This is huge - because most other releases have traditionally been in European languages. It is fairly rare to see Asian languages release.
One challenge is that typical linguistic use in Asia mixes the native language with English. For example, people in north india use "Hinglish". It is typically fairly hard to make sense out of this.
Hindi -- native: 370m | total: 490m
Bengali -- native: 196m | total: 215m
German -- native: 101m | total: 229m
Yet, most projects only target the Anglosphere, not even Europe is usually included.
A large fraction of Indian children will be illiterate in these "thriving" languages in the coming decades, with "zero" monetary loss. Not living is death, and they haven't been alive for a long time - I can neither get any Govt. services in my mother tongues, nor can get the laws done by the colonial state in Delhi.
A zombie is not alive IMO. If Indians wish to parlay their tongues for money, it's upto them. I for one will not deceive myself. We are going to be part of the borg that is the Anglosphere in less than 3-4 generations.
Regardless, dead has a specific meaning for languages and if people speak it(especially hundreds of millions of people) then it is not dead
Do you think gnipgnip believes something that isn't true, or do you think they're just using words differently to how you'd use them?
For much large part of Mughal period the court language was Farsi, but Hindi/Urdu survived, you are underestimating the ability of people to straddle multiple languages. For many Indians its just a necessity.