IITs has been asked to teach Samskritam … read all about it !
…..screamed our electronic media. The reaction has been mostly negative. Occasional person voicing some positive comments. Twitter has been abuzz, specifically with people and blogs quoting Deputy CM of Delhi, Mr. Manish Sisodia to the effect that whether the nex-gen JS version is really worth the upgrade over Samskritam. What better could one expect from a party whose leader is a self-confessed anarchist.
Armed with my usual salt ( a pinch is too small a dose. I take spoonfuls ) considering the state of our media I searched for the full press release of Ministry of HRD to find out what it actually said. Unfortunately there is no press release so far in public domain from Ministry of HRD on this. What was projected and decided without a debate was from her statements in Loksabha.
The most acceptable version seems to be …
Accordingly, IITs have been requested to teach Sanskrit language especially with reference to study of works which contain scientific knowledge,” Irani said
I cannot understand…
What’s in a name ?
If Thiruvalluvar himself did not want to cleanse non-Tamil words from Thirukkural, why do the tamil politicians bother to clean tamil of sanskrit/ north-indian influence ? Do the modern tamilians claim to be better tamil lovers than Thiruvalluvar ?If tamil is really an independent language, how come tamil legends talk about Agasthiyar ( a vedic Rishi) as the one who created Tamil ?How a vedic God Shiva become the first Tamil Sangam Leader ?
Why .. Why … Why do people love to hate it ?
- 1 : Hindutva lovers / Sanghis / BJP
- 2 : Hail Dravidian Identity and Tamil nationalism
- 3 : Project modernity and upwardly mobile culture
- 4 : Hey, its not as if I dont get a job if i dont study it.
- 5 : Brahmin: you oppressor, take that
In short ..
So do we need to protect, revive and reinstate Samskritam ?
If India has to go back to the glory days when it attracted people from distant lands to come and learn at its Universities at Takshashila and Nalanda, when its riches were stuff of lore told in other lands, when we were living in a different century than the rest of the planet, we need to first find out what worked for us. We need then to find out what went wrong. Then we can understand whether we can go back. If we already have it there is no need to reinvent the wheel, but to look at ourselves we need the lingua-franca of the golden ages to understand its literature.
A gentle yet clear brushing off of the cobwebs of the so-called Aryan theory and all its vicious corollaries is therefore absolutely necessary, especially for the South, and a proper self-respect created by a knowledge of the past grandeur of one of the great ancestors of the Aryan race — the great Tamilians.
We stick, in spite of Western theories, to that definition of the word “Arya” which we find in our sacred books, and which includes only the multitude we now call Hindus. This Aryan race, itself a mixture of two great races, Sanskrit-speaking and Tamil-speaking, applies to all Hindus alike.
-Swami Vivekananda, Aryans and Tamilians