As Maharashtra steps up its Marathi language push, Census data reveals a state far more linguistically mixed than the language debate suggests. A majority of primary Hindi and Urdu speakers did not report Marathi as an additional language, while nearly 44 per cent of primary Marathi speakers reported Hindi as one.

The numbers offer a useful perspective as the state begins enforcing its requirement that auto-rickshaw and taxi drivers have a working knowledge of Marathi. They show Marathi has been adopted by a sizeable section of people whose primary language is something else, but the extent varies sharply across communities.

The Census records a person’s primary language and up to two other languages they know, classified as “subsidiary languages”. A person whose primary language is Hindi but who also knows Marathi would have Marathi recorded as a subsidiary language, and a third language, if known, as a second. The data measures how many people are bilingual or trilingual; it does not measure fluency.

Story continues below this ad

Among Maharashtra’s 14.48 million primary Hindi speakers, 6.10 million reported Marathi as an additional language and 8.38 million did not, 42.15 per cent against 57.85 per cent.

The gap is wider among Urdu speakers. Of the state’s 7.54 million primary Urdu speakers, 2.19 million reported Marathi as an additional language and 5.35 million did not, 29.11 per cent against 70.89 per cent.

The pattern varies across other communities too. Among primary Gujarati speakers, 30.79 per cent reported Marathi as an additional language. The figure was 53.62 per cent among Telugu speakers and 57.2 per cent among Kannada speakers, but only 17.78 per cent among Tamil speakers.

Marathi speakers themselves are highly multilingual, with Hindi the most widely reported additional language. Maharashtra has 77.46 million primary Marathi speakers, of whom 33.73 million reported Hindi as a subsidiary language, more than twice the 14.48 million people whose primary language is Hindi.

Story continues below this ad

Of these, 32.66 million reported Hindi as their first subsidiary language and another 1.07 million as their second, together 43.55 per cent of primary Marathi speakers.

The language data is from the 2011 Census of India, the latest for which detailed, comparable language and bilingualism data is available. No similarly detailed, updated Census data has been released since.

One thing to watch on the fourth paragraph: folding “42.15 per cent against 57.85 per cent” straight after the two absolute numbers reads slightly denser than the original’s separate sentence. If a sub-editor wants it split back out for readability, that costs you about 8 words back, still well under 400.