Maithili, Angika and Bajjika in Contemporary Public Life

Contemporary Public Life Chapter 140 examines Maithili, Angika and Bajjika as languages of contemporary public life rather than as timeless cultural labels. Public life includes census naming, constitutional status, administration, education, examinations, literary institutions, broadcasting, digital media, political mobilisation and everyday interaction with the state. The three names do not occupy the same institutional position. Maithili is one of the twenty-two languages in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India and has a long national literary-institutional presence. Angika has substantial regional use and a state-level educational and academy history in Bihar but is not a scheduled language. Bajjika has an extensive speech community and literary activism, yet its Indian census and state-institutional visibility remains comparatively unsettled. Nepal creates a different frame because its Constitution calls all mother tongues national languages and its 2021 census separately enumerates Maithili, Bajjika and Angika. The chapter therefore refuses to turn a linguistic classification dispute into a demographic fact. A census category is an administrative instrument, not a final linguistic theory; a constitutional listing does not prove greater everyday vitality; and a speech community can be socially powerful without possessing a ministry, academy or examination paper. The border makes comparison especially revealing. In India, Maithili has strong formal recognition while Angika and Bajjika encounter narrower or more contested channels. In Nepal, separate census recognition is broader, but provincial working-language implementation remains politically contested. The correct historical question is how institutions convert language into usable public capacity, and where that conversion fails. 140.1 Public life requires separating language, variety, script and legal status Language in public life is produced by several institutions that answer different questions. Linguists ask about structural relationships and mutual intelligibility; censuses ask people to name a mother tongue; constitutions and statutes define legal categories; universities create subjects and departments; broadcasters decide which languages receive scheduled airtime; and citizens choose languages situationally. These layers can diverge. A person may speak Bajjika at home, use Hindi for a government form, study Maithili literature, and consume English-language digital content without experiencing contradiction. A useful history therefore records classification disputes without letting them erase social practice. It also distinguishes language from script. Contemporary Maithili is usually printed in Devanagari even though Tirhuta/Mithilakshar has major historical and symbolic importance. Angika and Bajjika likewise circulate principally in Devanagari in modern publishing, while older regional script traditions belong to a different historical layer. 140.2 The three names inhabit different recognition regimes The institutional asymmetry is the starting fact of the chapter. In India, Maithili has constitutional recognition in the Eighth Schedule; Angika and Bajjika do not. Bihar has nevertheless created or proposed state institutions for regional languages beyond the Eighth Schedule, and its higher-education curriculum can recognise subjects that national constitutional schedules do not. Nepal reverses part of this pattern: all mother tongues are constitutionally national languages, and the 2021 census separately reports Maithili, Bajjika and Angika. Yet Nepal’s federal Constitution still requires provincial law before an additional language becomes a provincial language of government. Recognition is therefore layered rather than binary. The same language name may be strong in one layer and weak in another. Figure 556 summarises these non- 14411441 GAJENDRA THAKUR equivalent regimes so that later comparisons do not confuse census visibility with legal or administrative power. Figure 556 — Maithili, Angika and Bajjika occupy different recognition regimes in India/Bihar and Nepal/Madhesh; the categories are not directly interchangeable. 140.3 Maithili’s Eighth Schedule status created national institutional access Maithili entered the Eighth Schedule through the Constitution (Ninety-second Amendment) Act, 2003, with effect from 7 January 2004. This is a major threshold because Eighth Schedule status places Maithili within the constitutional architecture used for official-language policy, public examinations and national recognition. It does not make Maithili the routine working language of Bihar, nor does it determine the boundaries of the speech community. Its practical importance lies in institutional access: Maithili can appear in Union-level language frameworks, examinations and official translation environments on a footing unavailable to non-scheduled regional languages. The distinction matters when comparing Maithili with Angika and Bajjika. It also shows why demands for inclusion in the Eighth Schedule carry political weight: they concern access to national institutions and symbolic equality, not merely a label in a list. 140.4 Constitutional recognition does not make Maithili Bihar’s routine administrative language The Eighth Schedule is sometimes treated as if it automatically changes the language of offices, courts and local administration. It does not. Bihar’s routine government communication remains dominated by Hindi, with English important in higher administration, courts, technical documentation and intergovernmental work. Maithili’s constitutional status creates opportunities but does not compel every district office in Mithila to function in Maithili. The gap between recognition and administrative use is a central theme of contemporary language