Official language policy: Articles 343-351 and the Official Languages Act

In short

Part XVII of the Constitution (Articles 343-351) settles which language the Union and the States use for official business, which language courts and legislation use, and what protection speakers of other languages get. Because Article 343 allowed English only for fifteen years, Parliament passed the Official Languages Act, 1963, which keeps English in use alongside Hindi indefinitely; the Official Languages Rules, 1976 translate that Act into day-to-day office practice. For a language graduate this is the core theory paper of any "Rajbhasha"/official-language course and the single most examined legal topic in UGC NET, UPSC/State PSC polity and general studies, SSC Junior Hindi Translator, and the written and interview rounds of Rajbhasha posts in banks, PSUs, railways and ministries.

Explained

1. How Part XVII came about - the Munshi-Ayyangar formula

• The Constituent Assembly was split between those wanting Hindi (or Hindustani) as a national language and those from non-Hindi regions who feared exclusion from government service.
• The compromise drafted largely by K. M. Munshi and N. Gopalaswami Ayyangar - the Munshi-Ayyangar formula - is what Part XVII contains: Hindi as official language of the Union (not "national language"), English retained for 15 years, and a built-in machinery of commissions and committees to review progress.
• The Assembly adopted these provisions on 14 September 1949, commemorated as Hindi Diwas.
• Part XVII has four chapters: Language of the Union (343-344), Regional Languages (345-347), Language of the Judiciary and Texts of Laws (348-349), Special Directives (350-351).
• No article declares any national language. Courts (including an often-cited Gujarat High Court observation of 2010) have held that India has official languages, not a national language.

2. Chapter I - Language of the Union (Articles 343-344)

• Article 343(1): The official language of the Union is Hindi in the Devanagari script; the form of numerals for official purposes of the Union is the international form of Indian numerals (0,1,2,...), not Devanagari numerals.
• Article 343(2): English was to continue for all official purposes for 15 years from 26 January 1950 - i.e. up to 25/26 January 1965. During this period the President could, by order, authorise Hindi in addition to English.
• Article 343(3): Parliament may by law provide for continued use of English, or of the international numerals, beyond 15 years - the hook on which the 1963 Act hangs. Note the device: English continues by *statute*, not by the Constitution, so it can in principle be altered by Parliament.
• Article 344(1): The President shall constitute an Official Language Commission at the expiry of 5 years and again at the expiry of 10 years from commencement - a chairman plus members representing different languages in the Eighth Schedule - to recommend progressive use of Hindi, restrictions on English, language of court proceedings, numerals, and recruitment.
• Article 344(4): A Committee of Parliament on Official Language of 30 members - 20 from the Lok Sabha and 10 from the Rajya Sabha, elected by proportional representation with the single transferable vote - to examine the Commission's report and report to the President, who may issue directions.
• History under this article: the first Commission (1955, chaired by B. G. Kher, report 1956); the first Committee of Parliament (1957, chaired by Govind Ballabh Pant). On its recommendation the President's Order of 1960 set up the machinery for translation, terminology and Hindi teaching. No further Article 344(1) commission has been constituted; the standing body today is the Committee under Section 4 of the 1963 Act.

3. Chapter II - Regional languages (Articles 345-347)

• Article 345: A State legislature may by law adopt any one or more languages in use in the State, or Hindi, as the official language(s) of that State; until it does, English continues for State purposes. This is why Tamil Nadu uses Tamil and English, Kerala Malayalam, West Bengal Bengali (and Nepali in Darjeeling hills), and so on.
• Article 346: The language authorised for Union purposes is the language of communication between States and between a State and the Union; two States may agree to use Hindi between themselves.
• Article 347: On a demand, if the President is satisfied that a substantial proportion of a State's population wants a language to be recognised, the President may direct that it be officially recognised throughout the State or any part of it (e.g. recognition of additional languages in multilingual districts).
• A State's official language need not be in the Eighth Schedule (e.g. English in Nagaland, Mizoram and Meghalaya; Kokborok in Tripura).

