Skip to main content

What's wrong with those seeking to promote Sanskrit? An ex-Hindi professor has the answer

Ajay Tiwari 
I have always wondered why certain elite sections are so fascinated by Sanskrit, to the extent of even practicing speaking a language that, for all practical purposes, isn’t alive. During my Times of India stint in Gandhinagar, the Gujarat state capital, I personally witnessed an IAS bureaucrat, Bhagyesh Jha, trying to converse with a friend in Sanskrit.
Jha, a courteous official without an air of arrogance, was the state culture secretary at the time. Known to be close to the then-chief minister Narendra Modi, he would insist in personal conversations that Sanskrit needed to be promoted in the country. “There are families in Gujarat who speak Sanskrit at home,” he would claim, but I would always laugh it off.
Paradoxically, Jha is better known for his poetry in Gujarati. Interestingly, his colleagues, in private conversations with me, would often dismiss his poems as mere tukbandi—improvised rhyming compositions that sound pleasant when recited but allegedly lack literary depth. Yet, regardless of their literary merit, they were easy to understand and engaging. I wonder if he ever tried writing all of his poetry in Sanskrit, and if so, for whom.
Indeed, I have always wondered why Sanskrit failed to gain popularity among the common masses. Even those who recite Sanskrit shlokas during religious ceremonies like marriages or childbirth—many of whom are die-hard Brahmins, I have been told—mostly do not understand the meaning of the verses they chant.
A senior academic, who was initiated into Sanskrit in his early years but later became a top chemical engineering professor, once told me that only 10% of those reciting shlokas actually understand their meaning, while the rest merely memorize them for ceremonies. This makes me wonder: why has Sanskrit education—so zealously promoted by the powers that be, allegedly to keep alive the fire of Indian culture—failed to take root among the masses?
And what an irony! While Sanskrit is included in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution, I have yet to come across anyone who actively seeks to converse in it. A quick internet search tells me that Sanskrit is not a dead language, but it is also not spoken as a primary language by anyone. It is only used in religious practices, philosophy, and linguistics.
The search further reveals: “No one speaks Sanskrit as their first language. Sanskrit was once limited to a small group of people, such as Hindu priests. Most Sanskrit knowledge was passed down orally, and this tradition has declined.” But it adds that Sanskrit is still studied and understood by linguists and academics and continues to be used in hymns and chants for religious purposes.
Be that as it may, the main trigger for this blog—apparently a continuation of my earlier piece on the same subject, written during the peak of COVID-19—is a Facebook post by my Delhi University friend, Ajay Tiwari, a former Hindi professor.
One of the few scholars who delve deep into the social and historical factors influencing Hindi literature, Tiwari’s post intrigued me because he highlights a major reason why languages perish.
According to him, India’s “communal leaders” fail to understand that language has no religion, and “religion has no language.” He argues that once a language is associated with a particular religion, it begins to be spoken by fewer and fewer people. For a language to flourish, he suggests, it must remain secular and adaptable, thriving through societal interaction.
Tiwari states, “When language and religion become inseparable, the downfall of one leads to the downfall of the other.” He offers the example of Pali, which was associated with Buddhism. The language disappeared with the decline of Buddhism in India. Similarly, Latin, the language of Christianity, was eventually abandoned for everyday use.
While Christianity spread across Europe, and its scriptures remained in Latin, sermons were delivered in local languages. “Not without reason,” he says, “in India, Christian missionaries do not preach to tribals in Latin or English.”
Regarding Sanskrit, Tiwari notes that it has been positioned as the language of Hinduism. He critiques the Brahmins, who took on the responsibility of preserving and spreading knowledge but confined it within Sanskrit, thereby limiting access and causing much of that knowledge to be lost. “Now, we complain that Europeans used our ancient texts to make modern discoveries! If this knowledge had been widely shared, would this situation have arisen?” he asks.
As for Hindi, Tiwari strongly opposes the claim that Urdu originated with Amir Khusro. “In my book Sangeet Kavita: Hindi Aur Mughal Badshah, I have demonstrated that Urdu was born ten years after Aurangzeb’s death, during the reign of Muhammad Shah Rangila. The claim that Khusro is the father of Urdu stems from the same communal sentiment that fuels the nonsense about studying Urdu turning someone into a mullah or a fanatic.”
Bhagyesh Jha
Tiwari argues that Khusro was not an Urdu poet but an early poet of the deshbhāshā (regional language) and the first poet of Khari Boli. He was a renowned scholar of Awadhi and other dialects of Uttar Pradesh. His global reputation stemmed from his writings in Persian, but in the hearts of Indians, he remains alive through his Hindi works, deeply rooted in folk culture.
He adds, “Khusro is an example of how much Muslims contributed to the formation and development of Hindi. To be honest, Muslims contributed to the development of all modern languages just as much as Hindus did.”
After reading his post, I called Tiwari and asked him a pointed question: what does he think of those who advocate for “Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan”? A Hindi enthusiast, his response was clear—if Hindi is tied to Hinduism, it would inevitably mark the beginning of the language’s downfall.
This instantly reminded me of my school days in Delhi. Studying at Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, where the medium of instruction was Hindi until the eighth grade, I found it strange—even as a schoolboy in the late 1960s—when there was an attempt in North India to purify the language by incorporating as many Sanskrit words as possible. This was done to distinguish Hindi from Urdu, a move contrary to what Mahatma Gandhi envisioned—Hindustani, a blend of Hindi and Urdu.
Efforts were made to repaint billboards in Hindi, replace English nameplates, and encourage vehicle owners to use Hindi number plates. This provoked a strong backlash in South India, fueling the hate-Hindi campaign—a sentiment that persists today, as seen in recent statements by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin.
I will conclude with an observation about Narendra Modi’s stance on Sanskrit. Contrary to the expectations of those who sought to replace English with Sanskrit, Modi, as Gujarat chief minister, chose instead to promote English while quietly sidelining those pushing for mandatory Sanskrit education.
At the time, Anandiben Patel—now the governor of Uttar Pradesh—was the state education minister. During an interaction with me (accompanied by Indian Express journalist Bashir Pathan) in her Sachivalaya chamber in Gandhinagar, she asked, “Why English? Why not Sanskrit?”
Despite this, Modi prioritized English education over compulsory Sanskrit instruction. Interestingly, a pro-RSS group running a school in Gandhinagar invited journalists, including me, to a press-cum-lunch meet where they complained that Modi was neglecting Sanskrit in favor of English. They even announced plans to agitate against this neglect—an agitation that never materialized.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Obviously the speaker has no clue about realities and is of a cheap mind that wants to please anti India forces