politics. Citizens often experience their mother tongue orally at counters, meetings and political events while receiving written forms, orders and digital interfaces in Hindi or English. This produces a layered public sphere in which spoken accommodation can coexist with written standardisation. Measuring public vitality therefore requires observing actual transactions, not simply reading constitutional schedules. HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II 140.5 Census 2011 remains India’s latest published language baseline As of September 2026, the 2011 Census remains the latest completed Indian census with published language tables. Table C-16 provides mother-tongue distributions, while C-17 records bilingualism and trilingualism. The published 2011 language data report roughly 13.6 million Maithili mother-tongue speakers nationally. Those figures are dated and should not be treated as 2026 population estimates. Their continuing importance is classificatory: they show how the state counted language at the last complete enumeration. Census 2027 is underway, but no language results can yet be used. This time lag matters politically because campaigns for recognition and self-identification take place in a statistical environment whose most authoritative public counts are fifteen years old. Any contemporary claim about growth or decline must therefore be labelled as a projection, survey finding or advocacy estimate rather than a new census fact. 140.6 Census classification itself shapes visibility The Indian language census does not simply mirror everyday names. It aggregates many mother-tongue returns under broader scheduled or non-scheduled language categories. Linguistic scholarship drawing on Census 2011 notes that Angika is counted within the larger Hindi umbrella rather than treated as a scheduled language in its own right. Publicly circulated accounts of Bajjika face an even sharper problem: there is no clean, widely used 2011 all-India public figure equivalent to the Maithili scheduled-language total. This does not mean Angika or Bajjika speakers disappeared. It means that the architecture of aggregation changes what becomes visible in headline statistics. The historian should therefore distinguish three things: what people said, how enumerators coded it, and how final tables grouped it. Recognition movements often begin precisely at this gap between social naming and statistical publication. 140.7 Census 2027 is becoming a new arena of linguistic self-identification Because the 2011 tables remain the last published baseline, Census 2027 has become a new horizon for regional language advocacy. Public campaigns in Bajjika-speaking areas have already urged residents to report Bajjika as their mother tongue. Similar recognition debates surround Angika. Such mobilisation is historically significant even before the results exist: it shows that census participation is understood as a form of political representation. The correct scholarly posture is restraint. The forthcoming census may alter counts, codes or aggregation, but no future outcome should be assumed. What can be documented now is the mobilisation itself and the institutional stakes attached to naming. Census categories shape funding claims, educational demands and narratives of numerical strength, but they remain administrative evidence rather than a substitute for linguistic fieldwork. 140.8 Nepal’s Constitution creates a different legal starting point Article 6 of Nepal’s 2015 Constitution declares all mother tongues spoken in Nepal to be national languages. Article 7 makes Nepali in Devanagari the language of official business of Nepal while allowing a province, through provincial law, to designate one or more additional national languages spoken by a majority of its population as languages of provincial official business. Article 32 protects the right of individuals and communities to use and preserve their languages, scripts and cultures. This framework differs sharply from India’s Eighth Schedule model. In Nepal, national-language status is broad; the politically difficult question is administrative implementation. A language can therefore be nationally recognised yet still await provincial legislation, terminology, trained staff, forms and procedures before citizens can use it routinely in government. 14431443 GAJENDRA THAKUR 140.9 Nepal’s 2021 census separately enumerates Maithili, Bajjika and Angika The National Population and Housing Census 2021 makes the cross-border contrast unusually clear. It reports Maithili as the mother tongue of 3,222,389 people nationally, Bajjika of 1,133,764, and Angika of 35,952. These are separate census categories, not subdivisions hidden under another language heading. The totals should not be converted mechanically into claims about India, because the two censuses use different category systems and political histories. They do, however, demonstrate that the same linguistic names can acquire different statistical visibility on opposite sides of an open border. Angika’s relatively small Nepal total also reminds us that Anga’s demographic centre lies mainly in eastern Bihar and adjoining areas rather than in Madhesh Province. Separate enumeration is evidence of recognition, not evidence that all three languages possess equal institutional capacity. 140.10 Madhesh is multilingual rather than a single-language province Madhesh Province is the most important contemporary cross-border arena for Maithili and Bajjika, but it cannot be reduced to either. The 2021 census reports Maithili at 41.7 percent of the provincial population, Bhojpuri at 18.8 percent and Bajjika at 18.4 percent, followed by Nepali, Tharu, Urdu, Magahi and many smaller languages. Figure 557 visualises this distribution. The pattern is geographically uneven: Maithili is especially strong in the eastern-central districts, Bhojpuri in the west, and Bajjika in the central-western belt. Administrative language policy must therefore solve two problems at once: represent the largest language communities and avoid making smaller communities invisible. A province-wide rule may need to coexist with local-level flexibility because the language ecology of Janakpur is not identical to that of Birgunj or Rautahat. Figure 557 — Madhesh Province mother-tongue shares in Census 2021; Angika is separately enumerated nationally but is not among the province’s leading mother tongues. 