Source: www.livemint.com
HARIDWAR, INDIA, April 19, 2010: [HPI note: This is an article in two parts.]
The advertisement, in Sanskrit, was small, tossed to the extreme right of the newspaper page: “Sanskrit-dwitiyarajbhashayuktam deshashya prathamrajyam Uttarakhandam” (Uttarakhand is India’s first state to have Sanskrit as its second official language).
The language of ancient Indian religious texts and epics is being revived and popularized, thanks to bipartisan efforts in Uttarakhand. Some schools and universities are taking Sanskrit beyond purely scriptural relevance to address a variety of modern subjects.
In January, the Uttarakhand government adopted Sanskrit as the second official language–Hindi remains the first–after the state legislature cast a unanimous vote. Mahavir Agrawal, vice-chairman of the Uttaranchal Sanskrit Academy (USA), leans forward in his chair to enunciate, first, the visual difference on the newspaper page. On the left page are news reports, all in English, interspersed with advertisements in the same language. On the right, the Sanskrit ad. “How often do you see an advertisement in Sanskrit in the ‘English-and-Hindi’ media? I have taught for decades in the language, but haven’t seen anything like this.” he says.
The Uttaranchal Sanskrit Academy also helps set up Sanskrit libraries, collection centres for manuscripts, and edits and publishes rare manuscripts and books in the language in collaboration with the National Mission for Manuscripts, a central body under the ministry of tourism and culture in New Delhi for creating a national database of manuscripts.
The Indian Constitution lists Sanskrit as an official language under its eighth schedule, along with 22 other languages, including Maithili, Tamil, Oriya and Punjabi, though most states use Hindi, English, Urdu or the respective regional languages as their first or second official languages.