Why India Doesn’t Have a National Language

Content warning: Mentions of self-harm ahead.

In November 2022, an 85-year-old farmer from a village in Tamil Nadu, one of India’s southernmost states, set himself on fire outside a local politician’s office. According to his suicide note, he was protesting the suggested imposition of Hindi in his home state, a threat he had opposed “since childhood.” His name was M.V. Thangavel.

The conflict over what language Indians should speak dates back much further, and the stakes today are higher than ever. Though the country has over 1,600 languages, 220 have died out in the last 50 years, and another 600 are at risk of extinction. The question of why the world’s most populous country hasn’t adopted a single, common language — and whether it ever will or should — has confounded us for centuries.