140.11 Nepal’s Language Commission recommended Maithili, Bhojpuri and Bajjika for Madhesh official work The Language Commission’s provincial recommendations provide a constitutional bridge between census numbers and possible administrative use. For Madhesh, the Commission recommended Maithili, Bhojpuri and Bajjika as languages that could be brought into provincial official business through law, while discussing phased development for other languages. The recommendation is important because it did not rely on numerical rank alone; it also considered capacity, standardisation and practical readiness. Maithili was assessed as especially capable of immediate official use, while Bhojpuri and Bajjika were identified as requiring further capacity building in some domains. This is a useful reminder that administrative language planning requires dictionaries, terminology, trained personnel, keyboards, forms, translation practice and document HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II standards. Speaker numbers create democratic claims, but institutional readiness determines whether a law can be implemented. 140.12 The 2025 Madhesh working-language bill showed that inclusion lists are political instruments In January 2025 the Madhesh provincial government introduced a bill proposing Nepali plus Maithili, Bhojpuri, Bajjika, Hindi and English for official work. The proposal immediately generated controversy. Critics questioned the inclusion of Hindi and English, whose mother-tongue shares in the province are small, and objected to the exclusion of Tharu. The dispute demonstrates that language legislation is not a neutral act of counting. A working-language list can signal identity, border orientation, elite preference, administrative convenience or coalition politics. Public debate also showed that a single provincial list may create new exclusions while attempting to correct older ones. For the historian, the bill is most valuable as evidence of competing concepts of representation: demographic weight, communicative reach, constitutional recommendation and political symbolism were all invoked. 140.13 The bill’s withdrawal and continuing debate show that implementation remains unsettled The 2025 proposal did not become a settled working-language regime. Reporting on the controversy records that the bill was withdrawn amid opposition and demands for revision, while public discussions in 2025 and 2026 continued to call for implementation of Maithili, Bhojpuri and Bajjika in provincial government. By February 2026, commentary on the Language Commission still noted the absence of a comprehensive federal language act. The result is a familiar gap between constitutional permission, expert recommendation and executable law. This unsettled status should not be simplified into a claim that Madhesh has already adopted Maithili or Bajjika as full official languages. The historically accurate statement is that the constitutional route exists, the Commission has recommended languages, a provincial bill was attempted, and the political-administrative settlement remains incomplete. 140.14 Maithili has the strongest national examination infrastructure of the three in India Public examinations are one of the clearest ways in which constitutional recognition becomes practical. The Union Public Service Commission continues to include Maithili literature within the Civil Services Main examination framework, with papers requiring knowledge of Maithili language and literature and answers in Maithili. UPSC archives also contain Maithili compulsory-language papers. Bihar Public Service Commission material likewise demonstrates Maithili’s use in relevant examination contexts. This matters socially because examination status generates textbooks, coaching material, standard terminology and a community of candidates and evaluators. Angika and Bajjika do not possess an equivalent national examination infrastructure. The contrast shows why scheduled-language status can affect educational markets and career pathways even when everyday administration remains Hindi-dominant. 140.15 Bihar’s university curriculum institutionalises Maithili as an academic subject Bihar’s Raj Bhavan/Lok Bhavan curriculum framework issued in 2023 includes Maithili within the undergraduate credit framework. The public curriculum lists provide a state-level academic infrastructure beyond individual university departments: they define course progression, learning outcomes and credit- 14451445 GAJENDRA THAKUR bearing study. Maithili’s university presence also has a longer history in institutions such as L. N. Mithila University, Patna University, B. R. Ambedkar Bihar University and others. Academic institutionalisation matters because it produces teachers, dissertations, grammars, editions and professional credentials. It can also standardise one written variety more strongly than everyday speech. The university therefore both preserves linguistic diversity and selects forms that become examinable. Public-life vitality should be measured not only by enrolment but by whether departments have staff, books, research programmes and pathways into school teaching, publishing and public service. 