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".
Languages of Singapore
Indian languages besides Tamil are managed slightly differently from the Chinese varieties. Even though only Tamil has official language status, there have been no attempts to discourage the use or spread of other Indian languages such as Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Malayalam, Punjabi, Telugu, and Urdu. For one, movies in these languages are shown in some local cinemas, such as Rex and Screens of Bombay Talkies. Furthermore, the local Indian TV channel Vasantham has also allocated specific programme timeslots to cater to the variety of Indian language speakers in Singapore.