Source: Hindu Press International
MUMBAI, INDIA, August 5, 2002: A recent BBC report by their correspondent, Sanjeev Srivastava, begins, “One of the oldest languages in the world, Sanskrit, is in danger of becoming extinct in India, the country of its origin. Although most Indian languages still use the basic grammar of Sanskrit, no more than a few thousand people in a country of more than one billion can claim to read, write and speak it fluently.” The article goes on to say that Mumbai’s Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan has few students for its Sanskrit courses, and that those students face poor job prospects upon graduation. The BBC article states that Sanskrit “lacks relevance,” although it fails to mention that the Hindu scriptures are in Sanskrit or that Hindu temple worship is conducted in the language. The article states, “There is a school of thought which believes that teaching and learning Sanskrit is a complete waste of time and resources, especially as most Sanskrit colleges are publicly funded.” HPI recalls the origin of this school of thought: the 1835 document entitled “Macaulay’s Minute on Indian Education,” in which Lord Macaulay argued successfully to curtail British government funding of Sanskrit colleges because “What we spend on the … Sanskirt colleges is … a dead loss to the cause of truth.” Macaulay added that it would be wrong for the government to “encourage the study of a literature admitted to be of small intrinsic value, only because that literature inculcates the most serious errors on the most important subjects.” But modern scholars worldwide find great value in Sanskirt. Click here to view a list of 53 major colleges and universities in the world which have departments of Sanskrit or offer courses in it. They include the great universities such as Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, Leiden, Oslo, Kyoto (which has a large department), and more. Germany has more universities teaching Sanskrit, 14, than India itself, ten, at least according to this list. The BBC article shows the continued impact of Macaulay’s plan set forth 167 years ago to, “form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern [in India]; a class of persons, Indian in blood and color, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.” And toward this end, Macaulay argued that ridding India of its great institutions of Sanskrit learning would be a significant step. As a result of his Minute, the British rulers closed all Sanskrit colleges in India except at Banaras. Hindus should not let the same thinking pervail today, rather, India should lead the world in the study of Sanskrit.