ABSTRACT
Legal provision of language rights may be a necessary condition to sustain linguistic diversity, but the ways in which and the purposes for which they are used are crucial for the maintenance of minority languages. The laws may be ignored or subverted by the State on some administrative, financial, or political reasoning, which is made possible by the way laws are formulated so as to permit administrative laxity and contingencies (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1998). The minority linguistic communities may demand application of the laws under certain political and historical conditions and not under others. The community may use the law for a purpose which it deems to be in its interest but which may not be the intent of the law. This chapter examines how different minority linguistic communities in India make or do not make use of the language rights provided by the law and how they perceive their interests when they use them.
