1961 Census of India
The 1961 Census of India was the 10th in a series of censuses held in India every decade since 1871.
The population of India was counted as 438,936,918 people.[1]
Language data
The 1961 census recognized 1,652 mother tongues, counting all declarations made by any individual at the time when the census was conducted.[1] However, the declaring individuals often mixed names of languages with those of dialects, sub-dialects and dialect clusters or even castes, professions, religions, localities, regions, countries and nationalities.[1] The list therefore includes "languages" with barely a few individual speakers as well as 530 unclassified "mother tongues" and more than 100 idioms that are non-native to India, including linguistically unspecific demonyms such as "African", "Canadian" or "Belgian".[1]