Names of India in its official languages
The following table lists the names of India in its official languages. The sole official language of India is Hindi in Devanagari script as per Article 343 of the Indian constitution and there is no national language for the country. English has the status of a "subsidiary official language". The Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution lists 22 languages, which have been referred to as "scheduled" languages and given recognition, status, and official encouragement.
North India
Linguistically, North India is dominated by Indo-Aryan languages. It is in this region, or its proximity, that Sanskrit and the various Prakrits are thought to have evolved. The most widely spoken language in this region is Hindi. It has official status in the states of Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh as well as in the union territory of Delhi. Punjabi has predominance in the state of Punjab where it is the official language. It also has significant presence in the nearby regions. Urdu enjoys official status in Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttar Pradesh. Further north in Jammu and Kashmir, major languages are Dogri and Kashmiri. Languages like Bengali, Bhili and Nepali are also spoken in notable numbers throughout the region. A large part of North India is taken up by the so-called Hindi Belt, which here subsumes most of the Rajasthani languages, dialects of Western Hindi, Bhojpuri, Awadhi, Garhwali and Kumaoni.