Question

The group of languages spoken by the largest number of people in India is:
A)Austro-Asiatic
B)Indo-Aryan
C)Dravidian
D)None of these

Answer 1

Hint: 1)They are the main language family in South Asia.
2)Since the beginning of the 21st century, more than 800 million people have spoken these languages.
3)More than 200 of these languages are well known.

Complete answer:
The lndo-Aryan language group is spoken by the largest number of people in India. They are a cluster of the Indo-Iranian languages, which by itself are a branch of the family of the Indo-European language. Modern Indo-Aryan languages come from ancient Indo-Aryan languages, such as early Sanskrit, through Middle Indo-Aryan languages. There are 219 known Indo-Aryan languages. The largest speakers are Hindustani (around 329 million Hindi-Urdu), Bengali (around 242 million), Punjabi (around 100 million) and other languages, with an estimated total of almost 900 million native speakers in 2005.

Following are the given alternatives:

Austro-Asian languages are a large family of languages in Mainland SouthEast Asia, scattered throughout parts of India, Bangladesh, Nepal and southern China. There are approximately 117 million speakers of Austro-Asian languages. Thus, Option A is incorrect.
Indo - Aryan Languages form a major part of South Asia, among which Indians form the majority of its speakers. Thus, Option B is correct.
The Dravidian languages are the language family spoken by 220 million people.The languages are mostly spoken in southern India and northern Sri Lanka.. Four major literary languages—Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, and Kannada—are recognised by the constitution of India. These languages are not spoken by the majority of Indians. Thus, Option C is incorrect.
Option D is also incorrect as the Indo-Aryan languages are spoken most by the Indians.

Hence, the correct answer is option (B)

Note: In 2005 the total number of native speakers of Indo-Aryan languages was estimated to be almost 900 million.
In 1880, Rudolf Hoernlé first proposed a binary grouping of Indo-Aryan languages, between the 'outer' Magadhi-descended group of Odia, Bengali, Eastern Hindi and Marathi and the 'inner' Sauraseni-descended group of western Hindi, Punjabi, Sindhi and Nepali.
Dardi languages are a group of Indo-Aryan languages widely spoken in the northwestern extremities of the Indian subcontinent.