Talk:India/Archive 28

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents

Secondary sources:

I have collected quotes from 21 secondary sources in the collapsible box below.

Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:40, 30 June 2007 (UTC) Last updated: Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:57, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Though several of these are applicable (particularly #8), others are off-topic (e.g., #9, which discusses a proposal, not law). Saravask 00:46, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I have reduced the secondary sources to 15 focused ones in the collapsible box below.

Thanks. Saravask 00:12, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Fowler&fowler«Talk» 03:25, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Discussion (continued)

  • Except the "...even while identifying Hindi as the official language of India..." part, the rest of the above passage is irrelevant to the discussion here. So, stop filling pages and wasting people's time. As for the 'matter-of-fact' claim that the author makes, it is a patently loose description of reality(understandable, considering that the subject of her discussion there is totally different). For that matter, I am sure that if you dig, you'll find plenty of secondary and tertiary sources even claim that Hindi is the "national" language, while in fact, the constitution clearly and conspicuously steers clear of even mentioning that word. The reality is far more nuanced as we have seen and it is in cases like this that we have to use primary sources(if available) to corroborate info from secondary and tertiary sources.
  • The fact of the matter is that, not only is "official language of the Union" not the same as "national" language, but, there is also no evidence to believe that it is even close. The "official language of the union" only means that hindi(along with english) is to be used in the transactions of the central govt. And even in these 'transactions' it is "Hindi only", "Hindi and English" or "English only" as the case may be. For example, states like Karnataka, TN, Andhra, Kerala etc., carry out all their transactions with the central govt., in English. A citizen of these states in turn uses Kannada(in case of Ktaka) with the state govt., and is free to use English with the babus in Delhi. The supreme court which is above(so to speak) the central govt., uses English. The "Constitution" which is 'above' the Supreme Court is in English with translations in several languages(including one in Hindi).
As an aside, the second half is indeed ironical. While one reading of it may suggest that Hindi piggybacked(unfairly) on Sanskrit's fair name, some others might lament that 'kommunal Porces' did afterall, manage to find Sanskrit a backdoor. Sarvagnya 19:33, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
You haven't produced a single reliable secondary source. You are now asserting that your claim needs "primary sources (if available)," while at the same time disparaging the secondary sources that disagree with you. Sumati Ramaswami, BTW, is a very careful historian of South Asia, one not given to "patently loose descriptions of reality" as you claim. The subject of the paper is not "totally different," as you again claim; the paper is a discussion of the history of the failed decade-long (1947-1957) attempt to make Sanskrit the official language of India and is very much linked to the language that eventually won out, namely Hindi. Almost every page of the paper discusses this issue. I have now increased the number of quotes from the paper to two and also moved the extended quote to a collapsible box. (The only reason I added the extended quote was to assure people that the author is not a Hindi protagonist.) I have no idea what you are alluding to in your aside, but since it is an aside and irrelevant to the discussion on hand, I will not dwell on it. Meanwhile, I will keep adding reliable secondary citations. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:02, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
Sumathi Ramaswamy is not news to me. I am fully aware of her scholarship and I have myself cited from her other works in a couple of articles that I have edited in the past. I have also read her books and will be citing her in future also. That I am 'disparaging' her scholarship, is, but a figment of your imagination.
She may have deliberated in her paper about Sanskrit's failed nom, but she doesnt delve into the nuances of what the constitution says and what it really means. And if you want secondary sources, just google. This piece from the Tribune first first weasels about the 1950 legislation and then declares - ...even more than half a century after being declared a national language, Hindi has not only not been given its due status but is also looked down upon by the elite... as if nothing changed since then. I am sure you'll find more on similar lines. As for sources like Britannica, Encarta etc., I dont think they have articles on the lines of Official languages of India etc.,. But we do. And all the content in this article is supposed to be a summary of articles that are downstream. We cant write something in the 'downstream' article and change its meaning when we summarise it here. The Indian govt gives preferential treatment(like in PSUs, railway booking counters, nationalised banks etc.,) to Hindi because it is one of its 'stated goals'. You cant point to that, confuse issues and conclude that Hindi is some sort of quasi-national language. It is not. There was a time in wikipedia when every second India related article had Hindi transliterations simply because Hindi was India's 'national language'(sic)! And I cleaned up much of the mess braving hordes and hordes of Hindi nationalists. You werent even around then. So dont give me this nonsense that I do what I do because I have a 'visceral' dislike for you or that I am anti hindi or that I disparage sources that disagree with me. Once again, SR isnt even discussing what we are discussing. Our discussion here starts off where her's ends. Sarvagnya 23:55, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
And the crux of the matter here is SR's reading of "...official language of the union.." as "official language of India/country". This is rather simplistic and flawed when you take a look at what the constitution actually says. If you read the constitution, it is clear that what is meant by the word "Union" is the "Union government" and not the country. And the Government of India is NOT the country. It is only a part of the country. Sarvagnya 00:12, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