4. Chapter III - Judiciary and texts of laws (Articles 348-349)

• Article 348(1): Until Parliament provides otherwise, English is the language of (a) all proceedings in the Supreme Court and every High Court; (b) the authoritative texts of all Bills, Acts, Ordinances, orders, rules, regulations and bye-laws of the Union and the States.
• Article 348(2): The Governor of a State, with the previous consent of the President, may authorise Hindi or any other State official language in proceedings of the High Court of that State - but not for judgments, decrees and orders, which stay in English unless Parliament legislates (see Section 7 of the 1963 Act). Hindi has been so authorised in the High Courts of Rajasthan (1950), Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar. Later requests from some States for their own languages have not been granted, the Union following a 1965 Cabinet decision that the Chief Justice of India's concurrence is required; this remains a live political demand.
• Article 348(2) does not apply to the Supreme Court. Regional-language *translations* of Supreme Court judgments (through the AI-assisted translation effort and the free judgment portal) are an administrative facility, not a change of the court's language.
• Article 348(3): Where a State uses a language other than English for its Acts, an English translation published under the Governor's authority is the authoritative text.
• Article 349: For 15 years from commencement, no Bill altering Articles 348 could be moved in Parliament without the President's previous sanction, and the President had to consider the Article 344(1) Commission's and Committee's recommendations. This article is now spent.

5. Chapter IV - Special directives (Articles 350, 350A, 350B, 351)

• Article 350: Every person is entitled to submit a representation for redress of grievance to any Union or State authority in any of the languages used in the Union or the State.
• Article 350A (inserted by the 7th Amendment, 1956): Every State and local authority shall endeavour to provide instruction in the mother tongue at the primary stage to children of linguistic minority groups; the President may issue directions to States.
• Article 350B (also 7th Amendment, 1956): A Special Officer for Linguistic Minorities, appointed by the President, investigates all matters relating to the safeguards for linguistic minorities and reports to the President, who places the reports before Parliament and sends them to the State concerned. The office functions as the Commissioner for Linguistic Minorities (CLM), headquartered at Allahabad/Prayagraj, under the Ministry of Minority Affairs - unlike the SC/ST Commissions it is a single officer and has no constitutional status as a commission.
• Article 351 - the directive on development of Hindi: It is the duty of the Union to promote the spread of Hindi, develop it so that it may serve as a medium of expression for all the composite culture of India, and to enrich it by assimilating the forms, style and expressions used in Hindustani and in the other languages in the Eighth Schedule, drawing primarily on Sanskrit and secondarily on other languages for its vocabulary. This is the constitutional basis of Sanskritised technical terminology (CSTT coinages) and a favourite essay question.
• Related but outside Part XVII: Article 120 (language in Parliament - Hindi or English, mother tongue with the presiding officer's permission), Article 210 (same for State legislatures), Article 29(1) (right of any section to conserve its language), Article 30 (minority educational institutions), and the Eighth Schedule itself.

6. The Eighth Schedule

• Listed under Article 344(1) and Article 351 only - it is a pool from which the Official Language Commission draws members and whose languages Hindi must draw on. Inclusion does not make a language an official language of the Union or of any State.
• Originally 14 languages; today 22.

• Demands for inclusion (Bhojpuri, Rajasthani, Tulu, Garhwali, Kumaoni, Mizo, Khasi, English and others, several dozen in all) are pending; the Sitakant Mahapatra Committee was set up to frame criteria but no fixed criteria have been notified.
• Classical language status is a separate Ministry of Culture scheme, not a constitutional category: Tamil (2004), Sanskrit (2005), Telugu and Kannada (2008), Malayalam (2013), Odia (2014), and Marathi, Pali, Prakrit, Assamese and Bengali added in October 2024 - 11 in all.

