The Indo-Aryan language of India. Hindi is the second most spoken language in the world, after Chinese. About 500 million people speak Hindi, in India and abroad, and the total number of people who can understand the language may be 800 million. Hindi being the National Language of India has its roots in the classical Sanskrit language.It is effectively a continuation of Hindustani, which developed from Khari Boli, the speech of certain classes and districts in Delhi affiliated with the Mughal court in the 16th-18th centuries. The language acquired its current form over many centuries, and numerous dialectical variations still exist. Like Sanskrit, Hindi is written in the Dev Nagari script, which is common to several other Indian languages as well. Much of the vocabulary of Hindi comes from Sanskrit, though Hindi also has a special relationship with Urdu. Their grammar and much of their vocabulary are virtually identical. Linguists think of Hindi and Urdu as the same language, the difference being that Hindi is written in Devanagari and draws vocabulary from Sanskrit, while Urdu is written in Persian script and draws on Persian and Arabic. The separation is largely a political one; before the partition of India into India and Pakistan, spoken Hindi and Urdu were considered the same language, Hindustani.

The development of Hindi into a national language had its beginnings in the colonial period, when the British began to cultivate it as a standard among government officials. Later it was used for literary purposes and has since become the vehicle for some excellent prose and poetry. Hindi shares with English and most other European languages. They evolved from a language thought to have been spoken in Central Asia around 5,000 BC, called by linguists, the Indo-European parent language. For this reason (and because of the 200-year influence of the British in India), many basic words in Hindi are the same as or similar to their counterpart in English.

Official status
The Constitution of India, adopted in 1950, declares Hindi in the Devanagari script as the "official language of the Union" (Article 343(1)). Hindi is also enumerated as one of the twenty-two languages of the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India, which entitles it to representation on the Official Language Commission. It was envisioned that Hindi would become the sole working language of the central government by 1965, with state governments being free to function in languages of their own choice. This has not, however, happened and English is also used along with Hindi for official purposes. There was widespread resistance to the imposition of Hindi on non-native speakers, in some states, especially the Anti-Hindi agitations in the state of Tamil Nadu, which resulted in the passage of the Official Languages Act (1963). This act provided for the continued use of English, indefinitely, for all official purposes, by the Union government. However, the constitutional directive to the central government to champion the spread of Hindi was retained and has strongly influenced the policies of the Union government.

At the state level, Hindi is the official language of the following states: Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, and Delhi. Each of these states may also designate a "co-official language"; in Uttar Pradesh for instance, depending on the political formation in power, sometimes this language is Urdu. Similarly, Hindi is accorded the status of co-official language in several states.

Social status
While the Union government has sedulously promoted the spread of Hindi, its official status is not reflected in social importance. As with other south Asian language groups, even native speakers of Hindi, if elite, are usually fluent in English. Education in English is a prerequisite for social status hence the existence of several English medium "public" (actually private) and Christian missionary schools in India. English remains the sole language of higher education in many of the fields of learning such as Engineering, Medicine and Science. There were numerous pro-Hindi agitations in the so-called Hindi belt as a reaction to the anti-Hindi agitations in Tamil Nadu during the 1960s, but the movement de facto called for the permission of English (being a foreign language) rather than actual promotion of Hindi.

At the informal level the use of Hindi has been growing, even among non-native speakers. Hindi is often used if the speakers in question hail from different linguistic provinces, especially if they belong to a social stratum that has not accessed a very good English education, and often even otherwise. Hindi movies have been playing a substantial role in popularizing the language all over the country. Popular Hindi TV serials do the same today. Seeing the popularity of Hindi, BBC World Service started News in Hindi in 1940.

Hindi is a direct descendant of Sanskrit through Prakrit and Apabhramsha. It has been influenced and enriched by Dravidian, Turkish, Farsi, Arabic, Portuguese and English. It is a very expressive language. In poetry and songs, it can convey emotions using simple and gentle words. It can also be used for exact and rational reasoning. The Hindi literary tradition is primarily one of verse and is also essentially oral. Prose was a latecomer to the Hindi literary scene, and the first work of prose in Hindi is generally agreed upon as being the fantasy novel Chandrakanta written by Devaki Nandan Khatri. The earliest works were composed to be sung or recited and were so transmitted for many generations before being written down. As a result, the earliest records of a text may be later by several centuries than the conjectured date of its composition.