Bengali Hindus
Bengali Hindus () are an ethnic, linguistic, and religious population who make up the majority in the Indian state of West Bengal and Tripura. In Bangladesh they form the largest minority. They are Bengalis adherents of Hinduism, and are native to the Bengal region in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent. Bengali Hindus speak Bengali, which belongs to the Indo-Aryan language family and adhere to the Shakta and Vaishnava traditions of their native religion, Hinduism. There are significant numbers of Bengali-speaking Hindus in different Indian states.
2001 Census of India
Hindi is the most widely spoken language in northern parts of India. The Indian census takes the widest possible definition of "Hindi" as a broad variety of "Hindi languages". According to 2001 Census, 53.6% of Indian population know Hindi, in which 41% of them have declared Hindi as their native language or mother tongue. English is known to 12.5% Indians in the 2001 census. The number of bilingual speakers in India is 25.50 crore, which is 24.8% of the population in 2001. India (780) has the world's second highest number of languages, after Papua New Guinea (839).