Sunday, April 29, 2001		Article

IS Sanskrit getting fashionable? You could attribute it to the popularity of mythological serials on television, or perhaps, to the pro-Hindutva wave engineered by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. But one thing is certain: many more youngsters in Independent India are opting for this ancient language than ever before.

In Bombay University, students are giving up French and German at the graduation and postgraduation levels and opting for Sanskrit. In Delhi University too, Sanskrit is attracting more students in the MIL (Modern Indian Language) stream than Hindi. Ditto Kolkata, Bangalore, Chennai...

That a degree in Sanskrit has no value in the job market is obviously not a deterrent. "I am doing it for the love of the language," says Urmila Patil who is doing her masters in Sanskrit from Bombay University. "Maybe, I will teach Sanskrit in a school, write articles and continue my studies in the language."

Adds Rupa Mukherjee, another student in Vidyasagar College, Kolkata: "I love the poetry and music of the language. Moreover, with scholars across the world trying to use Sanskrit in computer programming, its scope and applications are bound to increase in the future."

Little wonder, a Sanskrit Cell has 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. Moreover, the government has hiked the education budget in Sanskrit from Rs 14.5 million in 1996-97 to Rs 100 million in the current fiscal year.

The method of teaching has accordingly changed. From a time when complex grammatical applications had to be memorised from textbooks, 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 conducting 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. Besides, the University Grants Commission (UGC) has come up with a proposal to introduce Vedic rituals and astrology as part of the Sanskrit study material.

"Culture and language cannot be separated," justifies Chamu Sastry, a well-known Sanskrit scholar from Karnataka. "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."

As a member of the right wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Sastry is spearheading a ‘Speak Sanskrit’ campaign and claims to have made 2.5 million Kannadigas conversant with the language. Likewise, in Tirupati, Pandit Sadanand Dikshit is running Lok Bhasha campaign on similar lines.

These efforts have met with all-round approval and are even being compared to the manner in which Jews could revive Hebrew and make it Israel’s official language. That Germany has more internationally-renowned Sanskrit scholars than India can claim to, also accounts for the enthusiasm in learning the language.

What is however, raising many eyebrows is the indecent haste and urgency in "pushing" the language through. As former Supreme Court Chief Justice Rangannath Mishra puts it: "Unfortunately scholars of Sanskrit are being clubbed together with those who are exploiting it for political gains."

Sociologists are resenting the attempt to equate Sanskrit with sanskriti (culture in a Hindu sense), as though minority communities like the Muslims and Christians do not exist. This is not only damaging the secular fabric of the country, but also runs counter to the spirit of constitutional guarantees.

Added to this is the fact that Sanskrit was never the language of common currency something that the Jews can claim about Hebrew. It was exclusively the preserve of the learned and as historians point out, a means to establish the supremacy of Brahmins over the so-called lower castes who were largely unlettered.

Sociologist P.Anand sums up the issue thus: "There is no record of Sanskrit ever being a democratic language. Lack of access to the language meant lack of space in what the ruling classes upheld and celebrated as culture, knowledge and power." (MF)