Question

How many official and national languages have been recognized in the Constitution of India?
A. 1 and 23
B. 2 and 23
C. 1 and 22
D. 2 and 22

Answer 1

Hint:
> Official language is also known as the State language.
> It is defined as any language which has been given a special status in any country or nation.
> It is the language which is used by the government, not by the people.

Complete answer:
During the period of British India, the official languages used at the time of communicating any formal purpose was English, Urdu and Hindi where English was used at the Central level. In the year 1950, the Indian Constitution decided to ban English and use Hindi but it gave the power to the Parliament to use English along with Hindi as the official language at Central and State level.

The law which governs the use of language is the Official Language Act, 1963 which lays down rules and regulations for languages. In India officially there are 2 languages at the Central level but the Indian states are given the freedom to choose their own languages and according to that there are 22 official languages which are used at State level and they are – Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Odia, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.

Therefore the correct answer is D

Note
> The list of 22 languages are mentioned in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution.
> The first survey on the official language was done by Sir George Abraham Grierson during the year 1898 to 1928.
> The title of the survey was the Linguistic Survey of India.