There were 83 million native Marathi speakers in India, according to the 2011 census, making it the third most spoken native language after Hindi and Bengali.
A total of 8.30 crore people speak Marathi in the country, which is 6.86 percent of the total population. However when Bharat got freedom , mostly the the people who lived around the capital i.e. Delhi, who were also Hindi speaking population, made Hindi as Rashtrabhasha (national Language of Bharat), which made it easy for most of the politicians as it was their local language.
However when Mumbai, the capital of Maharashtra started bringing lots of businesses to Bharat , people from all over India came to Mumbai for Jobs and better living, who brought their cultures with them. That’s how Mumbai was culturally rich and diverse. However the locals started picking up whatever jobs they could to survive. People from the rest of Maharashtra, from interior parts of Maharashtra came to Mumbai, only to earn decent salary and settle down with whichever small or big work they could get. Their language being marathi, It became the language of locals and language the workers use. They were looked down upon by most other people, while some accepted marathi as it was the state language, which shouldn’t have been the case in first place. Government made Marathi compulsory in government offices as English was still an Alien language for most of the people, which was one step ahead to give Marathi the respect it deserves.
Thus Knowing English, being able to read, write and especially to speak in English was considered to be posh and fancy. While speaking in the local language was considered to be really backward. Thus Marathi got way too behind in acceptance of people. Being from different states of India, people chose English medium schools for their children Vs putting them in Marathi schools which were dominant earlier. It was practical as they could have gone to different states for the jobs and children would have suffered at the local language schools.
That became a trend that wealthy people put their children in English medium schools and Poor people/locals put their children in local language school.
This is story of almost all the state languages with little bit changes statewise. I feel any language is glorious in its own way and one who can talk in that language should feel proud about oneself and about the language too .
However now all the states are making their state languages compulsory in schools to bring back these languages in use and helping them not being extinct.
Also government is making an effort to provide the education to most of the students in their mother tongue .
It is not just the necessity of today but also our responsibility to keep the local languages alive by speaking them, using them in schools, offices , government offices as well as in day to day life.
Save Language :: Save Culture :: Enrich future.