<P> India is home to several hundred languages . Most Indians speak a language belonging to the families of the Indo - Aryan branch of Indo - European (c. 74%), the Dravidian (c. 20.61%), the Austroasiatic (Munda) (c. 1.2%), or the Sino - Tibetan (c. 0.6%), with some languages of the Himalayas still unclassified . The SIL Ethnologue lists 415 living languages for India . </P> <P> India has 23 constitutionally recognized official languages . Hindi and English are the official languages used by the Central Government . State governments use respective official languages . </P> <P> Hindi is the most widely spoken language in northern parts of India . The Indian census takes the widest possible definition of "Hindi" as a broad variety of "Hindi languages". According to 2001 Census, 53.6% of Indian population declared that they speak Hindi either as first or second language, in which 41% of them have declared it as their native language or mother tongue . 12.6% Indians declared that they can speak English as a second language . </P> <P> Thirteen languages account for more than 1% of Indian population each, and between themselves for over 95%; all of them are "scheduled languages of the constitution". Scheduled languages spoken by fewer than 1% of Indians are Santali (0.63%), Kashmiri (0.54%), Nepali (0.28%), Sindhi (0.25%), Konkani (0.24%), Dogri (0.22%), Meitei (0.14%), Bodo (0.13%) and Sanskrit (In the 2001 census of India, only 14,135 people reported Sanskrit as their native language). The largest language that is not "scheduled" is Bhili (0.95%), followed by Gondi (0.27%), Khandeshi (0.21%), Tulu (0.17%) and Kurukh (0.10%). </P>

Which is the largest speaking language in india