Language as a Determinant of Cultural Region

India is a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-religious country. According to anthropologists and historians, the Indian population comprises of the people who came here from the Mediterranean region, central Asia, south-west Asia, south-east Asia, Mongolia, Tibet, and China. Each of the racial and ethnic groups has its own language. After coming to India, the cultural mixing led to the mixing of their languages also. These languages have their core and peripheral areas. This broad linguistic regional identity formed the basis for the demarcation of Indian States in 1956. According to the Census of 1961, there were 187 languages spoken by different sections of the Indian society. Of these, 94 were spoken by less than 10,000 people. According to Vadodra-based Bhasa Research and Publication centre, the country had 1100 languages in 1961, but nearly 220 of them disappeared in the past 50 years. The lost languages were spoken mostly by nomads. At present, there are 780 languages in India (Times of India-August 8, 2013). The fifteen main languages, as mentioned in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution, are spoken by over 92 per cent of the total population of the country. The geographical distribution of the main languages of India has been shown in Fig. 13.12.

The Indian languages belong to the following four linguistic groups:

1. The Indo-European family (Arya)

2. The Dravidian family (Dravida)

3. Austric family (Nishada)

4. Sino-Tibetan family (Kirata)

1. The Indo-Aryan language This is the most important gl oup of Indian languages spoken by most of the people of northern India. Its core area is known as the Khari Boli region, comprising of Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh. Going away from the core, it has different shades and dialects. Prof.

A. Ahmad has given a diagrammatic representation of the diffusion of Khari-Boli (Hindi) in different directions from the core area. (Fig. 13.13). Offshoots include Dardi, Kohistani,Kashmiri, Lahnda, Sindhi, Kachhchi, Gujarati, Marathi, Odiya, Bengali, Assamese, Bihari, Avadhi, Bagheli, Chhattisgarhi, Hindi, Punjabi, Rajasthani, Nepali, and Pahari.

Hindi (the National language) is the principal language of the Indo-European Family spoken by over 40 per cent of the total population of the country. It is mainly spoken in Bihar, Delhi, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Uttarakhand. Urdu is closely akin to Hindi and is popular in Bihar, Delhi, Hyderabad, J&K, M.P., Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and in most of the places of urban India.

2. The Dravidian Family The Dravidian Family of the Indian languages is mainly spoken in Andhra Pradesh (Telgu), Karnataka (Kannada), Kerala (Malayalam), and Tamil Nadu (Tamil). These four languages are spoken by more than 22 per cent of the total population of India.

3. The Austric Family The Austric languages are spoken by the tribal groups of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya, Odisha and West Bengal. These languages belong to

Religion, like language, is a symbol of group identity and a cultural rallying point. All societies have value systems, common beliefs, understandings, and expectations which unite their people. Religion plays a crucial role in the socioeconomic life of the people and even their utilisation of natural resources is closely controlled by the religion of the people. Geographers are concerned with the interaction between religion and landscape (resources). Thus, religion provides a good basis for the demarcation of cultural regions.

India is a multi-religion country. It is the birth place of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. Subsequently, the successive waves ot people of other religious faiths came to India. They maintained their religious identity. For example, the Syrian Christians appeared on the west coast of India in the first century AD. They are still found in Kerala. The Muslims came to India from South-West Asia and Central Asia and maintained their religious identity.