LANGUAGES USED IN INDIA

The 2001 census recorded 29 individual languages as having more than 1 million native speakers (0.1% of total population).

Table: Ordered by number of native speakers

Rank	Language	2001 census[2] (total population 1,028.61 million)		1991 census[3] (total population 846.30 million)		Encarta 2007 estimate[4] (worldwide speakers)
		Speakers	Percentage	Speakers	Percentage	Speakers
1	Hindi[5]	422,048,642	41.03%	337,272,114[6]	39.85%	336 M
2	Bengali	83,369,769	8.11%	69,595,738	8.22%	209 M
3	Telugu	74,002,856	7.19%	66,017,615	7.87%	69.7 M
4	Marathi	71,936,894	6.99%	62,481,681	7.45%	68.0 M
5	Tamil	60,793,814	5.91%	53,006,368	6.32%	66.0 M
6	Urdu	51,536,111	5.01%	43,406,932	5.18%	60.3 M
7	Gujarati	46,091,617	4.48%	40,673,814	4.85%	46.1 M
8	Kannada	37,924,011	3.69%	32,753,676	3.91%	40.3 M
9	Malayalam	33,066,392	3.21%	30,377,176	3.62%	35.7 M
10	Oriya	33,017,446	3.21%	28,061,313	3.35%	32.3 M
11	Punjabi	29,102,477	2.83%	23,378,744	2.79%	57.1 M
12	Assamese	13,168,484	1.28%	13,079,696	1.56%	15.4 M
13	Maithili	12,179,122	1.18%
14	Bhili/Bhilodi	9,582,957	0.95%	5,572,308	0.665%
15	Santali	6,469,600	0.64%	5,216,325	0.622%
16	Kashmiri	5,527,698	0.54%
17	Nepali	2,871,749	0.28%
18	Gondi	2,713,790	0.27%	2,124,852	0.253%
19	Sindhi	2,535,485	0.25%	2,122,848	0.248%
20	Konkani	2,489,015	0.24%	1,760,607	0.210%
21	Dogri	2,282,589	0.22%
22	Khandeshi	2,075,258	0.21%
23	Kurukh	1,751,489	0.17%	1,426,618	0.170%
24	Tulu	1,722,768	0.17%	1,552,259	0.185%
25	Meitei/Manipuri	1,466,705*	0.14%	1,270,216	0.151%
26	Bodo	1,350,478	0.13%	1,221,881	0.146%
27	Khasi	1,128,575	0.112%
28	Mundari	1,061,352	0.105%
29	Ho	1,042,724	0.103%

* Excludes figures of Paomata, Mao-Maram and Purul sub-divisions of Senapati district of Manipur for 2001.
** The percentage of speakers of each language for 2001 has been worked out on the total population of India excluding the population of Mao-Maram, Paomata and Purul subdivisions of Senapati district of Manipur due to cancellation of census results.