ABSTRACT
The Indo-European languages and related dialects and the Dravidian languages all have substantial and ancient literary traditions, as do some Tibeto-Burman languages. Bhutan's national language, Dzongkha, is also of Tibeto-Burman origin. Choosing a route that did not impose one language on all, the Constitution of 1950 proclaimed Hindi the national language, with English an until 1965, by which time it was thought that the 65 percent of the population who did not know Hindi would have had the opportunity to learn it. In 1831, Bengali was declared the official language of Assam, becoming the language of government and schools. Next is Dravidian, representing languages spoken primarily in southern India today, but also found in small pockets in Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh, and quite probably related to the undeciphered language of the Harappa civilization.