7. The Official Languages Act, 1963 (as amended in 1967)

• Enacted under Article 343(3) and brought into force in stages; the crucial Section 3 took effect on 26 January 1965, the day the 15-year period ended. The Amendment Act of 1967 followed the Tamil Nadu anti-Hindi agitation of 1965 and Prime Minister Nehru's earlier assurance that English would continue as long as non-Hindi States wanted it.
• Section 3(1): English may continue to be used, in addition to Hindi, for all official purposes of the Union and for business in Parliament, even after 26 January 1965.
• Section 3(3): Both Hindi and English shall compulsorily be used for specified documents - resolutions, general orders, rules, notifications, administrative and other reports, press communiqués; administrative and other reports and official papers laid before Parliament; contracts and agreements, licences, permits, notices and tender forms. This bilingual obligation is absolute: failing to issue a tender notice or licence in both languages is a statutory violation.
• Section 3(4)-(5) (1967 amendment): Rules made under the Act must ensure persons serving the Union can work in Hindi or English; and Section 3 cannot be discontinued until resolutions to that effect are passed by the legislatures of *all* the States that have not adopted Hindi, and by both Houses of Parliament - the "virtual indefinite" guarantee of English.
• Section 4: A Committee on Official Language to be constituted after 10 years from the commencement of Section 3 (hence 1976) on a resolution of either House - 30 members: 20 Lok Sabha, 10 Rajya Sabha - to review progress in the use of Hindi and report to the President. It is chaired by the Union Home Minister and works through sub-committees; its reports and the Presidential orders on them drive Rajbhasha practice.
• Section 5: Authoritative texts in Hindi of Central Acts, Ordinances, orders, rules etc., published in the Gazette under the President's authority; the Hindi text so published is deemed to be the authoritative text thereof in Hindi.
• Section 6: Where a State uses a language other than Hindi for its Acts, a Hindi translation published under the Governor's authority is deemed the authoritative Hindi text.
• Section 7: With the President's consent, the Governor may authorise Hindi or the State's official language, in addition to English, for judgments, decrees and orders of the High Court - plugging the gap left by Article 348(2).
• Section 8: Rule-making power of the Central Government; Section 9 excludes the application of Sections 6 and 7 to Jammu and Kashmir (a provision read with the subsequent reorganisation).

8. The Official Languages Rules, 1976 - office practice

• Made under Section 8; apply to the whole of India except the State of Tamil Nadu (the 1963 Act itself still applies there).
• Regions (Rule 2): Region A - Bihar, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and the UTs of Delhi and the Andaman & Nicobar Islands; Region B - Gujarat, Maharashtra, Punjab and the UTs of Chandigarh and Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu; Region C - all remaining States and UTs.
• Rule 3 (broadly): communications to Region A - in Hindi; to Region B - ordinarily in Hindi, and where such a communication is issued in English it must be accompanied by a Hindi translation; to Region C - in English.
• Rule 4: inter-office communication - within Region A, Hindi; between Region A and B/C offices, Hindi with English translation; between B and C offices, generally English.
• Rule 5: A communication received in Hindi must be replied to in Hindi. Rule 7: applications, appeals and representations made or signed in Hindi get a reply in Hindi.
• Rule 6: Both Hindi and English are to be used in documents under Section 3(3), and the signing officer must ensure both versions are signed.
• Rule 8: An employee with proficiency in Hindi may do noting/drafting in Hindi without an English translation. Rule 9: "working knowledge" of Hindi (matriculation with Hindi, or Pragya under the Hindi Teaching Scheme, or a declaration). Rule 10(4): when 80% of staff of an office acquire working knowledge, the office is notified in the Gazette as one where Hindi is to be used.
• Rule 11: manuals, codes, procedural literature, forms, rubber stamps, name-boards, letterheads - bilingual. Rule 12: the administrative head of each office is responsible for compliance, with annual review and inspection.
• Annual Programme of the Department of Official Language sets region-wise targets for Hindi correspondence (recently of the order of 100% for Region A, 90% for B and 55% for C) and quarterly progress reports; the figures are revised each year, so quote the current Programme rather than a remembered number.

