Draft Recommendation #3: English is important to Indian Wikipedians
Draft Recommendation #3: English is important to Indian Wikipedians
Surprisingly (or not) English is the secondary official language of India - the primary official language is Hindi. Why is this important? Firstly, to record that English is an Indian language. Secondly, to note that as far as Wikipedia and sister projects are concerned, there need be no reticence in claiming that English is an important Indian language - after all, according to the 2001 census [[1]] there are about 225 million people in India who are fluent in English (on a global scale, this figure is second only to the US in terms of English language speakers nationally).
While not denying that native Indian languages are of tremendous importance to Wikipedians, it is perhaps prudent to note the continuing importance of English to us. This impacts Wikimedia work in India to the extent that activities and projects related to English on Wikipedia and sister projects are given equal importance to those in our native languages. - Achal Prabhala
When the English language is considered to be important for India, it needs to cover India in the same way as it does the United States, Great Britain, Australia or Ireland.. This means that India should at least be visible. This means in my opinion that featured articles, did you knows and featured pictures should be part of this visibility.
English is very important to Indian language wikipedians. It is the common language of communication for different language wiki communities. Hindi is not a preferred for this. This is one of the main reason why I have requested here, to use only English while communicating with multiple language communities. As mentioned by GerardM, this fact needs to have an impact on English wikipedia also.