140.16 Angika’s presence in Bihar’s statewide undergraduate curriculum is institutionally significant Angika occupies an instructive middle position. It lacks Eighth Schedule status, yet Bihar Lok Bhavan’s 2023 undergraduate curriculum framework explicitly lists Angika for both the first two semesters and the third-to-eighth-semester sequence. This gives Angika a formal academic presence that cannot be dismissed as purely oral or folkloric. Curriculum recognition creates demand for teachers, reference works, spelling conventions and a body of examinable literature. At the same time, the absence of national scheduled status limits access to some Union-level channels available to Maithili. Angika thus demonstrates that language institutionalisation is multi-level: state higher education can move ahead of national constitutional recognition. This is particularly important in the Anga region around Bhagalpur and adjoining districts, where regional language identity intersects with a university city, print culture and migration. 140.17 Bajjika’s India-side educational infrastructure remains comparatively weaker Bajjika has a substantial speech community and active literary organisations, but the same 2023 Bihar statewide undergraduate curriculum lists that include Maithili and Angika do not list a comparable Bajjika undergraduate programme. This absence should not be mistaken for absence of literature or speakers. It identifies an institutional gap. Bajjika public life on the Indian side has depended more heavily on literary conferences, magazines, cultural organisations, local performance and digital media than on a stable university subject infrastructure. The weakness is consequential: without curricular pathways it is harder to create salaried teaching posts, standard reference materials and formal assessment. The Nepal side provides a contrasting form of recognition through separate census counting and provincial-language recommendation. Bajjika’s contemporary history therefore illustrates how a language can be socially extensive while institutionally uneven across an international border. 140.18 Language academies reveal the difference between formal creation and operational capacity Bihar’s language academies have long been intended to publish books, support research, organise events and promote regional languages. Yet an academy’s name in a government list is not the same as a functioning institution. Staffing, grants, offices, publication cycles and governance determine whether the academy produces a public sphere. In March 2025 the Bihar government told the Assembly that it was working to strengthen eight language academies and bring them under an umbrella structure. By May 2026, reporting described a proposed ‘Policy 2026’ still moving through financial and cabinet approval. The restructuring debate is itself evidence: language policy had become partly an institutional-repair problem. Figure 558 therefore treats academy presence as intermediate or unstable rather than automatically ‘strong’. The relevant measure is output and accessibility, not nominal existence. HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II 140.19 The Maithili Academy crisis shows how recognition can coexist with institutional fragility Maithili offers the clearest example of the gap between symbolic prestige and organisational health. A January 2026 Patna High Court judgment, in a service-liability case, recorded counsel’s submission that the Maithili Academy was ‘no more in existence’. Contemporary reporting described a largely inactive institution, missing publications and demands for revival. At the same time, state policy discussions continued to treat Maithili as part of the language-academy structure to be reorganised. These sources are not necessarily contradictory: a society can survive formally, collapse operationally, and then be targeted for restructuring. The episode matters because the Academy had historically published important scholarly and literary works. When institutional continuity breaks, students, researchers and exam candidates lose access even though constitutional recognition remains intact. 140.20 Angika academy history and the proposed Bajjika academy show uneven institutionalisation State-level academy policy has not developed uniformly. Angika has been named among Bihar’s existing language academies in government statements and reporting, although the effectiveness and infrastructure of the academy have been questioned. Bajjika followed another trajectory. The state announced plans in 2022 for a Bajjika academy, but public demands for its actual establishment continued in 2025 and March 2026. May 2026 reporting on the proposed restructuring again described separate Bajjika and Surjapuri academies as proposals linked to a new umbrella arrangement. The sequence demonstrates why announcement dates must not be confused with functioning start dates. It also shows how language activism interacts with state architecture: movements seek not only symbolic recognition but offices, budgets, publications, experts and durable programmes. Figure 558 — Analytical dashboard of institutional presence across census visibility, legal status, education, examinations, academies, broadcasting and provincial-language politics; it is not an official ranking. 140.21 Sahitya Akademi gives Maithili a durable national literary public National literary institutions create another form of public recognition. Sahitya Akademi has made awards in Maithili since 1966 and maintains a Maithili Advisory Board for 2023–27. Its current award lists include annual awards, translation prizes and Yuva Puraskar in Maithili. This continuity matters because it 14471447 GAJENDRA THAKUR creates a national circuit of publication, translation, prizes and literary events independent of the operational weakness of any one Bihar institution. The contrast with Angika and Bajjika is substantial: neither has a comparable separate Sahitya Akademi award stream. National literary recognition does not determine linguistic legitimacy, but it affects visibility, translation flows and canon formation. It also produces archives through which future historians can trace genres, authorship and generational change. 