As per a recent report of the census directorate, several languages or dialects in India are believed to be endangered. Officials said that these over 40 languages are heading towards extinction because only few thousand Indians speak them.
This report stated that 100 non scheduled and 22 scheduled languages are spoken by a big sized crowd – over one lakh. However, around 42 languages are spoken by a small sized group of Indians which is less than ten thousand. All these are heading towards extinction and considered endangered. This report was shared by Home Ministry Officials. On the other hand, UNESCO has also shared similar sort of list having all these 42 dialects or languages. UNESCO has also considered them as endangered dialects and counted them as languages heading towards extinction.
As shared by officials, the languages which are considered endangered, include eleven from 11 from Andaman and Nicobar Islands (Great Andamanese, Lamongse, Luro, Sentilese, Shompen Jarawa, Muot, Onge, Pu, Sanenyo and Takahanyilang), four from Himachal Pradesh (Baghati, Handuri, Pangvali and Sirmaudi) and seven from Manipur (Aka, Koiren, Lamgang, Purum  Aimol, Langrong and Tarao).
Some other languages in this category are Pengo, Manda and Parji (Odisha), Nihali (Maharashtra), Mra and Na (Arunachal Pradesh), Gadaba and Naiki (Andhra Pradesh), Koraga and Kuruba (Karnataka), Kota and Toda (Tamil Nadu), Bangani (Uttarakhand), Birhor (Jharkhand), Tai Nora and Tai Rong (Assam), Ruga (Meghalaya) and Toto (West Bengal). Official informed that The Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore has started projects for preservation and protection of all such endangered languages. The central government has launched a scheme and under this, monolingual and bilingual dictionaries, anthologies of folklore, grammatical descriptions, language primers, encyclopedias of all these dialects are being prepared. Under this scheme, especial concern is over those languages or dialects those are spoken by less than 10,000 people.
According to the census data, India has 1,635 rationalised mother tongues, 234 identifiable mother tongues and 22 major languages.  Besides scheduled languages, there are 31 other languages which were named as an official language by various state governments and Union territories.