A late-evening phone call from the Ministry of Home Affairs on Saturday left K.V. Sampath Kumar and his wife Vidushi K.S. Jayalakshmi perplexed. Apart from saying a terse “congratulations”, the caller asked the couple to immediately send by email their full names in English and Hindi. When Mr. Kumar ventured to ask the reason for it, the caller merely said it was confidential. “You will know soon,” he said, before hanging up.
Another call a few hours later — around 8 p.m. — left the couple in a state of shock. “We received the news of being selected for the Padma Shri,” said Mr. Kumar, who along with his wife multitasks as editor, publisher, proofreader and reporter of India’s, and perhaps the world’s, only Sanskrit newspaper, Sudharma .
“We were stunned for a while as the news left us wondering whether we had done anything of significance to merit a national award,” said Mr. Kumar, amid taking phone calls to thank his readers and well-wishers, who kept calling him throughout the day with congratulations. “I did not know that my name had been proposed. I salute the person who suggested my name along with that of my wife and dedicate this award to the memory of my late father, who started this venture.”
The award and national recognition could not have come at a more appropriate time, as the Sanskrit daily — which has a circulation of nearly 3,500 — is set to celebrate its golden jubilee next month. Launched in 1970 by Mr. Kumar’s father, Pandit K.N. Varadaraja Iyengar, it was an enterprise with a difference — not for profit, but to disseminate news in Sanskrit to keep the “language of the gods” alive and conserve a slice of Indian culture while dispelling the notion that Sanskrit was “dead” or “only for vidwans”. Though a lot of students study Sanskrit in schools even today, it is more because of the perception that it is a “scoring subject”, said Mr. Kumar.
Initially, people were sceptical about the paper’s viability, but Iyengar, with his zest for news and Sanskrit, kept the enterprise alive and extracted a promise from his son and daughter-in-law to keep Sudharma alive.
Today, the paper has about 3,500 subscribers for the print version and is despatched to readers across India by post. The paper has also kept pace with the changing times and launched an online version, which is available to subscribers for a fee of ₹500.
But, as Mr. Kumar and Ms. Vijayalakshmi pointed out, the future is bleak, given the spiralling costs of printing and distribution. In fact, it has brought the couple to a state of near bankruptcy. To tide over the difficulties, they have published calendars in Sanskrit to generate additional funds. With hardly any advertisement support from the government or from private entrepreneurs, Sudharma is dependent on subscription fee and donations. “It will be easy to shut down the publication, but the challenge to keep it alive. We are committed to taking it forward,” Ms. Vijayalakshmi said.
The couple are bracing for the golden jubilee celebrations of Sudharma , which will be held in the city on February 29 and March 1.