Can you specify where Union is the Union Government and not the Union of India. --KnowledgeHegemony 09:20, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
Please read this and don't call it a hoax and term it one of the greatest hoaxes - http://www.constitution.org/cons/india/p01001.html
  1. Line 1:Name and territory of the "UNION":-
Clearly Union means the Country and not the Union Government.
Note: Just because you don't like a fact its not a hoax. The Constitution, CIA, Brittanica etc are not Hoaxes, neither are they Hindi fundmentalists.--KnowledgeHegemony 09:38, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
Explain this. KnowledgeHegemony 09:57, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
  • As it stands, Hindi and English are the official languages of the federation. They are the official languages of India, to the extent the central government is the Government of India. However, they are not the sole official languages of India, to the extent the Government of India is not the only government body that is involved in the administration of India. I really don't know how to make this clearer. At any rate, because of this, the term "official language" has a lot of nuances in relation to India, and it seems to me that an encyclopaedic article which is devoted to the sole topic of the official languages of India (as opposed to a throwaway sentence in a larger article) needs to describe this. If you disagree, you can feel free to revert that article to this version.
  • As far as the Eighth Schedule is concerned, if you look further up this page, you'll see that I started out by questioning whether it was appropriate to list the languages in the Eighth Schedule as the official languages in the box. See here. Almost nobody responded to that question. If people feel that "official languages" for the purpose of this article ought to only be Hindi and English, I'm not going to stand in your way - it was one of the options I suggested, for heaven's sake. But please understand the fact that you're taking a decision on what meaning you want to attach to the term "official language", that that is not the only meaning the term has as a matter of Indian law, and please be sure that you are convinced you have good reasons for taking that decision.
For the record, Hindi is my mother tongue (to the extent someone who grew up in South Bombay has a mother tongue).-- Lexmercatoria 21:18, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
No one has said that you are anti-Hindi; at least I haven't. What I said above was simply that citing primary sources (more than a few times) without supportive secondary sources constitutes original research (according to how WP defines original research). The Official languages of India page has 46 citations of primary sources and only one of a secondary source. If the secondary sources don't exist, then you should really be writing a paper for a constitutional law (or law and linguistics) journal, and if they do, you should cite them. Wikipedia is very clear on this, as I have mentioned above. I will reply to your other points later. I don't necessarily disagree with them. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:04, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
That is, bluntly put, asking the impossible. No journal is going to accept a paper which does nothing more than restate what the law self-evidently says. Anyway, if that is what Wikipedia's policies require, there isn't very much I can do about it. I guess I finally understand why articles which touch on issues of Indian law are so utterly abysmal, and so frequently get things wrong. -- Lexmercatoria 23:58, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
Well, it can't be that self-evident if it is not out there anywhere. At least you could write a survey article summarizing the state of affairs. For the record, the little that I have read of your posts above, I have found you to be a considerate and objective editor (in contrast to others with inscrutable compulsions); however, I am a little troubled by your words "... you're taking a decision on what meaning you want to attach to the term "official language", that that is not the only meaning the term has as a matter of Indian law, and please be sure that you are convinced you have good reasons for taking that decision." My understanding of WP policy is that we don't make those decisions; we simply follow precedence to the extent we can find it in the secondary sources. (Encyclopedia writing is dumb to that extent.) That is why I produced the 16 secondary source citations above. I think if Britannica, Encarta, the UN, UNESCO, the Library of Congress, US State Department, the British Foreign Office, etc. think that (in the context of a profile or information box) Hindi and English, as official languages of the union, deserve precedence over the other 21 official languages recognized by the constitution, then we need to take that precedence seriously. That is all I am saying. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:14, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
In India, law is still regarded as something of a trade, so there is a whole lot of stuff that all lawyers "know", which you won't find in the literature. In general, the moment you start dealing with delegated legislation, you stop finding secondary sources unless the subject is tax law.
The point I was trying to make is that, "official language" has these manifold meanings in law, which we need to take note of. I am still very new to Wikipedia, and I had no idea the rules were this strict about primary sources - my impression was that any sort of source was fine, so I was basically expecting to just have to point to sections, paragraphs, and so on to fix the many problems we have in articles where Indian law is relevant. Secondary sources frequently get things wrong, and I've seen so many incorrect treatments of India's language policy written by non-lawyers it makes mne want to tear my hair out. I suppose I'll just need some time to figure out how to work with the rules about primary and secondary sources. -- Lexmercatoria 00:38, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

