Of Sense And Sanskrit
By J Sri Raman
The Daily Times
31 October, 2003Politics and ideology are driving the aggressive promotion of
Sanskrit and this has given the language - the mother of many South
Asian languages - an image it does not deserve
President A P J Abdul Kalam was recently in Bulgaria along with a
mission. According to a small news item carried in many Indian
newspapers on October 24, when he visited Sofia University, some
students told him that they would 'love to learn Sanskrit'. The tone
of national pride was evident in most news stories and even
understandable. Ever since the days of colonial humiliation, every
Oriental nation takes great pride in any Occidental discovery and
recognition of its cultural heritage. Pride in Sanskrit, however, has
by now acquired a political and ideological dimension of an entirely
different kind.
India's rich Sanskrit literary heritage was also, quite largely, a
discovery of Western scholars like Max Mueller, which consequently
led to a nationalist rediscovery. According to eminent Indian
historians like Romilla Thapar, along with the Western tributes came
other theories. The concept of a racial Aryan-Dravidian divide among
the Indian people is a case in point. Westerners, however, are not to
blame for what Sanskrit and pride in the language have come to
symbolise today socially and politically.
Sanskrit has come to symbolise a particular view of India's past and
a particular kind of pride in it. Forces that reject much of India's
history and seek to rewrite history uphold Sanskrit as the banner of
the misleadingly so-labelled 'Hindutva', a majoritarian communalism
that has little to do with the faith of millions. The language, that
preserves the literature of several ancient religions and sects of
India and schools of philosophical thought including atheism, is now
identified with a brand of Hinduism that cannot be accepted by many
of its devout practitioners.
Sanskrit, in the process, is now set up against other major languages
of India. Majoritarian communalism masquerading as nationalism has
set it up, above all, against Urdu, the latter is a product of a
composite Hindu-Muslim culture and is unfairly identified with a
religious minority.
This process, which finds its political culmination now, started a
long while ago. In its early stages, this process took the form of
concerted efforts to replace Hindustani, the people's language in the
heartland, with 'shuddh' (pure) Hindi.
India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was openly critical
of the exercise and frequently deprecated the creation and
development of 'AIR (All-India Radio) Hindi' or a heavily
Sanskritised and de-Urduised Hindi that made little sense to the
common man. It may have become more intelligible now, but the
political process it signified has not paved the way for people's
unity that true patriotism should have aimed at.
In retrospect, the development of 'pure' Hindi would also appear to
have been an attempt to deny the divided subcontinent a common
language. Some readers may be aware that a similar campaign was
carried out in Pakistan.
Sanskrit has also been set against another ancient, but still living
Indian language - Tamil. The political votaries of Sanskrit, from the
'sangh parivar' and its allies, have done the language a distinct
disservice by pronouncing it more sacred and hence more suitable for
worship than Tamil, the language of the southern state of Tamilnadu,
the birth-place of the 'bhakti' (devotional) movement, which some
historians see as the Hindu counterpart of Islam's Sufi stream.
In social terms also Sanskrit has been made synonymous with
caste-based elitism. It may no longer be possible to prohibit any one
other than the priestly caste from chanting Sanskrit mantras but the
sociologist's use of the term 'Sanskritisation' to denote the elite
in a caste society still makes eminent sense. Sanskrit is still
widely associated with the upper castes. One will rarely ever find
low-caste students reading Sanskrit at Indian universities. A
low-caste or a tribal community 'Sanskritises' itself for upward
social mobility.
Politics and ideology are driving the aggressive promotion of
Sanskrit and this has given the language - the mother of many South
Asian languages - an image it does not deserve. And the people who
oppose this particular ideology and brand of politics are now also
opposing Sanskrit. The consequent de-Sanskritisation drive is
counterproductive.
In Tamilnadu, for instance, it led to a 'pure Tamil' movement that,
many lovers of the language would now acknowledge, has not served its
cause well. And when someone cast in the 'parivar' mould like Human
Resources Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi proposes promoting
Sanskrit in the academia, there is a howl of protest against the idea
of learning a 'dead language'. This reaction is uncalled for and what
I would term a mercenary argument that might later be expanded to
argue that there is no reason to learn about the past which is over
and no longer relevant.
In another incident there is now a campaign against the schools that
have been officially established for the purpose of learning the
Vedas by rote: critics counter this move by projecting the Vedas as
the vilest of human documents and denounce studying them as if it
were a cardinal, reactionary sin!
The right course for any country, of course, is to study its heritage
in a historical perspective. But a fascist ideology and the politics
flowing from it make this well-nigh impossible.
The writer is a journalist and peace activist based in Chennai, India