STIFF RESISTANCE FROM THE southern states — and Tamil Nadu chief minister J. Jayalalithaa in particular — forced Smriti Irani, former television soap opera star appointed Union HRD (human resource development) minister in the newly-elected BJP/NDA government, to ‘modify’ her ministry’s circular dated June 30 to all 15,000 schools affiliated with the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE — supervised by the HRD ministry) to compulsorily celebrate Sanskrit Week from August 7-14.
After Jayalalithaa wrote to prime minister Narendra Modi requesting him to “advise the officials of the government of India to suitably modify the letter to enable each state, including CBSE schools in the state to organise celebrations in tune with the language and culture of the state,” Irani issued a clarification stating the circular was advisory rather than mandatory.
Nevertheless this hasn’t stopped the Sanskrit Academy in New Delhi from continuing with its efforts to revive public interest in this ancient language. Currently the academy is working on a project to make it easy to learn the language through an online curriculum developed with inputs from the Sanskrit department of Lucknow’s Vidyant Hindu PG College. It promises to enable a student to master speaking, reading and writing the language within 60 days, with only 20 minutes of daily study.
“Millions of people want to know about the rich culture and heritage of this great nation, yet are held back because of lack of knowledge of Sanskrit. Moreover, Sanskrit is a scientific language which can be used for everything, from writing computer codes to understanding artificial intelligence. It would be churlish to deny students the chance to learn it because of its perceived religious underpinning,” says Dharmendra Kumar, secretary of the Sanskrit Academy.
Against this backdrop, monitors of the revivalist hindutva fringe elements are linking Sanskrit promotion with non-appointment of Urdu language teachers in government schools. This forces Muslim children to study Sanskrit, they allege. Last month Nawa-E-Haque, a Delhi-based NGO, claimed that failure of the Delhi state government to appoint Urdu language teachers in 100 Delhi government and municipal schools, forced over 14,000 Muslim students to study Sanskrit. The NGO cited a report in the Times of India (September 2) which said that despite some government primaries hosting “hundreds” of Muslim students, not a single Urdu teacher has been appointed.
Moreover, in a landmark case in May this year (State of Karnataka & Anr. vs. Association of Managements of (Government Recognised Unaided English Medium) Primary & Secondary Schools & Ors), the Supreme Court held that no state can impose a ‘mother tongue’ or the state’s official language as the medium of instruction in primary schools and gave parents the liberty to choose the medium of instruction.
Meanwhile a resolution was passed at the International Sanskrit Conference held between September 26-28 in Dehradun, to translate and edit around 5 million Sanskrit language manuscripts scattered across various parts of the country. “These are rich works in science and philosophy and deserve to be widely read and circulated,” says Satya Vrat Shastri, chairman of the Sanskrit Commission, adding that the task of translating and editing these manuscripts will generate lakhs of jobs and shatter the myth that Sanskrit is only good for religious ceremonies.
Clearly, organising conferences and workshops is a more intelligent option to promote this ancient language than issuing diktats forcing children to celebrate it.
Puja Awasthi (Lucknow)