I see. Yes, it does present a dilemma; however, it is well worth the wait for thinking it through, as you propose. If you need to run something by me, I am happy to help. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:59, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

My 2 cents: I don't detect that big a gulf between what Lex and F&F are claiming, and this may just be an instance of talking past each other. As far as I understand:

  • Lex is right as to the interpretation of English and Hindi as "official languages of the union" as laid out in the Indian constitution and the Official Language Act. (I know these are primary sources, that cannot be the sole basis for writing a wikipedia article, but that does not mean that I cannot use them to come to my own conclusion as long as that conclusion is voiced on talk pages)
  • F&F is right that English and Hindi are referred to as "Official languages of India" by well-established secondary sources. This does give the two languages a "distinctive" status. Notre I am using the word "distinctive" with care and not implying any linguistic superiority

The above statements are simply facts (correct me if I am wrong here!) and the only point of contention (as far as the India article is concerned), is whether the "distinctive" status accorded to English and Hindi by the GOI should mean that the wikipedia article list the name of the country in the two languages or not ? This brings is back to the options enumerated by Dab, which I relist here:

  • (a) just put the English term, since this is en-wiki, and English is a "language of the union"
  • (b) give both English and Hindi as "local" names, since these are the two "languages of the union" (fine with me, but we'll get no end of trouble from the non-Hindi Indian editors)
  • (c) follow MoS to the letter and give the 1,652 "local names" (huh)
  • (d) be semi-reasonable and give only the 22 languages of the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution
  • (e) give "Bharat" as the "local" name in "Standard Average Indian" without specifying which language this is.
  • (f) keeping it simple, ignoring this discussion, and revert to the old version without switching on our brains

Personally I can live with options (a), (b) and (e) - but this is a matter of editorial judgement and not simply stating facts. Abecedare 01:09, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Proposals

Proposal 1: Official Languages: I have now finished compiling the secondary sources (for official languages) for the purposes of this article. See here for the extended quotes. In light of the references, especially 19 by B. Mallikarjun, Academic Secretary, Central Institute of Indian Languages, (Manasagangothri, Mysore 570006, India), author of Language Use in Administration and National Integration, Mysore: Central Institute of Indian Languages, 1986, and an expert of the subject and reference 21 by David Laitin, Watkins Professor of Political Science at Stanford, and another expert on the subject, I feel that Hindi (and to lesser extent English) has had a special position in language policy in India from well before independence, and is reflected so in the constitution. This needs to be acknowledged explicitly (as all 21 references do) both in the information box and in the demographics section of the India page. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:58, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I think something along the lines of the British Foreign Office would be reasonable: "The official language of India is Hindi written in the Devanagari script. English has official status an 'associate language'. In addition, there are 21 official languages recognized by the constitution: Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu?" Of course, it will have to be made more compact for the information box. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:42, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
PS None of the 16 secondary sources I cite above make a distinction between India and the Union of India (with the latter identified with the (Federal) Government of India) and I don't see why Wikipedia should either. In other words, there is no need (at least in the India article) to say that Hindi is the official language only of the "union," but not of India. That distinction (buttressed by secondary sources) could belong to the Official languages of India page, but does not belong to the India page. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:57, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Proposal 2: First sentence of the India page (Names): There is a pretty good correspondence between the list of multilingual nations and their official languages (from Britannica) that I produced here and their names in Wikipedia (as displayed in the first sentence of their country pages). See: Kazakhstan, Algeria, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Switzerland, and Georgia. In light of this, the first sentence of the India page should read: "India (Hindi Bhārat; see also other names), officially the Republic of India, is a sovereign country in South Asia." Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:24, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Discussion (continued)

