♦ The Union Cabinet officially granted classical language status to Marathi, Pali, Prakrit, Assamese, and Bengali on 3 October 2024. This decision marks a significant addition to India’s classical language list, which was first established on 12 October 2004, with the declaration of Tamil as a classical language. 

♦ The category was created to honor languages with a long and rich history, ancient literature, and cultural heritage.

♦ The status of a classical language is granted based on specific criteria, including the language’s antiquity, with recorded texts dating back over a thousand years, a body of ancient literature considered a valuable heritage by generations, and an original literary tradition not borrowed from other linguistic communities.

♦ The Linguistic Experts Committee (LEC), constituted by the Ministry of Culture under Sahitya Akademi in November 2004, reviewed and revised the criteria, leading to the declaration of Sanskrit as a classical language in 2005. Since then, Telugu (2008), Kannada (2008), Malayalam (2013), and Odia (2014) have also received classical language status.