9. Implementation machinery

• Department of Official Language (Rajbhasha Vibhag), Ministry of Home Affairs - created in 1975; frames the Annual Programme, monitors compliance, runs awards.
• Kendriya Hindi Samiti (1967) - apex policy body, chaired by the Prime Minister.
• Hindi Salahkar Samitis - ministry-level advisory committees chaired by the Minister; Official Language Implementation Committees in each office (quarterly meetings); Town Official Language Implementation Committees (TOLICs / Nagar Rajbhasha Karyanvayan Samiti) in cities with 10 or more central offices.
• Central Translation Bureau (1971) - translation of codes, manuals and forms, and translator training; Central Hindi Directorate (1960); Kendriya Hindi Sansthan, Agra; Commission for Scientific and Technical Terminology (CSTT, 1961) - coins technical terms under the Article 351 mandate; Hindi Teaching Scheme - Prabodh, Praveen, Pragya courses and Hindi typing/stenography for central staff.
• Incentives: cash awards for noting/drafting in Hindi, Rajbhasha Gaurav and Rajbhasha Kirti Puraskar, Hindi Pakhwada/Hindi Diwas (14 September), LEELA and Kanthasth/e-Mahashabdkosh digital tools.
• Limits: the Act and Rules create duties on offices, not justiciable individual rights; non-compliance is handled administratively (reports, inspections, committee observations), not by penalty. Articles 350A and 351 are directives, not enforceable rights.

Key points

• Article 343(1) - Hindi in Devanagari is the official language of the Union; numerals are the international form of Indian numerals.
• Article 343(2) - English for 15 years from 26 January 1950, ending 26 January 1965; 343(3) lets Parliament extend it by law.
• Article 344(1) - Official Language Commission at 5 and 10 years; 344(4) - Committee of Parliament of 30 members (20 LS + 10 RS).
• Article 345 - a State adopts its own official language(s) by law; English continues till it does.
• Article 346/347 - language of inter-State and Centre-State communication; Presidential recognition of a language spoken by a substantial proportion of a State.
• Article 348 - English for Supreme Court and High Court proceedings and for authoritative texts of laws; 348(2) lets a Governor, with the President's previous consent, allow a regional language in High Court proceedings only.
• Article 349 - 15-year bar on amending the language-of-courts provisions without the President's sanction; now spent.
• Article 350 - representation for grievance in any language used in the Union or State.
• Article 350A - primary instruction in the mother tongue for linguistic minorities (7th Amendment, 1956).
• Article 350B - Special Officer for Linguistic Minorities, i.e. the CLM, appointed by the President (7th Amendment, 1956).
• Article 351 - duty to develop Hindi, drawing primarily on Sanskrit, assimilating Hindustani and Eighth Schedule languages.
• Eighth Schedule - 22 languages (14 originally); Sindhi 1967, Konkani/Manipuri/Nepali 1992, Bodo/Dogri/Maithili/Santali 2003; inclusion confers no official status.
• Official Languages Act, 1963, s.3(1) - English continues in addition to Hindi indefinitely; s.3(3) - 14 classes of documents must be bilingual.
• s.3(5) (1967 amendment) - English cannot be dropped until all non-Hindi State legislatures and both Houses so resolve.
• s.4 - the standing Committee on Official Language; s.5 - authoritative Hindi texts of Central Acts; s.7 - regional language in High Court judgments with the President's consent.
• Rules, 1976 - Regions A / B / C; Rule 5 (reply in Hindi to Hindi), Rule 10(4) (80% staff → notified office), Rule 12 (administrative head responsible); not applicable to Tamil Nadu.
• No national language - the Constitution speaks only of official languages; "Hindi is the national language" is a factual error in an exam answer.

Examples

Example 1 - When did English's constitutional term end, and what saved it? Commencement 26 January 1950 + 15 years = 26 January 1965. Article 343(2) expired that day. Parliament had already enacted the Official Languages Act, 1963, whose Section 3 was brought into force on 26 January 1965 precisely so there would be no gap. So English continues today under Section 3(1) of the 1963 Act read with Article 343(3) - not under Article 343(2). The 1967 amendment then added Section 3(5), requiring resolutions from all non-Hindi State legislatures and both Houses before English can be discontinued.

Example 2 - A central PSU branch at Coimbatore receives a letter in Hindi from a Delhi ministry and wants to issue a tender notice in English only. What applies?