Questions to Lexmercatoria :
  1. Isn't the 8th Schedule mainly concerned with 'regional' and 'classical' languages and not the Union as a whole and that explains why English is not included in it while Hindi is(since Hindi is also the state language of Himachal Pradesh, UP, MP, Bihar, Rajasthan, Uttarkhand...etc.)
  2. Hence is it correct to refer to the 8th schedule like it is being used presently since English a 'associate language' of the Union is not included?
  3. Is it wrong to mention - "Hindi is the principal official language along with English which is used a an 'associate' language of the Union. The Government also recognises 21 other languages" as per the Eighth schedule of its Constitution .(the quoted version is of World Book Encyclopedia(India, languages of) ISBN: 0-7166-6696-0.--KnowledgeHegemony 13:49, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
1. From the point of view of the Constitution, the Eighth Schedule is principally a list of languages whose speakers will input into the manner in which Hindi is developed - which makes it obvious as to why English isn't included. Since then, it's acquired an additional, extra-constitutional significance, described in the official languages article.
2. For the reasons I explained several days back, I'm not entirely convinced the Eighth Schedule is the appropriate source for listing India's "official" languages.
3. The term "associate" official language is not used in Indian law. The phrase used is "subsidiary official language." Most encyclopaedias and non-legal sources totally misunderstand the significance of the Eighth Schedule, and to say that the Government "recognises 21 other languages" is plain wrong - but I don't know any way to demonstrate this which doesn't involve what Wikipedia calls original research, so I guess for now we'll just have to live with the law being misstated both here and in the "official languages" article. -- Lexmercatoria 22:30, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
To Lexmercatoria: OK, How about "The official language of India is Hindi written in the Devanagari script. English has status as a 'subsidiary official language'. In addition, there are 21 languages recognized by the constitution: Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu?" Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:21, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
PS Here, BTW, (not for you Lex, but for others), is a good site Constitution of India: Provisions Relating to Languages Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:21, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
F&F good site just what the doc prescribed. BTW I would like to see views on F&F's proposal to the first line of the article. KnowledgeHegemony 12:17, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
It seems to be a fairly accurate statement of the law. Are you thinking of it for this article or the official languages article? -- Lexmercatoria 22:41, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
PS. Lex, I think, KH is referring to proposal 2 above. (Both proposals apply to the India page, not Official languages of India page.) I have now changed the language of proposal 1 (in light of your comments above). Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:25, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

<deindent>
F&F, I assume you are proposing the text for the demographics section, right ? If so, perhaps we can blend in both the official status and demographic information into the same set of sentences. Something along the following lines:

Proposal 1 (v3.0)
Hindi is spoken by around 40% of the Indian population, and is the official language of India. English, which is widely used in business and administration, has the status of a 'subsidiary official language'. The constitution also recognizes in particular 21 other languages that are widely spoken or have a classical status.

  • The rough 40% statistic is from memory. I can look up the exact census information.
  • I don't think listing 21 languages serves the reader of this article who will most likely brush over the list. So I would prefer linking to the relevant article instead.
  • The above text will need copyediting and will need to be blended in with the remainder of the 2nd paragraph of the Demographics section.

My main motivation for proposing a change from F&F's v2.0, is that IMO the details of the official language status is just not important enough for this article to devote a whole paragraph to (think of all the differences between states and union territories that we gloss over). So we should try to make the information as unobtrusive as possible, while maintaining accuracy. Abecedare 01:56, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi Abecedare, your version (Proposal 1 (v3.0) is great! One minor point: do we need the "in particular?" Fowler&fowler«Talk» 04:48, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

