Demonizing Sanskrit

Let us look at a passage written by Amir Khusro, a fourteenth century poet, praising the languages of our great country:

As I was born in Hind, I may be allowed to say a word respecting its languages. There is at this time in every province a language peculiar to itself, and not borrowed from any other—Sindi, Lahori, Kashmiri, the language of Dugar,” Dhur Samundar, Tilang, Gujarat, Ma’bar, Gaur, Bengal, Oudh, Dehli and its environs. These are all languages of Hind, which from ancient times have been applied in every way to the common purposes of life.

But there is another language more select than the others, which all the Brahmans use. Its name from of old is Sanskrit, and the common people know nothing of it. A Brahman knows it, but Brahmani women do not understand a word of it. It bears a resemblance to Arabic in some respects, in its permutations of letters, its grammar, its conjugations, and polish. They have four books in that language, which they are constantly in the habit of repeating. Their name is Bed. They contain stories of their gods, but little advantage can be derived from their perusal. Whatever other stories and fables they have, is contained in kabits, parwAnas, and namahs. The language possesses rules for composition and eloquence. The language is very precious, inferior to Arabic, but superior to Dari ; and though the latter is certainly sweet and melodious, yet even in that respect this language does not yield to it.

 Now compare it with the way it has been presented in the NCERT text book of class 7.

Page 10, Book - OUR PASTS - 2

Notice the differences?

Firstly, the sentence – 'These are all the languages of Hind' has been removed.

Secondly, the praise of Sanskrit has been omitted deliberately.

Why would you remove those words which re – inforce the unity and appreciation of our mother land? And why would anyone remove praise of Sanskrit?

The answer to both the questions is that the forces hostile to our country have been trying to discredit everything that has cultural and unifying value. And as the present textbooks indicate, these hateful forces are now infesting our democratic institutions to undermine them from within.

It is not that these forces were not there earlier. They have always been there.

In the year 1994, the minister of HRD, Arjun Singh, removed Sanskrit from the list of optional subjects for class XII of CBSE. Arjun Singh is remembered as the Congress Minister who was the first person to support Sonia Gandhi as Congress president. The reason given by him to remove Sanskrit, even as an elective subject, was that the Government did not have enough resources to teach Persian and Arabic.

The matter was challenged in the Supreme Court and the honorable court severely reprimanded the government move. In the stinging judgement, the court had a special mention about the significance of Sankrit. It reads:

Place of Sanskrit in our educational ethos.

11. It is well known that Sanskrit is a mother of all Indo-Aryan languages and it is this language in which our Vedas, Puranas and Upanishadas have been written and in which Kalidas, Bhavbuti, Banbhatta and Dandi wrote their classics. Teachings of Shankracharya, Ramanuj, Madhwacharya, Nimbark and Vallabhacharya would not have been woven into the fabric of Indian culture if Sanskrit would not have been available to them as a medium of expressing their thoughts.

12. The report of the Sanskrit Commission (set up by the Government of India) which was submitted in 1957 speaks eloquently about the importance of Sanskrit. We do not purpose to burden this judgment will all that was said by the Commission in this regard. It would be enough for our purpose if we take note of some passages finding place in the report which highlight the quality, substance, content and strength of Sanskrit. At page 71 of the report it has been mentioned that Sanskrit is one of the greatest languages of the world and it is the classical language par excellence not only of India but of a good part of Asia as well. At page 73 the report states that the Indian people and the Indian civilisation were born, so to say, in the lap of Sanskrit and it went "hand in hand with the historical development of the Indian people, and gave the noblest expression to their mind and culture which has come down to our day as an inheritance of priceless order for India, nay, for the entire world". The report further speaks at page 74 about the "great mental and spiritual link" of Sanskrit and of it being the elder sister of Greek and Latin, and cousin of English, French and Russian.

Again the the para 17, the court noted that:

We also propose to refer to what was said by the Sanskrit Commission on the subject of "Sanskrit and National Solidarity" in Chapter IV of its report. The Commission has, in this context first stated that Sanskrit is the "embodiment of Indian culture and civilisation". It then observes that the Indian People look upon Sanskrit as the binding force for the different peoples of this great country, which was described as the greatest discovery which, the Commission made as it travelled from Kerala to Kashmir and from Kamarupa to Saurastra. The Commission, while so travelling, found that though the people of this country differed in a number of ways, they all were proud to regard themselves as participants in a common heritage; and that heritage emphatically is the heritage of Sanskrit. According to the Commission one of the witnesses which appeared before it went to the length of suggesting that if the Sanskrit Commission had come before the States Reorganisation Commission, many of the recent bickerings in our national life could have been avoided. (Pages 80 and 81).

and then the SC concluded that

20. We, therefore, conclude by saying that in view of importance of Sanskrit for nurturing our cultural heritage, because of which even the official education policy has highlighted the need of study of Sanskrit, making of Sanskrit alone as an elective subject, while not conceding this status to Arabic and/or Persian, would not in any way militate against the basic tenet of secularism. There is thus no merit in the first objection raised by the Board.

