A man's bid to revive deva vani, Sanskrit

Resurrecting Sanskrit, the mother of many Indian languages, is not a simple task in itself. Even trying isn’t. But there’s one man who has been, and that too for 32 long years now.

That’s Chamu Krishna Shastry, the all India ‘prakashana pramukh’ of the Samskrita Bharathi, who now says, “It was surely not an easy endeavor. I used to have people asking me why I am going back to the days of bullock carts, and why I am going back to the dark ages. But, what they fail to recognise is that Sanskrit is the the basis for everything in India.” Probably not so much in India; but then the language is taught in 450 universities of 60 countries across the world.

Asserting that the method of teaching Sanskrit in the country has created a mental block in the minds of many, resulting in the very decline of the language, Shastry argues, “Learning a language through another language or by translation is called rota method. This method teaches you only about the language. This is the method through which one learns most languages in schools, as it is an easy method. Most Sanskrit teachers subscribe to this method. Hence, they are themselves not conversant with the language. They just memorise and teach.”

Shastry continues, “Learning a language in the same language is our method. Once people know about it, they realise how easy it is to speak in it. Besides, most languages in the country are derivatives of Sanskrit. That makes things easier.” Shastry’s efforts have not gone awaste. His camps for Sanskrit learning have become popular in the city.