• The Rules, 1976 do not apply to the State of Tamil Nadu, so Rule 3/Rule 5 region obligations are not attracted.
• But the Act applies throughout India: a tender form falls squarely in Section 3(3), so the notice must be issued in both Hindi and English. Doing it in English alone is a statutory breach.
• The incoming Hindi letter: Rule 5's mandatory Hindi reply does not bind a Tamil Nadu office, though replying bilingually is the standard practice advised by the Department of Official Language.

Example 3 - Which text of a law prevails? A litigant relies on the Hindi Gazette text of a Central Act that differs from the English text.

• Article 348(1)(b): the authoritative text of a Central Act is in English.
• Section 5 of the 1963 Act makes the President-authorised Hindi translation "deemed to be the authoritative text" for its purposes, but in a conflict the English enactment governs, the Hindi being a published translation of it.
• For a State Act passed in, say, Malayalam: the English translation published under the Governor's authority is authoritative (Article 348(3)), and a Hindi translation under Section 6 is the authoritative Hindi text.

Example 4 - Can the Kerala High Court deliver judgments in Malayalam? Two separate permissions are needed. For proceedings, the Governor needs the President's previous consent under Article 348(2). For judgments, decrees and orders, the route is Section 7 of the 1963 Act, again with the President's consent. Four High Courts (Rajasthan, UP, MP, Bihar) have Hindi so authorised; proposals for Tamil, Gujarati, Kannada, Bengali and Malayalam have not been accepted so far, the Centre citing the requirement of the Chief Justice of India's concurrence. The Supreme Court is outside Article 348(2) altogether - only translations are provided.

Example 5 - Region-wise correspondence target arithmetic. A Region C office (say Bengaluru) despatched 4,000 letters to Region A and B addressees in a quarter, of which 2,000 were in Hindi; the Annual Programme target for Region C correspondence in Hindi is 55%.

• Achievement = 2,000 / 4,000 = 50%, i.e. 5 percentage points short; the shortfall to be made up = 0.55 × 4,000 − 2,000 = 200 letters.
• Separately, if 180 of the office's 200 employees have working knowledge of Hindi, that is 90% - above the 80% threshold in Rule 10(4), so the office qualifies to be notified in the Gazette, after which noting and drafting in Hindi becomes the norm there.

Where it is used

• Rajbhasha sections of every ministry, bank, insurer and PSU - Reserve Bank of India, SBI, LIC, ONGC, NTPC, Indian Railways, BHEL - which run Official Language Implementation Committees, Hindi Pakhwada and quarterly progress reports on exactly these rules.
• Bilingual compliance work: drafting tenders, licences, notices, annual reports and parliamentary papers under Section 3(3); this is the statutory reason translator posts exist.
• Legal and legislative drafting: Legislative Department and Central Translation Bureau producing authoritative Hindi texts under Section 5, and State law departments producing English texts under Article 348(3).
• Courts and tribunals: pleadings and judgment languages in the four Hindi-authorised High Courts; translation cells in High Courts and the Supreme Court's regional-language judgment translation effort.
• Education and minority administration: Article 350A mother-tongue schooling, CLM reports, State Minority Commissions, three-language-formula implementation and NEP 2020's "no language shall be imposed" position.
• Exams and selections: UPSC/State PSC polity, UGC NET (Hindi and Rajbhasha units), SSC Junior Hindi Translator and departmental Rajbhasha promotion exams, where Part XVII, the 1963 Act and the 1976 Rules are directly asked.

