If you look at any Indian currency bill (Rupee), you'd see the denomination written in words in 22 languages, though in a smaller font. Those are the official l

If you look at any Indian currency bill (Rupee), you'd see the denomination written in words in 22 languages, though in a smaller font. Those are the official languages of India. The official languages of the central government are Hindi and English. All government communications between the central government and state governments or between state governments commonly happen in English because India does not have one language identified as a "national language". Administrative nightmares are avoided by the use of English, which then gets translated to local languages as required. Apart from the 22 official languages, there are nearly a thousand languages/dialects (the distinctions are quite hazy) spoken in the country. What your Indian friend experienced could be because of an assumption that many people in the north make about Hindi being the lingua franca around the country. The truth is that while Bollywood has made Hindi more widespread than it otherwise would be, every section of the country its non-Hindi languages, be it west, east, north east or the south, resists the imposition of Hindi by governments. People in many states, not just in the south, may not even understand Hindi or speak it even if their languages are closer to Hindi. Among Indians, only someone from some of the northern states (where Hindi is the official language) would mistakenly think of Hindi as a "national language" or a bridge language.