Doesn’t India have 10s to 100s of languages?
Yes. And the differences can be extreme. Tamil for instance has no relation to Hindi or Punjabi. Its in an entirely different language family.
English is the lingua franca of India. Its also the language of instruction in higher education. But its a sort of English that takes a lot of getting used to.
India has 28 official languages, and most of these have their own script! Beyond these there are 300 other languages.
And these are languages not dialects: Marathi and gujarati are not mutually intelligible though both are neighbouring states. And both have written histories and literature dating back over 1000 years.
What is more amazing is that India has languages belonging to 5 Language FAMILIES :
1. Indo European
2. Dravidian
3. Tibeto-Burman
4. Mon-Khmer
5. Sentinel-Jarawa
3.