Abstract
Abstract The role played by agencies like the census has been important in deciding upon language issues in India (Brass, 1974; Khub‐chandani, 1983; Mahapatra, 1990). In the fluid linguistic zone of north India, many languages are taken to be dialects of Hindi. The official status of a speech variety as a language or a dialect is largely dependent on the categorisation made by the Indian census. Often Maithili is referred to as Hindi in different censuses. Here I have tried to give a sociolinguistic appraisal of the representation of languages in the Indian census with special reference to the status of Maithili, which deals with the problems that arise out of the inconsistent approach of the census towards ‘language’, ‘dialect’ and ‘mother tongue’. The speakers of Maithili and other such languages face problems of identity and loyalty. On the one hand, their concern to maintain Maithili as an independent language is seen as a hindrance to the homogeneity of the ‘Hindi belt’ and, on the other, there is an...
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