India celebrates September 14 as Hindi Day or Hindi Diwas every year. On this day in 1949, Hindi was adopted as one of the official languages by the Constituent Assembly. Hindi got its status as the official language due to the efforts put by scholars like Seth Govind Das, Maithili Sharan Gupt and Kaka Kalelkar. One of the Hindi scholars, who advocated for Hindi’s official status was Beohar Rajendra Simha, whose birthday falls on the same day as Hindi Diwas.
It is spoken by about 40 percent of the Indian population and it also accounts for the fourth most widely spoken language in the world.
According to the Census 2011 data, the language is the most widely spoken language in India. Hindi is followed by Bengali and Marathi with 8 percent and 6 percent speakers respectively. This is followed by Telugu and Tamil as the fourth and fifth most spoken languages in India.
Based on comparative data since 1971, Hindi speakers have also gone up 6.64 percentage points over the last 40 years. This could be due to higher fertility rates or the rate of population growth in north Indian states, where Hindi is the most spoken language compared to southern part of the country.
Hindi accounts for the most spoken language in Delhi, Chandigarh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh.
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