Paper short abstract:

Language endangerment of South Asian languages with long history and big population is about reducing their functionality and restricting their use to in-group communications and for cultural and political identity. For smaller minority languages and tribal languages, it is their speakers shifting to dominant languages. Both developments are encouraged by the economic and political changes from feudal to capitalistic in the post-colonial period.

Paper long abstract:

The contemporary regional languages of India emerged autonomous in the beginning of the second millennium out of being variants of Sanskrit in the north and being subordinated to Sanskrit in the south (with the exception of Tamil). Under the colonial rule, these languages came to be subordinated to English. The independence of India promoted a policy of maintaining and developing all Indian languages, of which the major ones will take the place of English in administration and education. Challenges to this change over raise questions about the survival of the major Indian languages not with regard to their demographic existence but with regard to their vitality in domains other than culture.

The minor languages of India face the challenge of physical survival in the changed environment of increasing disruption of the feudal order and geographic and economic mobility of people as well as the assertiveness of the regional major languages.

This paper discusses the meaning of survival for the major and minor languages of India including their symbolic existence and hybridized existence. The discussion is embedded in what has changed in South Asia in the post-colonial period.