SOUTH INDIAN CULTURE
SOUTH INDIAN CULTURE LANGUAGE The Dravidian Family of Languages constitutes the largest linguistic group in southern India. It comprises of seventy three languages. The major languages spoken include Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam. Tulu is spoken by about 1.5 million people in coastal Kerala and Karnataka and Konkani, an Indo-Aryan language, is spoken by half a million people in the Konkan coast. English is also widely spoken in urban areas of South India. Urdu is spoken by around 12 million Muslims in southern India. Tamil was the first language to be granted ‘classical language’, status by the Government of India in 2004. Other major languages declared classical were Kannada in 2008, Telugu in 2008 and Malayalam in 2013. RELIGION Hinduism forms the dominant religion in south India as well, with about 80% of the population adhering to it. The second most followed religion is Islam with about 11% of the population following it and 8% of the population follow Chris