India celebrated World Sanskrit Day on August 12th to spread the awareness of our unique and rich heritage. Starting from 1969, when the day was observed for the first time to honour Sanskrit, which is often referred to as the “Dev Bhasha or Language of the Gods”, many activities are planned to support and celebrate a beautiful language.
With more and more youngsters becoming unfamiliar with and knowing very little about Sanskrit; the relevance of Sanskrit Diwas in promoting and familiarising the coming generations with the oldest and mother of all languages couldn’t have been more opportune.
The Saga of Decline
While increasing from 6,106 speakers in 1981 to 49,736 in 1991, Sanskrit is the only scheduled language to have displayed visible swings when it declined to 14,135 speakers in 2001. Why even at Mattur, a community in Karnataka that is referred to as India’s Sanskrit village, hardly any people identified Sanskrit as their mother tongue!
With less than 1% of Indians speaking Sanskrit, utilised by Hindu priests during religious rites. Only one Indian state, Uttarakhand in the north, peppered with ancient Hindu temple towns, has it as one of its official languages.
Sanskrit is studied as an optional language in most of the schools since students prefer more commercially or professionally viable languages like French, German, or even Mandarin.
It is noteworthy to learn that it was in Rajasthan, that the first Sanskrit University was founded in 1791. Sanskrit has been the focus of 18 universities with more than 1,000 colleges linked with them.
Hence, it is crucial to study the factors that have contributed to this historic language’s lack of relevance in India.
Sultanate to Raj
Sanskrit by and large had enjoyed royal patronage of varied degrees up till the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate. With more and more encouragement given to languages such as Persian and Turkish, the Language of Gods got relegated to a secondary status.
Final nail in the coffin was hammered during the British Raj when the new colonial power needed more English and Hindustani speakers to carry out government duties and liaise with the common mass.
The Three-Language Formula
Brought around in 1968, the policy placed a strong emphasis on learning Hindi, English, and other modern Indian languages. As a result, while most states in the North opted for Sanskrit, the Southern states went about choosing native tounges such as Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam.
Over a period of time, due to inadequate supervision and a large shortage of unqualified teachers, Sanskrit became a subject to be mugged up to get higher scores in the Northern states. Whereas most non-Hindi speakers went for Hindi to derive job-related benefits and so forth.
Government’s Patronage
Due to a lack of teachers, universities struggle to fill their Sanskrit courses with pupils. Successive governments seem to have failed to uphold strict standards at the higher educational level.
Summing Up
In some way or another, Sanskrit has been persuaded to be only linked with Hindus. Sanskrit shouldn’t be mistaken for a language used only in sacred writings. It has also been a pioneer in a variety of other subjects, including astrology, yoga, science, history, and philosophy.