Is hindi our National Langauage myths and truth

The Answer is Yes. But, it is not "THE" national language, but one of the 22 national languages - my mother toungue Kannada is there in the list, and so is Marathi, the language of the state I am currently in. Here is the official website which has the list of "National Languages" as the left frame rightly describe. So what is this crap all about Hindi being THE national language of India. For me, its a myth being propogated by -dont know who- but believed by almost everyone, and taught in our schools. Hindi is an official language of India (even though the link above uses the word 'The', I would still stick to the word 'an' since English is also an official language of India, approved by the constitution of India.) Ok. Enough of proving my point. The point I am trying to make it - I get pissed off when any Indian points at any fellow Indian who doesnt know Hindi that you "should" have known Hindi being an Indian - because hindi is "the" national language of our country. One incident is etched in my memory - it was in the Railway reservation center of Pune when the person standing in the queue was insulted by the booking officer for not knowing Hindi, that poor Tamilian was asked - what an Indian he is if he does not know Hindi? In a nutshell, In a vast country like ours, there cannot be one language which everyone should know, just like there cannot be one type of food or one type of dress. Learnt to co-exist, learn as many languages as possible, but never force anyone to learn a language of the majority's choice. PS: I learnt Hindi from the age of 8 and have completed 8 examinations in Hindi, even though Hindi is not a subject in the schools I learnt. I am only against forcing Hindi on non-Hindi speaking Indians. PS2: A very interesting read on this topic is a set of 4 articles written long back by Rajeev Srinivasan in rediff.com. Here they go Article 1 Article 2 Article 3 Article 4