, and then move towards, at the second instance, to the Scheduled Languages. 3 Annamalai, E. 2004. "Nativization of English in India and its effect on multilingualism." Journal of Language and Politics, Volume 3, Number 1, 2004 , pp. 151-162(12), John Benjamins Publishing Company.