Linguistic rights
The constitution of India was first drafted on January 26, 1950. It is estimated that there are about 1500 languages in India. Article 343–345 declared that the official languages of India for communication with centre will be Hindi and English. There are 22 official languages identified by constitution. Article 345 states that "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".
South India
The largest linguistic group in South India is the Dravidian family of languages, a family of approximately 73 languages The major languages spoken include Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam. Tulu is spoken by about 1.5 million people in coastal Kerala and Karnataka and Konkani, an Indo-Aryan language, is spoken by half a million people in the Konkan coast. English is also widely spoken in urban areas of South India. Urdu is spoken by around 12 million Muslims in southern India. Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Urdu and Konkani are listed amongst the 22 official languages of India as per the Official Languages Act (1963). Tamil was the first language to be granted classical language status by the Government of India in 2004. Other major languages declared classical were Kannada (in 2008), Telugu (in 2008) and Malayalam (in 2013)