NEW DELHI: The ministry for Human Resource Development has cleared a Rs 50 crore yearly spending proposal to set up 4 parallel grants commission, just for Sanskrit and classical languages.
The news comes in the wake of an impending resource crunch, in the existing universities who are starved for Rs 40 crore, to tide over the problem.
The University Grants Commission (UGC), paymaster to all universities, froze all grants at last year’s levels because the human resource development ministry decided to cut back on higher education. Now the HRD ministry, seemingly oblivious to the call of dying universities, is thinking of setting up a parallel UGC for classical languages.
The official name will be the Sanskrit and Classical Languages Grants Commission, All this is based on the recommendations of an expert committee set up by the HRD ministry. Headed by the former Comptroller and Auditor General of India, T.N .Chatuvedi, the committee fully recommended the establishment of this parallel UGC. These recommendations have been forwarded to the Cabinet and the UGC. The Cabinet’s reaction is not known, but the UGC is disinclined.
The parallel commission will have a full time chairman, a post equivalent to that of a secretary in the government. There are II more honorary part-Lime member posts. Four of these will be taken from the HRD ministry, finance ministry, UGC and the Indira Gandht National Center for Arts. The remaining seven will be nominated for three years and will be a mix of eminent Sanskrit scholars and vice chancellors of Sanskrit universities. The main basis of the commission being that our “oral Shastri traditions” are on the verge of extinction,
“Modern education”, the committee in its report says, “has made the traditional system of education in Sansrit and classical languages defunct. This is sad. Especially, since hundreds of thousands of manuscripts and valuable texts in libraries or private collections are not getting due attention. Most of them are being devoured by termites or the clandestine international black market”, the report reads.
Then the report comes up with the wide possibilities of classical languages. “Sanskrit may indeed be amongst the languages best suited for computer applications.” It points out in Germany and the United States, studies on this are on. “It would be a matter of national shame if foreigners rather than us come up with concrete proof of modem relevance of Sanskrit and other classical languages of our country.” In fact, Sanskrit is portrayed as the mother of all languages. And it has to be saved.
Institutions like the UGC are tailored to the requirements of formal education, says the report. Most of the really genuine teaching of Sanskrit takes place in the non-formal framework of the guru shishya parampura. The proposed commission would cater to the requirements of such places of education.
Article extracted from this publication >> July 17, 1992
