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".
Hindi–Urdu controversy
Hindi is a literary register of the Hindustani language, derived from the Khariboli dialect of the Hindi languages. A Persianized variant of Hindustani began to take shape during the Delhi Sultanate (1206–1526 AD) and Mughal Empire (1526–1858 AD) in South Asia. Urdu, along with English, became the first official language of British India in 1850. Urdu was being written, spoken and translated to and from English in all courts, schools, official documents, and government institutes. Although the need to have a language for Hindus developed in the 1850s, the irrevocable momentum of the Hindi language movement occurred around 1880. Urdu is a name derived from the Turkic word "ordu" (army) or "orda". When the Turco-Persian Mughals who invaded the Indian subcontinent made camps, the colloquial Persian spoken by the soldiers, known as the "language of the camp", or ""Zaban-i-Ordu"", became gradually more and more Indianised, as they themselves settled and married into the local communities, until the dialect they spoke was readily intelligible to the native Hindu population.