What about the infobox? Should that too read: "Hindi (official language), English (subsidiary official language) and 21 other languages"? or should we list the 21 languages there? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 04:48, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

this discussion is a bit over the top at this point. Keep in mind: the largest five languages account for >70% of native speakers, the largest ten for >90% (this is not all that different from Switzerland, where the largest ten account for ca. 97%). Keep it brief. "Hindi, English, other" should do. dab (𒁳) 10:13, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
That sounds good to me. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:40, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Both seem fine to me, but can we simply say "Hindi is the most widely-spoken language in India, and is the official language of India..." The figure of 40% of the population includes the 22% of us who speak Hindi proper as our mother tongue and another 20% or so who speak one of the "Hindi languages", which include things like Rajasthani whose status as Hindi is questionable (I believe Rajasthan treats it as a separate language) and Maithili which is now constitutionally recognised as a separate language. See this detailed PDF from the census departament. "Most widely spoken" has the added advantage of taking second language speakers into account. It's not a major issue for me, so if others feel the 40% figure is better, I'm fine with it. -- Lexmercatoria 14:35, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Hi Lex, Your revision sounds great. (And Abecedare, in any case, wasn't sure about the 40%). Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:43, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
are we sure about the 40%? List of Indian languages by number of native speakers gives 40% Hindi first language Hindi speakers. But strangely the numbers given add up to some 170%, so that there seem to be a significant number of people with two or more "first languages". dab (𒁳) 14:57, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Here is where I apparently remembered the 40% from [1]. The numbers add up to 100%, so I guess they data refers to native language; the only downside is that the data is 16 year old. One advantage of mentioning the exact stat. is that most non-Indian (non-Swiss :-) ) readers will not expect a country's "official language" to be native to less than half the population, and therefore the data point is of interest. However, again, this is not the focus of the article and saying "most widely spoken" is also fine with me. Would someone like to take a stab at adding these sentences to the main article so that they read well with the rest of the paragraph ? Abecedare 18:50, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Off-topic clarification: Swiss German is still spoken by more than half of the population of Switzerland. I had always thought that German, French, Italian and Romansh accounted for more than 99% of the Swiss people. Anyway, I think Fowler has added your proposal to the page. GizzaDiscuss © 02:49, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
Oh, the Swiss bit was more a light-hearted reference to Dab than to the landlocked European nation !
I am happy with the edit that F&F made to the page [2]. A couple of quick notes though, (1) is there a way to avoid using the word widely in three consecutive sentences ? (2) it would be a good idea to add a reference for Hindi and English's status, before someone disputes the change or add a {{cn}} tag. Cheers. Abecedare 03:49, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I saw the "widleys" too, but was too tired to do anything about it. I have now fixed it. Let me know if there are any problems. I removed "widely" altogether, since it implies that the language has wide geographic distribution (which, whether accurate or not, might bring up more objections or requests for citations). Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:36, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Continued (more)

Okay, now that the demographics section is fixed what about the infobox(concerns regarding wrong use of 8th schedule) and the first line of the articleKnowledgeHegemony 06:22, 5 July 2007 (UTC)?

For the infobox, there seems to be some agreement (Dab, Lex, F&f, K-H, ?) that it is best to keep it short, along the lines of:
Proposal 3: Infobox: Official Languages: Hindi[1], English, [2] others.
  1. ^ Official language of the union.
  2. ^ Subsidiary official language of the union.
As for the first line of the article, I think the wording of proposal 2 above is adequate for me, "India (Hindi Bhārat; see also other names), officially the Republic of India, is a sovereign country in South Asia." I have explained my reasons there. I think that there is adequate evidence (see here) that Hindi, among all Indian languages, has special status in the Constitution of India, and India's Hindi appellation belongs to the first sentence of its Wikipedia page. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:33, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Fowler&fowler's proposal although I believe that the Devanagari script should be juxtaposed with Bharat in accordance with Article 343 of the Constitution of India:
“ The official language of the Union shall be Hindi in Devanagari script. ”
In light of this fact, the modified form of Proposal Two would read as follows: "India (Hindi: भारत Bhārat; see also other names), officially the Republic of India, is a sovereign country in South Asia." I hope this helps. Thanks to everyone who researched this topic. With regards, AnupamTalk 19:53, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
No, I don't think there is any need for the Devanagari script. The scripts are there in the "other names". Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:28, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
Dear Fowler&fowler, I respect your opinion but do not agree with it. In India, Hindi is not official in the Roman script but in the Devanagari script. Since everything here is being aligned with the official positions of countries, it would only be correct if we gave the name Bharat in Devanagari. Please refer to articles of other countries which are all aligned with my position (i.e. Afghanistan, Japan, Lebanon, etc.) If you decide not to accept this modification to your proposal, I would need to offer my version as an entirely different proposal. Please let me know your feelings on the issue. With warm regards, AnupamTalk 01:28, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
OK, upon further reflection, I've changed my mind. I support your version (on account of the statement "Hindi in the Devanagari script" in the constitution). Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:54, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for your kind acceptance. Thus far, how many are aligned with proposal? Thanks in advance, AnupamTalk 03:32, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
Anupam's proposed version would be my first choice too. Abecedare 03:39, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
Anupam's version gives me nothing to object. I support it too. KnowledgeHegemony 16:02, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Infobox

