Sanskrit on a comeback trail in Hyderabad

Hyderabad: Sanskrit, widely perceived as a dead or lost language among the Indian languages, seem to have been making a comeback with more and more people trying to pick up the threads of the language.

The learners include students from Class 5 to postgraduation, homemakers, tutors, teachers, IT professionals, doctors, businessmen and even scientists working in different multinational corporate companies in and around the city.

Speaking to The Hans India, Ashish Naredi said, "Sensing the growing interest among all age groups we are conducting the Sanskrit spoken language course for 10 days at the Pearl Country, a gated community in Attapur.

The students come from various backgrounds residing in our colony, ranging from homemakers, professionals, school and college children," he added. The 10-day camps are much sought-after.

The camps are supported by the Sanskrit Bharati, which was founded in 1981 as a movement to protect, develop and propagate the Sanskrit language, literature, traditions. Because, the repository of knowledge systems embedded in the language have a precious value, he added.

Explaining how the popularity is growing, Ashish said the focus in these camps was not meant any complex and grammatical oriented learning process. Instead, importance is given to spoken Sanskrit to make people to first speak and construct sentences on their own.

What is more important is that all the ingredients and teaching tools used while teaching has been done using the utensils that one uses in a kitchen, house appliances, stationery. Also, the situational method used is taken from the general day-to-day routines like walking in park, cycling, travelling in a train and others.

In turn, this is making people feel at ease in connecting themselves and figuring out how it could be used in their daily lives like any other Indian languages, he said.

The teacher who conducted the classes said the 10-day camps at the Pearl Country is not the only one. Earlier, Sanskrit spoken classes were conducted for information technology professionals in IT companies in Cyberabad.

The camps are being conducted on a regular basis keeping in view the convenience of the students. All that is needed is a space and a minimum of 15 students to learn the basics within a 10-days, he said. "Each one has a different objective for turning up to learn the language.

But, the predominant factor among several learners is to take forward their learning so that they can read the original Sanskrit texts. Particularly, this interest is growing as the learners of these days see how the language is being picked up in foreign lands like Germany, United Kingdom and others," he added.

Aarya, a class VI student, set a target for herself, supported by her parents. " I even opted the same at my schools and I will continue my Sanskrit learning," she resolves. For Jyothi, is learning language and set a target to read Bhagavad Geetha in its original Sanskrit form.

Terming the positive response from the learners from all backgrounds, Rupesh said that Sanskrit is one among the scheduled recognised languages in the country.

As of now, it is being spoken by a smaller number of people when compared to other Indian languages. But, the increase in the number of people speaking Sanskrit in the country has been growing at a rate of 76 per cent since 2001.

This reflects the increasing interest among people to learn and speak one of the ancient languages in the world, he said.