Find out about the following (You may go to the internet, interview people, consult reference books or visit a library.)

(a) Linguistic human rights

(b) Constitutional guarantees for linguistic minorities in India.

(a) Linguistic human rights are rights of humans to preserve and promote communication in any language in private and public sphere. International human rights law has been imposed all over the world, which gives right to promotion and protection of identity to all the groups.

In the international law, linguistic rights come under educational and cultural rights.

Some of the linguistic rights include, right to one’s own language in legal work, education and media.

There are many worldwide organisations such as UNESCO are working on the protection of linguistic human rights.

(b) The term “Linguistic minorities” is referred to the people who speaks a language that is not common in an area and is spoken by less number of people. For example, Tamil language in Northern India.

The constitution of India is the longest and most elaborated constitution in the world. It guarantees and preserves right of every group in the society. In the same line, there are some articles that prevents exploitation of the rights of linguistic minorities in India. Some of them are:

Article 29 : Right to establish and manage educational institutions to minorities

This article gives right to the people to establish the minority group based educational institutions and giving instructions accordingly, to preserve their culture and heritage.

Article 350A : Facilities of instruction in mother tongue at primary stage

Every child in India has a right to receive education in their mother tongue at the primary level, taht is till class 5.

Article 350B : Provision for Special officer for linguistic minorities under constitution

For the preservation of a minority group’s language, a special officer is appointed to keep a check if the rules are being followed or not.