Languages of Bharat - Bandhgala of I&B Minister at Cannes

Last week, I had shared how an upcoming Hindi movie's team did not feel it essential to showcase the sixth classical language of India - Odia, though they had well planned, projected and shown almost all the other official languages of India.

India has 22 official languages.

This week, it is great to see the Indian Bandhgala of the Information & Broadcasting Minister, Shri Anurag Singh Thakur.

It is a wonderful concept and showcases "Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat"- One India, Best India.

India boasts of 'unity in diversity".

There are six buttons where engraving has been done in six regional languages namely-

• Hindi
• Gujarati
• Urdu
• Bengali
• Punjabi
• Malayalam
• Tamil

Source

Whenever I see such lists, I look for Odisha. "Where is Odia?".

As India has 22 official languages, it is not possible to include all in such cases.

True that there is no Odia. We understand

Odia is the sixth classical language of India.

Only two classical languages have been included in this case namely- Malayalam  and Tamil.

Had the theme for this been "classical languages of India", then south would have got extra focus as most of the classical languages have southern links.

In that case, they would not have been truly representative of the the nation.

In order to do so and to portray Bharat, there has to be at least 1 language from 4 corners- East, West, North and South.

When there are only six buttons and choice has to be of six languages, usually only one is selected from eastern India. In 99% such cases, Bengali makes it to the list. 

Yes, Bengal and Bengali is considered representative of eastern India.

I want to know- 

Who decided which languages to include in this particular Bandhgala buttons case?

Someone must have made the tough decision.

What made her/him to select the above six only and why not the others? 

Under whose guidance/orders, did they do this?

These are just for my curiosity. Trying to understand why a language is excluded.

Would definitely love to see more inclusion of Odia and Odisha.

What about you? Would you like your mother-tongue to be included too?

Do share in the comments below.