NEW DELHI: India’s right-wing Hindu nationalist government has ordered the country’s civil service schools to replace the teaching of German with an Indian language such as Sanskrit in the “national interest”, reports said.
The order has been given to the state-run Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan (Central School Organisation), which comprises 1,092 schools across India serving children of army officials and other government personnel, according to the Indian Express newspaper. Currently German is offered in these government-run schools as an optional foreign language.
It was not immediately clear whether only Sanskrit would be allowed in place of German or also other official Indian languages such as Tamil. However, reviving Sanskrit has been a priority of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party which swept to power in May.
Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani said the decision was taken in “the national interest”, according to the Indian Express. Pupils could continue to study German as a “hobby” (no credit) class, he said.
Sanskrit, an ancient classical language used in literature and by Hindu priests, is from the Indo-Aryan group and is the root of many but not all of India’s nearly two-dozen official languages.
Just 14,000 people among India’s 1.2-billion population call Sanskrit their primary language, census figures show.
A Sanskrit lobby group, the Sanskrit Sikshak Sangh (SSS), had launched court action in favour of the move and called teaching of foreign languages in schools “a western conspiracy” aimed at “ending civilisation”.
“The fundamental aim of studying Sanskrit isn’t earning money but the search for happiness,” SSS president D K Jha told the newspaper. “Whether it’s NASA’s research on the ‘God particle’ or astronomy or mathematics, all of the knowledge is already there. Sanskrit is the key which will unlock it,” he said.
AFP