Give me one good reason why should we insist on keeping the official languages section brief when we have given the option to "hide" the list. The list says "Hindi and English are the official languages of the union" which summarizes so called special treatment by our constitution. The "hide" option there actually hides the list making the infobox short, in case you didn't notice. Gnanapiti 21:49, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that Hindi has special status in the constitution. I consulted with an expert who in turn provided me with citations of two experts. According to one of them, B. Mallikarjuna, Academic Secretary of the Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore, "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." English is the "subsidiary official language." The order is Hindi, English and not English, Hindi (as you seem to revert to; it is not alphabetical). The other language are not official languages of India, but Schedule VII languages, which, as Lex has remarked many times above, provide input into how Hindi is to develop further. You are welcome to hide the other twenty one schedule 8 languages, but Hindi and English are separate; the link others does precisely that. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:09, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
  • The fact that the Indian govt., has some special provisions for Hindi doesnt mean that we should accord special treatment to it on wikipedia(that explains the alphabetical ordering). And even with the special treatment accorded, there's many an if an but. Quite unlike an intuitive understanding of the phrase "Official language of the Union", Hindi's status is not one of unqualified, all pervasive nature. There is far too much fine print involved there for us to go into in this article and therefore listing the remaining "Official languages of the states" helps to put things in perspective. And in any case, they are all wrapped in a collapsible box and not taking up space(if somebody can make the box "collapsed" by default, it would be great). Just mentioning English and Hindi is not adhering to NPOV. Sarvagnya 23:25, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
  • And in any case, it is English and not Hindi that has a pre-eminent position across spheres of administration, judiciary, constitution etc., not to mention business, industry and daily life. Majority of the states use English to communicate with the union government and circumvent the need for Hindi. The highest court of the land uses English. The constitution itself is written in English - not Hindi. An overwhelming majority of the states(except the Ups and Bihars) use English to communicate among themselves. Even in public sector undertakings, Hindi is 'encouraged' but English is non-negotiable. Sarvagnya 23:35, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
We are not talking about "language and society," but rather about "official languages," which, for better or worse, are determined by legislations of governments (or at least by constitutional changes made by governments). For this reason, the United States infobox's "official language" slot, if it had one, would have to be left blank (or say "none"), even though English is the predominant language of the country. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:36, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
"..We are not talking about "language and society,..." - And who said we are?! Take your straw man arguments and tangential babble elsewhere. Sarvagnya 20:48, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
English in "administration, judiciary, constitution, ... business, industry and daily life!" What is that if not language and society? And who gave those examples Sarvagyna? It wasn't me. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:52, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
Sarvagnya, I understand your point but the GOI does get to determine India's official language, and as has been now established through a multitude of secondary and tertiary sources, Hindi is referred to as such. But you are correct in stating that there is more to the issue than a simple label and that is the reason I think the Infobox should list "Hindi1, English2 and others" rather than simply "Hindi" (which would be technically correct, but misleading). In fact IMO linking to the Official languages of India is preferable to just dumping a list of languages, since it better serves the reader in understanding the complicated situation. And as for English's use in administration and government, I'll be the first to acknowledge that fact (see my "Proposal 1 V3.0") above, but it is completely irrelevant to the "Official Language" status. If, say, a new government in all its wisdom declared Esperanto to be India's official language, wikipedia will have to parrot that information, even if only 10 Indians spoke in the tongue. Abecedare 03:53, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
If we do not follow the the 'Constitution' and the GOI for 'official' matters then what are we supposed to... can you give a solution???? I can't understand what's the confusion all about? KnowledgeHegemony 15:48, 6 July 2007 (UTC)