Ahmedabad/Guwahati. Siyasat.net
A petition has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking to notify Sanskrit as the national language while continuing with Hindi as the official language.
The PIL has been filed by former additional secretary to the Gujarat government, K.G. Vanzara, who is now a lawyer in the Gujarat High Court. Vanzara is the brother of controversial IPS officer D.G. Vanzara, who was jailed in connection with the Ishrat Jahan encounter case and retired in jail.
The former bureaucrat who is practicing as an advocate moved the plea in SC as a party in person; plea likely to come up for hearing on January 1
His petition submitted before the Supreme Court states, “While continuing Hindi as the Official language, Sanskrit should be notified as the National Language. Looking at Articles 343 to 351 about languages in the Constitution, Hindi is ‘Official Language’ and not ‘National Language’. Therefore, while continuing Hindi along with English as Official language, the central government can carve out a separate category, higher than Official Language, for Sanskrit as National Language.”
The plea said Sanskrit has “the biological scientific phonetic structure of Sanskrit, which develops the brain, rhythmical pronouncing and memorising capacity in children” . Even former PM had said “the greatest treasure that India possesses is and what is her finest heritage, I would answer unhesitatingly that it is the Sanskrit Language literature and all that it contains,” the plea added
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He further submitted, “In the Constituent Assembly, the issue of Official Language was discussed on September, 1949 wherein claims of four languages – Hindi, Hindustani (Urdu), English and Sanskrit were deliberated and Hindi was finalised because of the strength of Hindi-speaking northern and central Indian members in the Assembly. About 40 prominent Constituent Assembly members, including Dr Ambedkar had ferociously advocated making Sanskrit as the official language.”
He also submitted that, “As per an estimate of UNO, 90% languages of the world have their roots in Sanskrit. Looking at “the biological, scientific, phonetic structure of Sanskrit, which develops the brain, rhythmical pronouncing and memorising capacity in children, many European countries have made Sanskrit a compulsory language in middle schools. Even a staunch Islamist scholar Dr Zakir Nayak, although declared an absconder for some reasons, favoured Sanskrit as a language of common man. India should learn from Israel that made Hebrew, considered to be a dead language for the past 2,000 years, along with English as the official/national language of Israel in 1948.”
Meanwhile, Patriotic People’s Front Assam (PPFA) welcomes a recent petition filed in the Supreme Court of India demanding to declare Sanskrit as the national language. The forum of nationalists in northeast India argues that the initiative would also help promoting the national integration in a far better way.
Days back, India-based senior French journalist and scholar Francois Gautier, while participating at a video-conference with city scribes, argued that Indian people should revive Sanskrit as the Israelis did with their Hebrew language, because it could revitalize the whole Indian culture and unify the country like never before. Israel in 1948 made its ancient language Hebrew, then considered as a dead language for the last 2000 years, the official language.
Gautier also appealed to the government to invite a group of dedicated linguists to sit down with Sanskrit scholars to devise a way of simplifying and modernizing the mother of all Indian languages. He pointed out that Israeli people after getting a part of their holy land started welcoming Jews from various parts of the world. As they came back to live in Israel a major problem was aroused because they spoke different languages. Then the Israeli authorities asked their scholars to revive the Hebrew language so that everybody could use it comfortably.
“Sanskrit as a national language in India is a very much logical expectation. Only a few people may know that the Devabhasa was the official language in the region since the days of majestic Kamrup kingdom till the Ahom era,” said a PPFA statement adding that various written documents from the days of great Ahom king Rudra Singha and others undoubtedly proves the royal recognition to the sacred language of Hinduism.
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