TRENDING

Morari Bapu echoes misleading figures to support the BJP's anti-conversion agenda

A senior Gujarat activist phoned me today to inform me that the well-known storyteller on Lord Ram, Morari Bapu, has made an "unsubstantiated" and "preposterous" statement in Songadh town, located in the tribal-dominated Tapi district. He claimed that while the Gujarat government wants the Bhagavad Gita to be taught in schools, the "problem is" that 75% of government teachers "are Christians who do not let this happen" and are “involved in religious conversions.”

Patriot, Link: How Soviet imbroglio post-1968 crucially influenced alternative media platforms

Adatata Narayanan, Aruna Asaf Ali Alternative media, as we know it today in the age of information and communication technology (ICT), didn't exist in the form it does today during or around the time I joined formal journalism at Link Newsweekly as a sub-editor in January 1979. However, Link, and its sister publication Patriot, a daily—both published from Delhi—were known to have provided what could be called an alternative media platform at a time when major Delhi-based dailies were controlled by media barons.

60 crore in Mahakumbh? It's all hype with an eye on UP polls, asserts keen BJP supporter in Amit Shah's constituency

As the Mahakumbh drew to a close, during my daily walk, I met a veteran BJP supporter—a neighbor with whom we would often share dinner in a group. An amicable person, the first thing he asked me, as he was about to take the lift to his flat, was, "How many people do you think must have participated in the holy dip?" He then stopped by to talk—which we did for a full half-hour, cutting into my walk time.

Breaking news? Top Hindu builder ties up with Muslim investor for a huge minority housing society in Ahmedabad

There is a flutter in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur area, derogatorily referred to as the "border" because, on its eastern side, there is a sprawling minority area called Juhapura, where around five lakh Muslims live. The segregation is so stark that virtually no Muslim lives in Vejalpur, populated by around four lakh Hindus, and no Hindu lives in Juhapura.

Justifying social divisions? 'Dogs too have caste system like we humans, it's natural'

I have never had any pets, nor am I very comfortable with them. Frankly, I don't know how to play with a pet dog. I just sit quietly whenever I visit someone and see their pet dog trying to lick my feet. While I am told not to worry, I still choose to be a little careful, avoiding touching the pet.

An untold story? Still elusive: Gujarati language studies on social history of Gujarat's caste and class evolution

This is a follow-up to my earlier blog , where I mentioned that veteran scholar Prof. Ghanshyam Shah has just completed a book for publication on a topic no academic seems to have dealt with—caste and class relations in Gujarat’s social history. He forwarded me a chapter of the book, published as an "Economic & Political Weekly" article last year, which deals with the 2015 Patidar agitation in the context of how this now-powerful caste originated in the Middle Ages and how it has evolved in the post-independence era.

Caste, class, and Patidar agitation: Veteran academic 'unearths' Gujarat’s social history

Recently, I was talking with a veteran Gujarat-based academic who is the author of several books, including "Social Movements in India: A Review of Literature", "Untouchability in Rural India", "Public Health and Urban Development: The Study of Surat Plague", and "Dalit Identity and Politics", apart from many erudite articles and papers in research and popular journals.

New York-based digital company traces Modi's meteoric rise to global Hindutva ecosystem over several decades

A recent document, released by the Polis Project Inc.—a New York-based digital magazine and hybrid research and journalism organization—even as seeking to highlight the alleged rise of authoritarianism in India, has sought to trace Prime Minister Narendra Modi's meteoric rise since 2014 to the ever-expanding global Hindutva ecosystem over the last several decades.

Socialist utopia challenging feudal and Brahminical systems: Kanwal Bharti on Sant Raidas’ vision of Begumpura

In a controversial claim, well-known Dalit writer and columnist Kanwal Bharti has asserted that a clever Brahminical move appears to be behind the Guru Granth Sahib changing the name of the 15th-16th century mystic poet-saint of the Bhakti movement, Sant Raidas, to Sant Ravidas.