21. In the aforesaid premises, we direct the Board to include Sanskrit as an elective subject in the syllabus under consideration. Necessary amendment in the syllabus shall be made within a period of three months from today.

A few years later, when Atal Bihari Vajpayee's government was formed, the HRD minister Murli Manohar Joshi was sympathetic to the cause of Sanskrit, therefore, the language survived in the curriculum.

But, the dirty tricks department was still working to attack the venerated language. According to India Express of 31/12/2000, one Kancha Illaiah of Hyderabad announced at India's national conference on Human rights that - “We want to kill Sanskrit”. 

 He claims to be a champion of Dalits and is frequently invited by American missionary organizations based Gospel for Asia and Dalit Freedom Network (DFN). In fact, he has been awarded a post doctoral fellowship by DFN. Funnily, his hatred does not stop at Sanskrit but he also advocates that the “IITs and IIMs should be shut down as they pander to the upper cast economy of the country”.

According to his article in Deccan Chronicle in 2013, Kancha considers Sonia Gandhi alongwith Annie Besant, Agnes Teresa, and Gail Omvedt to be four foreign women who have left a deep imprint on India. It is interesting to note that Kancha and Gail use the pseudo scientific racism which was used during colonial times by Britishers. His book titled 'Why I am not a Hindu' is is full of hatred againstHinduism and Brahmans. This book is sponsored by Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, headed by Sonia Gandhi. Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi, alongwith P Chidambaram are the members of executive committee of this foundation.

His vitriolic outburst did not bring any change in the NCERT policy at that time. The job to block Sanskrit was taken over by a woman called Aruna Roy. She filed a public interest litigation in the Supreme Court. She wanted the removal of Sanskrit from the list of subjects which students of India can study in schools. The argument put forward for this preposterous demand was that this was 'anti secular' and Sanskrit was being imposed on the students.

The SC had again to remind these 'activists' that:

For Sanskrit language being imposed, it has been pointed that allegation is wholly wrong. The provisions only enable this language to be taught to those students who wish to study it. Sanskrit may be made available as an additional option at the secondary stage and as suitable elective course to all those who wish to study it at the higher secondary stage. It is also pointed out that Sanskrit is one of the official languages of India. Reliance is placed on Santosh Kumar's case (Supra), wherein this Court has emphasized the importance of Sanskrit study and declared the omission of Sanskrit from CBSE syllabus as unjustified.

"19. .we entertain no doubt in our mind that teaching of Sanskrit alone as an elective subject can in no way be regarded as against secularism. Indeed, our Constitution requires giving of fillip to Sanskrit because of what has been stated in Article 351, in which while dealing with the duty of the Union to promote the spread of Hindi, it has been provided that it would draw, whenever necessary or desirable, for its vocabulary, primarily on Sanskrit. Encouragement to Sanskrit is also necessary because of it being one of the languages included in the Eighth Schedule.

20. We, therefore, conclude by saying that in view of importance of Sanskrit for nurturing our cultural heritage, because of which even the official education policy has highlighted the need of study of Sanskrit, making of Sanskrit alone as an elective subject, while not conceding this status to Arabic and/or Persian, would not in any way militate against the basic tenet of secularism. There is thus no merit in the first objection raised by the Board."

Although she did not get any success with the SC, but when the regime changed in 2004, she was inducted into an extra constitutional body called National Advisory Council, headed by Sonia Gandhi.

The change in regime also presented the chance to subvert NCERT from within. The example of distortion of Khusro's statement fits neatly into this pattern. In 2004, Arjun Singh was again gifted with the post of HRD Minister. Since then the status of Sanskrit has been gradually undermined. The more sinister attack on Sanskrit has been inserted into the history textbooks by revising them from 2005 - 2007.

All the symbols of our tradition and heritage are under a systematic attack, including Brahmans and holy scriptures. The terms and words have been strategically chosen to create a wrong perception. 

To ensure that the trickery is well established in the impressionable minds of the young children, there is a question placed on the next page asking the students about the statement of Khusro about the knowledge of Sanskrit.

Those who know a little bit of applied psychology know that the best form of propaganda is to let the victim think that it is his own thought and not a plant by someone. What other way to do it then by asking such mischievous questions!
Pay a closer attention to this page and you will find that Brahmans are being systematically maligned. In next issue, we will discuss the attack on Brahmans.