India: Sanskrit initiative has little to do with national unity, has everything to do with a cultural agenda (Kanti Bajpai)

The Times of India - January 30, 2016 - Edit Page, India

Command and control
by Kanti Bajpai in TOI Edit Page


Smriti Irani fiddles with language policy while education burns

The HRD minister wants to make Sanskrit compulsory in schools. What an ambition! India’s educational system is in shambles and needs a massive overhaul. Smriti Irani meanwhile wants to fiddle with language policy, Nero like, while the education sector languishes and is convulsed by controversial, badly-conceived reforms and appointments.

Personally, I loved learning Sanskrit back when I was a schoolboy. I found it easier than Hindi, and I enjoyed its structure and rhythms. Quite why everyone in India should have to learn Sanskrit, though, is beyond me.

The three-language policy of the 1960s was a sensible compromise that assuaged the feelings of those who were not Hindi speakers. It said essentially that everyone should learn Hindi, the national language, at some point in their school careers. In addition, Indians were to be taught in their state language. Finally, they were to know English, again up to some level of competence, so that India had a link language across the length and breadth of the country.

The three-language policy never quite worked as well as its engineers hoped. Some states went slow on Hindi, others on English, and a few on both. Nevertheless, Hindi is the fastest growing language in India. It has therefore joined, indeed surpassed English as the link language. Despite the games that various states played with the policy, ordinary Indians invested in Hindi and to a much lesser extent in English. And of course they studied in their state languages.

If it is not broke, why fix it? If the three-language formula has worked, why is the minister playing around with it when there are so many other things to do in the education sector? India is united by many cultural, social, economic and political links between people. Surely it does not need tinkering with the language policy to deepen its unity.

The Sanskrit initiative has little to do with national unity or improving education standards. It probably has everything to do with a cultural agenda. BJP ideologues want control of the commanding heights of culture and knowledge-production to reshape the “idea of India” in ways that will help the party politically. School and higher education is the key to establishing control and the way we think about our political choices.

Poor old Sanskrit is to be the vehicle for this programme. Classical languages, the world over, don’t do well as languages of daily use. They never did. That is the lesson of Latin and classical Mandarin. In the case of classical Arabic and classical Greek speakers are diglossic, that is, they move in and out of the classical and modern variants depending on the linguistic occasion and context. But in these two latter cases, there was no real break in the use of the classical variant. That is hardly the case with Sanskrit. It was never widely spoken or written, even in northern India.

There are those who genuinely love Sanskrit and quite understandably want it to flourish linguistically. Is this the motive of the HRD minister? Kanimozhi, DMK MP, has been quoted as saying: “Sanskrit is a very Hindu language, it is not used by Christians or Muslims. So why do you want to impose it on everyone?” She was speaking rhetorically of course and has provided the answer to her own question. Her point is that Sanskrit is sought to be imposed precisely because it is associated with Hindus.

One of the very real problems of India’s school education is the appalling way languages are taught – all our languages including English. Hindi should be taught effectively, as hundreds of millions use it even if many are relatively “passive” users. English is the greatest world language, whether we like it or not, and something must be done to check alarmingly declining standards. And the state languages must be taught well for cultural and educational reasons.

The HRD minister should turn her attention to fixing the general level of language teaching and attainment rather than wasting time over Sanskrit instruction. Language is the vehicle of thought. Knowing a language well is a vital skill; it is not mere cultural adornment.