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".
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.