Tony Jefferson, age 16, of Shreveport, La., for his question:
WHAT LANGUAGE IS SPOKEN IN INDIA?
About 180 languages, including 14 major ones, plus more than 70 different dialects are spoken in India today. In just one state, Madhya Pradesh, the people speak more than 375 different languages and dialects.
The use of so many different languages provides obstacles that hinder India's development.
Hindi is the official language of India. India's constitution of 1950 provided that Hindi would be the official language but that government business would be conducted in English for 15 years. In 1965, English was dropped as an official language and became an "associate" language.
Although English serves as a common language among most educated Indians, only about 2 percent of the people speak the language. About half of the people speak Hindi.
Many Indians who cannot speak Hindi did not want it to become their nation's official language. They claimed that the best jobs in government and industry would go to those who speak Hindi.
Generally, Indians who speak the same language live in the same state. A major language is spoken throughout most of the states. Some states have been created from parts of other states to unite members of a language group.
In 1956 the government reorganized the states for this reason, reducing their number from 27 to 14. However, the people of the new state of Bombay still included two large language groups: persons who spoke Gujarati and those who spoke Marathi.
Each group was unhappy and wanted its own language. So the government in 1960 divided Bombay into two new states: Gujarat and Maharashtra.
In 1966, two states were formed from Punjab because of language differences. The states are Punjab, where Punjabi is spoken, and Haryana, where Hindi is spoken.
The chief languages of India belong to two families: Indo European and Dravidian. The Indo European languages, spoken in northern India, include Hindi and its closely related form, Urdu.
The languages spoken in northern India, in addition to Hindi and Urdu, also include Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kasshmiri, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi and Rajasthani. They come from Sanskrit, an ancient Indian language with many words similar to words in European tongues.
The main Dravidian languages, spoken in southern India, include Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu.
The tribal people speak their own languages.
The people of India belong to all the major racial groups of man. More than 90 percent of them are Caucasians.
Most other Indians belong to tribes such as the Bhils, Nagas, Santals and Todas. About 7 percent of the nation's population are tribesmen and they live in the hills and forests apart from the rest of the people.