140.22 Public broadcasting converts language recognition into repeated audibility Broadcasting is one of the most direct measures of a language’s presence in public life because it creates scheduled, repeated use rather than occasional celebration. Akashvani’s current Patna regional-unit page lists a five-minute Maithili evening news bulletin at 18:25 alongside Hindi, Urdu and Bhojpuri services, and its regional-audio archive continues to publish Maithili bulletins in 2026. A short bulletin is not equivalent to full programming, but it establishes editorial terminology, pronunciation norms and a recurring public-news register. Broadcasting also reaches listeners who may not buy books or use university Maithili. For Angika and Bajjika, comparable India-side public-service broadcasting visibility is more limited in the evidence reviewed here, which again shows that spoken population and media infrastructure need not move together. 140.23 Radio Nepal illustrates a different multilingual public-service model Radio Nepal has a long history of broadcasting news and cultural programming in Maithili, with its own institutional history tracing Maithili news to the early 1990s and later expansion of programmes. The system also demonstrates how smaller public-language services can evolve. In August 2026 Radio Nepal published a notice seeking a Bajjika-language newsreader, direct evidence that Bajjika was being incorporated into a formal public-service broadcasting workflow. This is more than symbolic recognition: news reading requires recruitment, editorial text, terminology and broadcast scheduling. It does not mean Bajjika has become a provincial language of government, but it does show a concrete public institution using the language. Broadcasting can therefore advance faster than administrative-language law, creating audibility before full bureaucratic functionality. 140.24 Print, FM, video and digital platforms have multiplied language publics The contemporary language public is no longer organised by a single newspaper or academy. Maithili, Angika and Bajjika circulate through local newspapers, magazines, FM radio, YouTube, Facebook, podcasts, messaging groups, e-journals and digitised books. Chapter 136 examined the platform dynamics in detail; the present point is institutional. Digital publication lowers entry costs and enables diaspora participation, but it also shifts standard-setting away from a small number of editors. Orthography, vocabulary and even the boundaries between named varieties become more visible and more contested. A language may therefore gain cultural presence while losing centralised editorial control. The public sphere becomes larger but more fragmented. For historians, digital abundance must be archived carefully because platform posts are unstable, searchable metrics can change, and algorithmic visibility is not the same as representative social use. 140.25 Script choice separates heritage identity from routine public functionality Maithili’s historical Tirhuta/Mithilakshar script is a major marker of regional heritage and has gained new technological visibility through Unicode and digital fonts, as discussed in Chapter 116. Yet routine contemporary publishing, examinations and most public communication use Devanagari. This does not make Tirhuta irrelevant; it changes its domain. Tirhuta can function as heritage script, calligraphic identity, HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II manuscript key and cultural emblem while Devanagari carries mass literacy and interregional interoperability. Angika and Bajjika public writing is likewise predominantly Devanagari today, although older Kaithi and regional manuscript practices belong to their wider history. Language policy should therefore avoid a false choice between heritage and access. Script revival and public readability can be pursued simultaneously when digital standards, teaching materials and archival practices are designed carefully. 140.26 Translation and terminology are the hidden infrastructure of administrative language Declaring a language usable in government is easier than creating the materials required for actual administration. Offices need standard terms for land records, welfare, taxation, procurement, health, education, disaster response and digital services. Forms must be translated consistently; staff must be trained; databases must support relevant scripts and characters; and citizens need confidence that a mother-tongue submission will be legally understood. Maithili’s literary depth does not automatically supply modern bureaucratic terminology, while Bajjika and Angika face additional standardisation and institutional-capacity challenges. This is why the Nepal Language Commission distinguished numerical strength from functional readiness. Terminology work is often invisible, but it determines whether language rights become usable public services. A language policy without translation budgets and document workflows can remain ceremonial. 140.27 Markets and migration sustain multilingual repertoires beyond formal recognition Everyday public life in Mithila, Vajji, Anga and Madhesh is intensely multilingual. A trader may bargain in a local speech form, use Hindi for an invoice, Nepali at a cross-border office and English terms for mobile payments. Migrants acquire Punjabi, Bengali, Gujarati, Nepali, Hindi or Gulf workplace languages while retaining Maithili, Angika or Bajjika in family networks. Such repertoires complicate language politics because public utility is not zero-sum. The expansion of Hindi or Nepali does not necessarily imply the disappearance of regional languages, and strong mother-tongue use does not prevent multilingual competence. Census bilingualism tables and Nepal’s second-language data should therefore be read as evidence of layered communication. Language vitality is often sustained by flexible multilingualism rather than by monolingual territorial closure. 