(Bhagavadgita manuscript in Kangra Fort Museum)
Sanskrit bashing has become very fashionable, especially after Modi took over. Why?
- Modi roots for all things good in our country including Sanskrit, Dharma, and Yoga.
- A number of vocal "Hindutva" voices have become active, expressing many sensible and nonsensical ideas.
- Many scholars who make their living bashing Sanskrit and sporting PhDs, sense a great branding opportunity.
People like Wendy Doniger who says Ramakrishna was a homosexual and Pollock who says Sanskrit is responsible for the Jewish Holocaust, are winning large grants and buying up mainstream media space in The Hindu, Economic Times and so on.
I thought I should place some basic facts as I know them:
- The threat level of Sanskrit terrorism has been and will always be low, although some fellows say it is as bad as from Daesh.
- Sanskrit accounts for over 70% of all our vocabulary riches in most Indian languages.
- Reading Bhagavadgita, Adi Shankara, Kalidasa, Ramayana and Bhagavata, in my own rudimentary way, gives me wonderful insight into life and mysticism which thrills me no end. No wonder every great thinker around the world has marvelled at the wisdom of the Orient. It is ALL handed down in Sanskrit from thousands of years ago.
- Learning Sanskrit is a wonderful intellectual effort. It is aided by a teaching methodology which is so scientific!
- Those who believe in Sanskrit classics and our ancient texts should separate science fiction from science; and symbolism from history. Of course people of those ages had marvellous powers of concentration and contemplation, which could have conferred extra-sensory awareness and power on them. Even their literature would have been impossible without those insights. But it does not mean one could buy a flying machine off the shelf. You should be as savvy buying these ideas as you're while shopping on Flipkart.
Sanskrit bashing is ugly and shows how vulnerable we are, when we swing from total ignorance of our cultural roots to some jingoistic pseudoscience claims. We better study our classics, practise Dharma, and fight when necessary all this cow-dung throwers called Sanskrit bashers.
Just as ridiculous is the idea that somebody flew around the world in 80 days in a Pushpaka
Vimana, it is crazy to say the Holocaust was caused by Sanskrit. And funding such blatant slogan mongers is truly shameful for anybody.
