India is the land of indigenous languages. Diversity in language is very common in India.

. Most Indians speak a language belonging to the families of the Indo-Aryan branch of Indo-European (ca. 74%), the Dravidian (ca. 24%), the Austroasiatic (Munda) (ca. 1.2%), or the Tibeto-Burman (ca. 0.6%), with some languages of the Himalayas still unclassified.

The ancient  northern Indian languages generated from the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family influenced by Old Indic by way of the Middle IndicPrakrit languages and Apabhraṃśa of the Middle Ages. It is difficult to identify the specific period where the modern north Indian languages such as Hindustani, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Rajasthani, Sindhi and Oriya emerged, but AD 1000 is widely accepted. Each language had different influences, with Hindustani strongly influenced by Sanskrit and Persian. It is claimed Oriya is the only classical language from this language family and it is least influenced by any foreign language.
      Again  the Dravidian languages of South India had a history independent of Sanskrit. The major Dravidian languages are Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada and Tulu.Though Malayalam and Telugu are Dravidian in origin, but influence of Sanskrit is very much.
   The terms "language" and "dialect" are distinguished by experts on the basis of mutual intelligibility. The Indian census uses two specific classifications in its own unique way: (1) 'language' and (2) 'mother tongue’.
According to the  census of 2001, 29 'languages' have more than a million native speakers, 60 have more than 100,000 and 122 have more than 10,000 native speakers.

: Ordered by number of native speakers
Rank	Language	2001 census[2] (total population 1,028,610,328 )
		Speakers	Percentage
1	Hindi languages[5]	422,048,642	41.03%
2	Bengali	83,369,769	8.11%
3	Telugu	74,002,856	7.19%
4	Marathi	71,936,894	6.99%
5	Tamil	60,793,814	5.91%
6	Urdu	51,536,111	5.01%
7	Gujarati	46,091,617	4.48%
8	Kannada	37,924,011	3.69%
9	Malayalam	33,066,392	3.21%
10	Oriya	33,017,446	3.21%
11	Punjabi	29,102,477	2.83%
12	Assamese	13,168,484	1.28%
13	Maithili	12,179,122	1.18%

14	Bhili/Bhilodi	9,582,957		0.93%
15	Santali	6,469,600		0.63%
16	Kashmiri	5,527,698		0.54%
17	Nepali	2,871,749		0.28%
18	Gondi	2,713,790		0.26%
19	Sindhi	2,535,485		0.25%
20	Konkani	2,489,015		0.24%
21	Dogri	2,282,589		0.22%
22	Khandeshi	2,075,258		0.21%
23	Kurukh	1,751,489		0.17%
24	Tulu		1,722,768		0.17%
25	Meitei/Manipuri		1,466,705*		0.14%
26	Bodo		1,350,478		0.13%
27	Khasi		1,128,575		0.11%
28	Mundari		1,061,352		0.103%
29	Ho		1,042,724		0.101%

100,000 to one million speakers

Rank	Language	2001 census
		Speakers	Percentage
30	Kui	916,222
31	Garo	889,479
32	Kokborok	854,023
33	Mizo	674,756
34	Halabi	593,443
35	Korku	574,481
36	Munda	469,357
37	Mishing	390,583	0.047%
38	Karbi/Mikir	366,229	0.044%
39	Saurashtra	310,000	0.037%
40	Savara	273,168	0.033%
41	Koya	270,994	0.032%
42	English	226,449	0.027%
43	Kharia	225,556	0.027%
44	Khond/Kondh	220,783	0.026%
45	Nishi	173,791	0.021%
46	Ao	172,449	0.021%
50	Sema	166,157	0.020%
51	Kisan	162,088	0.019%
52	Adi	158,409	0.019%
53	Rabha	139,365	0.017%
54	Konyak	137,722	0.016%
55	Malto	108,148	0.013%
56	Thado	107,992	0.013%
57	Tangkhul	101,841	0.012%