140.28 Language politics cannot be reduced to speaker counts Numerical weight is democratically important, especially when deciding which languages deserve public services. Yet counts alone cannot resolve questions of official use. A small language may require protection precisely because it lacks market power; a large language may still lack standardised administrative materials; a widely understood contact language may have few mother-tongue speakers; and a language concentrated in a district may deserve strong local use even if its province-wide share is modest. The Madhesh working- language controversy made these tensions explicit. The same caution applies in Bihar, where constitutional scheduling, census aggregation and state educational recognition do not align neatly. Good policy therefore needs multiple criteria: speaker numbers, geographic concentration, functional readiness, educational infrastructure, community demand, inclusion of minorities, cost, digital support and the rights of citizens to understand government. 14491449 GAJENDRA THAKUR 140.29 Contemporary public vitality requires a multi-domain dashboard A single indicator such as census share, award count or social-media followers cannot measure public vitality. A robust dashboard should track at least eight domains: census visibility; legal recognition; school and university provision; examination availability; academy and research capacity; publishing and translation; broadcast/digital presence; and actual administrative use. Each domain requires a dated source and a clear unit. Figure 558 offers a qualitative synthesis for the three languages, while Table 140.1 records the evidence architecture behind the chapter. The purpose is not to rank languages but to expose mismatches. Maithili is strong in national recognition yet can suffer weak state institutional capacity; Angika can have formal university curricula without national scheduling; Bajjika can possess large speech communities and Nepal- side census recognition while India-side educational structures remain thin. Such mismatches are the history. Figure 559 — Public-language equality depends on a chain from naming and legal status to institutional capacity, education, media and routine use; bottlenecks can occur at every stage. 140.30 Conclusion: recognition is strongest when institutions and everyday use align The contemporary history of Maithili, Angika and Bajjika is not a linear movement from ‘dialect’ to ‘language’ or from private speech to official status. It is a field of overlapping recognitions. Maithili combines constitutional, literary, examination and broadcast presence with continuing struggles over institutional capacity. Angika demonstrates how a non-scheduled language can acquire state curriculum and academy recognition while remaining weak in national census and Union-level frameworks. Bajjika demonstrates the reverse cross-border pattern: strong social use, separate Nepal census recognition and provincial-language recommendation coexist with weaker India-side formal education and an academy project that remained unsettled in the evidence through 2026. Figure 559 summarises the central lesson. Naming matters, but public-language equality depends on the whole chain from counting and law to staff, curriculum, media, translation and routine use. Table 140.1 — Evidence architecture for analysing Maithili, Angika and Bajjika in contemporary public life Evidence source What it establishes Use in Chapter 140 Main limitation India Constitution, constitutional listing national legal- does not measure Eighth Schedule and date of Maithili recognition baseline Bihar administrative inclusion use HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II Evidence source What it establishes Use in Chapter 140 Main limitation Census of India 2011 mother-tongue and last complete Indian aggregation affects C-16/C-17 multilingualism language baseline Angika/Bajjika categories visibility; dated UPSC / BPSC actual exam availability career-linked public exam presence is not examination records and syllabus institutional use population-wide language use Bihar Lok Bhavan statewide credit higher-education curriculum does not UG curricula frameworks for Maithili institutionalisation prove enrolment or and Angika staffing quality Bihar academy academy names, state cultural formal existence can records / policy restructuring proposals, infrastructure differ from institutional crisis operational capacity Sahitya Akademi awards, advisory board, national literary public literary prestige is not records translation and youth for Maithili administrative status prizes Akashvani Patna scheduled Maithili news repeated public short bulletins do not schedules broadcasting audibility represent all programming Nepal Constitution all mother tongues as legal framework across requires provincial 2015 national languages; the border law and provincial working- implementation language route Nepal NPHC 2021 separate counts for cross-border census classification differs language report Maithili, Bajjika and comparison from India Angika Language recommended expert language- recommendation is Commission provincial working planning baseline not enacted law recommendations languages for Madhesh Madhesh 2025 proposed list and evidence of withdrawn/contested language bill debate political contestation implementation politics proposal, not settled status Radio Nepal records Maithili history and public-service broadcast use does 2026 Bajjika newsreader multilingual not equal recruitment broadcasting administrative use 14511451