Linguistic Regionalism – Causes, Effects and Way Forward
India is a multilingual country and is considered to be a land of a wide range of diversity. Being a land of diversity, it has benefitted and has to deal with several problems at the same time. Linguistic diversity is one such diversity that gives rise to linguistic regionalism in India. Regionalism is not a new concept to India. From time immemorial there have been issues regarding differences among people based on religion, caste, culture, and so on. These differences act as a unifying as well as a dividing force among people. Linguistic regionalism is one such issue that gave rise to many states in India. Time and again, there have been demands for providing some special status to some language in some parts of the country. Many regional-language speaking groups feel isolated amongst the varied diversity of the country. This gives rise to linguistic regionalism which has become a burning issue nowadays.