India has over 19,500 mother tongues, making it one of the most linguistically rich countries in the world. But according to UNESCO, a language disappears somewhere in the world every two weeks, and India is very much a part of this crisis. Many of these languages are spoken by only a few hundred elderly people, and once they are gone, the language dies with them, forever.
This is not just about losing words. A language carries stories, traditions, medicinal knowledge, and a whole way of seeing the world that cannot be translated into another tongue. Unlike a monument or an old manuscript, the sound of a language, its accent, its rhythm, the way it feels when spoken, leaves no trace behind. No archaeologist can dig it up later.
What makes this worse is that English has become the standard for education and success in India, pushing families to stop speaking their native languages at home. Even Hindi is slowly being replaced by English in everyday conversation. The smaller and tribal languages suffer the most because they are not taught in schools and are rarely written down anywhere.
Indias Constitution officially recognises only 22 languages, leaving over 19,000 others with no protection or documentation. There is no real effort at the school or community level to record these languages or teach them to younger generations before the last remaining speakers pass away.