Ask anyone what language they speak in a given major country, and it is typically not a hard question. Italians speak Italian, Swedes speak Swedish, and the Japanese speak Japanese. Most people know that Argentines speak Spanish, and it is broadly true that the language of China is Chinese.
But India, the second-largest nation on earth with big cultural influence and rapidly rising economic power, is different. Over its millennia of history, there was never a single national entity of “India.” Hundreds of empires foreign and domestic ruled fractions large and small of the subcontinent, until it was finally unified by a British merchant company. India has a complicated past, and a language landscape to reflect it.