The Back to Sanskrit Movement

[Guest guest]

Aditi Chaturvedi

 

 

An Awakening of National Consciousness

Current trends in India are starting to give our pseudo secular junta

some sleepless nights. For decades they have been doing everything

under the sun to ensure that the syllabus for Indian education is

replete with the praises of Islamic terrorists, Christian

imperialists and communist fanatics. This was clearly a long term

investment for our pseudo secular intellectuals whose hearts swelled

with joy when they imagined the future of India studded with

potential Lenins, Macaulays and Aurangzebs. But alas, it looks like

Generation X is letting them down in a really bad way. You see they

had never imagined in their wildest dreams that the new generation of

Indians would find Sanskrit, yes that's right I said SANSKRIT,

fashionable!

 

Much to the hysterical outrage of our pseudo sec community, the very

language that they touted as the "tool of Brahmanical oppression" has

now become one of India's hottest education trends and students of

all ages are choosing Sanskrit as an integral part of their

curriculum. The disgruntled junta of course attributes it to

the "infiltration" of mythological serials on television, or perhaps,

to the pro-Hindutva wave engineered by the ruling BJP. Whatever the

real reason may be, there is no disputing the one most important fact

about the situation, that more students in Independent India are

opting for Sanskrit than ever before.

 

In Bombay University, records indicate that students are giving up

French and German at the graduation and post graduation levels and

opting for Sanskrit. In Delhi University too, Sanskrit is attracting

more students in the MIL (Modern Indian Language) stream than Hindi.

And the situation seems no different in Kolkata, Bangalore, Chennai,

or any other Indian city. The story is the same throughout the nation.

 

The argument that a degree in Sanskrit may have very low scope or

value in the job market seems to have no negative effect on the

students' choice. They are taking up Sanskrit for the sheer love of

the language. It is the poetry, the musical sweetness, the power of

Sanskrit that are drawing students to learn it. But the single most

important factor which remains unspoken is the fact that Sanskrit

truly is origin of all Indian languages. It is the mother from which

all the regional languages of India have been born, and yes that

includes Tamil despite what the Dravidian theorists would like you to

believe. As Rishi Aurobindo and many other erudite Hindu scholars

have pointed out, Tamil is perhaps the oldest branch that began

deviating from ancient Sanskrit, but it stems from the same root

nevertheless.

 

And schools, colleges, universities have begun recognizing the

importance of offering Sanskrit as an option. Sanskrit Cells have

been set up at IIT, Delhi and now, NCERT is making the language a

compulsory part of the school curriculum from classes 3 to 10. The

trend has not escaped the notice of the central government either. It

has increased the education budget in Sanskrit from Rs 14.5 million

in 1996-97 to Rs 100 million in the current fiscal year.

 

What's more, educational institutions are beginning to realize that

outdated techniques like memorization are not necessary to teach

Sanskrit. They are starting to use updated methods. Students are now

supplied with audio-cassettes for perfecting their pronunciation,

understanding of shlokas and rendering them in the right intonation.

Many schools and colleges are incorporating fun field trips for

students of Sanskrit to decipher inscriptions on ancient

archaeological remains. Some are also holding Sunday classes and

workshops on holidays when Sanskrit is taught in the traditional way

with students dressed in robes and squatting on the floor. In Delhi,

inter-school Sanskrit competitions in debates, quizzes, drama,

singing and essay writing have become very popular. The University

Grants Commission (UGC) has also come up with a proposal to introduce

Vedic rituals and astrology as part of the Sanskrit study material.

 

The pseudo secular crowd in the meantime is getting more and shrill

as they realize that they are losing the battle for control of

India's soul. They have already begun making noises about how

equating Sanskrit with sanskriti (culture in a Hindu sense), suggests

that minority communities like the Muslims and Christians do not

exist. According to their paranoid delusions, this is damaging

the "secular" fabric of the country. Thank God that we live in a

democracy where such self-hating fanatics cannot dictate what

direction the country's educational system should be taking anymore.

Since they no longer have the help of a Congress government to squash

Indian students choices, the pseudo-secular junta has no other option

but to go down screaming.

 

Although all of these trends are immensely encouraging much, much

more needs to be done to bring Sanskrit back to its true place. For

starters, the government would do well to revisit the whole concept

of a national language and recognize that only Sanskrit can fit that

definition. The states in the South would definitely find this much

more acceptable than colloquial Hindi which is becoming more and more

a euphemism for Arabicised Urdu.

 

The spiraling popularity of Sanskrit clearly indicates that Indian

youth want the connection with their distinctive heritage to be kept

alive. Whether the pseudo-secular crowd likes it or not the fact

remains that Indian culture is synonymous with Hindu culture and

Sanskrit is the base for that culture. Therefore it should come as no

surprise that Indian students all over India and abroad are beginning

to realize the significance of Sanskrit in their personal

development. Shri Chamu Sastry, a well-known Sanskrit scholar from

Karnataka is spearheading the 'Speak Sanskrit' campaign and has

already made 2.5 million Kannadigas conversant with the language.

Likewise, in Tirupati, Pandit Sadanand Dikshit is running Lok Bhasha

campaign on similar lines. Shri Shastry has put the situation in

eloquent terms when he states, "Culture and language cannot be

separated. If we lose a language, we lose the culture as also the

knowledge embedded in the language. Sanskrit is our language and we

cannot afford to lose it."