Is the Sanskrit-speaking population much higher than the one projected in the census? It seems so, if one were to go by what Bibek Debroy, Chairman of the Economic Advisory Council to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, says.
In his address at the 21st convocation of the Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeetha here on Monday, Mr. Debroy pointed out that the last census taken in 2011 did not cover the ‘great linguistic diversity’. “For the preceding censuses, the number of people who reported Sanskrit as mother tongue was 2,212 in 1971, 6,106 in 1981, 49,736 in 1991 and 14,135 in 2001,” he said, feeling that this was no indicator to the number of people actually speaking Sanskrit in India. “India is multi-lingual. Indians speak more than one language. For Sanskrit to be the first language or mother tongue is rare, but it can be the third or fourth. We capture this imperfectly and inadequately,” he explained.
Mr. Debroy made the observation while referring to Sanskrit being dubbed by some a ‘dead language’. “Unlike an ‘extinct’ language, there is no proper definition of a ‘dead’ language. Whatever be the definition, I don’t see any signs of it being dead,” he said while squarely blaming the census figure as a ‘misleading indicator’ for showing fluctuation from one census to another.
RSVP Chancellor N. Gopalaswami, former Chief Election Commissioner of India, laid stress on self-help among the 17 premier Sanskrit institutions, before seeking governmental help. On digitisation, he said the process per se would be of little use, unless the scholars collaborated with the experts in the relevant fields, harnessed the knowledge available in the ancient texts and put it to use for the benefit of society.
The Vidyapeetha conferred ‘Mahamahopadhyaya’ title on ‘Tantra Puja’ expert Ballapadavu Madhava Upadhyaya, spiritual author Sribhashyam Vijayasaradhi, orator Salaka Raghunatha Sarma and ‘Vachaspati’ title on top cop-turned-scholar K. Aravinda Rao and Vedic exponent Marri Krishna Reddy. Vice-Chancellor V. Muralidhara Sharma presented the annual report, while Registrar Ch.P. Satyanarayana presented the candidates 46 Ph.D., 69 M.Phil (Sanskrit) and other degrees.