Interview questions

• Q: Is Hindi the national language of India? A: No. Article 343 makes Hindi in Devanagari the official language of the Union; the Constitution nowhere uses "national language", and States have their own official languages under Article 345.
• Q: English was to go in 1965. Why is it still used? A: Article 343(3) let Parliament legislate, and Section 3(1) of the Official Languages Act, 1963 permits English in addition to Hindi indefinitely; the 1967 amendment made discontinuance conditional on resolutions by all non-Hindi State legislatures and both Houses.
• Q: What is the significance of the Munshi-Ayyangar formula? A: It is the Constituent Assembly compromise behind Part XVII - Hindi as the Union's official language, English for fifteen years, and review machinery - avoiding both a Hindi imposition and English permanence in the text.
• Q: Which documents must compulsorily be bilingual? A: Those listed in Section 3(3) - resolutions, general orders, rules, notifications, administrative and other reports, press communiqués, papers laid before Parliament, contracts, agreements, licences, permits, notices and tender forms.
• Q: What are Regions A, B and C? A: Groupings under Rule 2 of the Official Languages Rules, 1976 by prevalence of Hindi - A the Hindi-speaking States with Delhi and the Andamans, B Gujarat, Maharashtra, Punjab and the UTs of Chandigarh and DNHDD, C the rest - determining the language of correspondence.
• Q: Does the 1976 Rules apply all over India? A: They apply to the whole of India except the State of Tamil Nadu; the 1963 Act, however, applies there too.
• Q: A letter arrives in Hindi at a Region C office. In which language must the reply go? A: In Hindi - Rule 5 makes a Hindi reply to a Hindi communication mandatory irrespective of region (Tamil Nadu apart, where the Rules do not apply).
• Q: Can a High Court deliver judgments in a regional language? A: Only with the President's consent - Article 348(2) covers proceedings, and Section 7 of the 1963 Act covers judgments, decrees and orders; Hindi has been so authorised in the Rajasthan, UP, MP and Bihar High Courts.
• Q: Does inclusion in the Eighth Schedule make a language official? A: No. The Schedule is referred to only in Articles 344(1) and 351 - representation on the Official Language Commission and sources for enriching Hindi; official status comes from Article 343 for the Union and Article 345 for a State.
• Q: What does Article 351 direct, and what has it produced? A: That the Union develop Hindi as a medium for India's composite culture, drawing vocabulary primarily from Sanskrit and secondarily from other languages, assimilating Hindustani and Eighth Schedule forms - the basis of the Commission for Scientific and Technical Terminology's coinages.
• Q: Who protects linguistic minorities constitutionally? A: Article 350A (mother-tongue primary education), Article 350B (Special Officer for Linguistic Minorities, functioning as the Commissioner for Linguistic Minorities) and Articles 29(1) and 30 on conserving language and minority institutions.
• Q: Which body reviews the progress of Hindi today, and how is it composed? A: The Committee on Official Language under Section 4 of the 1963 Act - 30 members, 20 from the Lok Sabha and 10 from the Rajya Sabha, chaired by the Union Home Minister - mirroring the Article 344(4) committee.

Common mistakes

• Writing that Hindi is the "national language", or that the Eighth Schedule lists "national languages" - both are wrong; and giving the count as 18 instead of 22.
• Saying English continues "under the Constitution" - it continues under Section 3 of the 1963 Act; Article 343(2) lapsed on 26 January 1965.
• Confusing Article 344(1) (Commission, at 5 and 10 years) with Article 344(4) (Committee of Parliament, 30 members) and with Section 4 of the Act (the standing Committee).
• Claiming Article 348(2) lets a High Court give judgments in a regional language - it covers proceedings only; judgments need Section 7 of the Act. And extending Article 348(2) to the Supreme Court, which it does not touch.
• Forgetting that the Rules, 1976 exclude Tamil Nadu, or assuming the exclusion covers the Act as well.
• Treating Articles 350A and 351 as enforceable rights - they are directives on the State; and treating the CLM under 350B as a multi-member constitutional commission, which it is not.
• Mixing up the Ministry of Culture's classical language scheme (11 languages) with constitutional recognition, and quoting Annual Programme percentage targets as if they were fixed in the Rules - they are revised yearly.

Related topics

Rajbhasha jobs: Hindi translator, Hindi officer and SSC JHT · Eighth Schedule languages and their literatures · Indian federalism and Centre-State relations · Language policy in Indian education and NEP 2020 · Translation studies and technical terminology · Fundamental rights of linguistic and religious minorities (Articles 29-30).