Languages with official status in India
The Indian constitution, in 1950, declared Hindi in Devanagari script to be the official language of the union. Unless Parliament decided otherwise, the use of English for official purposes was to cease 15 years after the constitution came into effect, i.e., on 26 January 1965. The prospect of the changeover, however, led to much alarm in the non Hindi-speaking areas of India, especially Dravidian-speaking states whose languages were not related to Hindi at all. As a result, Parliament enacted the ,
Tamil Nadu
Tamil (தமிழ்) is the sole official language of Tamil Nadu while English is declared an additional official language for communication purposes. When India adopted national standards. Tamil was the first language to be recognised as a classical language of India. As of 2001 census Tamil is spoken as the first language by nearly 90 percent of the state's population followed by Telugu (5.65%), Kannada (1.67%), Urdu (1.51%) and Malayalam (0.89%). Other Languages spoken are Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali etc. which are mostly spoken by people whose first language is not Tamil, or, Native Tamil speakers who have knowledge of these languages.