Among the Indian languages, which one is spoken maximum in the world after Hindi?

Census-based language proportions show Bengali is the second-largest mother-tongue in India after Hindi, comprising about 8.03% of speakers compared with Telugu at 6.70%, Tamil at 5.70%, and Malayalam at 2.88% — placing Bengali clearly ahead of the other options [1]. Supporting this, descriptive text notes Bengali as “the second most spoken language of India,” with Telugu following it in numerical strength, confirming the rank order implied by the statistics [2]. Therefore, Bengali (option 3) is the Indian language spoken the most worldwide after Hindi when considering native-speaker counts and official census-based rankings.

Sources

1. [1] Democratic Politics-II. Political Science-Class X . NCERT(Revised ed 2025) > Chapter 2: Federalism > Scheduled Languages of India > p. 22
2. [2] Geography of India ,Majid Husain, (McGrawHill 9th ed.) > Chapter 13: Cultural Setting > Language as a Determinant of Cultural Region > p. 49