Hindi is gaining popularity among Germans over the once popular Sanskrit, with more and more of them preferring India's national language as the best medium of communication with a large section of the Asian community.
“Hindi and Sanskrit are being taught in several cities of Germany, including universities in Heidelberg, Leipzig, Humboldt and Bonn, for a few decades now. But off late, there has been a reduction in the number of those wanting to study Sanskrit,” Ashutosh Agarwal, First Secretary of Indian Embassy, told PTI-Bhasha here.
The number of students in the Sanskrit section of the Department of Asian Language Studies in these universities used to be over 100 in one session, but has reduced to a maximum of 40 students since the last two sessions, Mr. Agarwal said.
“However, it must be kept in mind that the minuscule number of Sanskrit students still holds significance because of the low population of the country and also because all the students are generally Germans.”
Sanskrit gained popularity ever since English philologist William Jones translated Kalidas' Abhijnanasakuntalam in 1789, Werner Wessler, Professor of Hindi at the University of Bonn, said.
Keywords: Asian community, Department of Asian Language Studies, Sanskrit, Hindi
I was shocked to find this erroneous fact in The Hindu.
The above article says that Hindi is the national language of India.
Only an ignorant reader might continue reading beyond that.
Article 343 of our constitutuion clearly says that English and Hindi form the offical languages of India. And there's nothing in India with the nomeclature 'national language of India'.
It is but naturally expected that library languages like Sanskrit, which is no more a living language and is of only a historical value today will eventually lose out to the more vibrant living languages like Hindi. What intrigues me though is the utter ignorance on display by the news writer to the fact that Hindi is not India's National language. There exists no such entity as per the Indian Constitution, and I would have expected The Hindu to have known it better than anyone else having witnessed all the acrimony surrounding it post-Independence!
The constitution of India or the Indian law does not define any language as the national language. We have official languages in which each state can legislate.
Please Email the Editor