As per Article 343 of the Constitution of India, India’s official languages shall be Standard Hindi (the dialect known as khadi boli) written in the Devanagari script, and English.

These are the official languages of the Union of India, i.e. at the Central Government level. However, each state is allowed to have its own official language based on its own linguistic demographics. So, we end up having a total of 22 official languages today (excluding English).

However, India does not have a national language. There is a difference between a national language and an official language. While a national language would have a patriotic and nationalistic identity, an official language is one which is designated for communication at the official level.

The history behind having two official languages and no national language:

When we became independent, no particular language was designated as the national language, because people who spoke Dravidian Languages were more comfortable in English than they were with the most spoken language in India, i.e. Hindi. A period of 15 years, in fact, was designated for the Indian government to make efforts to make Hindi the lingua franca all over India, so that English could be dropped from the official language position when that happened. English was, after all, a foreign language.

However, the 15 years didn’t yield any efforts from the government to make Hindi the lingua franca. South India was still comfortable with either English or their mothertongue. There was an agitation in Tamil Nadu at the completion of the 15 years — since the 15 years hadn’t yielded any lingua franca (and no language except English seemed to have any prospects of soon becoming the lingua franca), it was only fair that English be made the main official language.

When violence erupted in Tamil Nadu, Lal Bahadur Shastri, the Prime Minister, called an emergency Parliament session. The ideal task was to have an originally-Indian language (unlike English) which could be given the combined status of 1) a national language, 2) the only official language, and 3) the lingua franca. Obviously, Hindi could be the only choice based on demographics, but it could not be the national language until it was also the lingua franca.

Shastri announced this decision: “English shall continue as an additional official language of India as long as the non-Hindi speakers want.” Unlike the 15-year deadline set earlier, there was no deadline this time. And so even today, we do not have any national language, or an ONLY official language for the Union.