Sanskrit cadre of scholars in India reaching extinction

[Guest guest]

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/towards-literacy-then-scholarship/499770

 

Tavleen Singh

Aug 9, 2009

 

Last week I read a report by my friend Sheldon Pollock, who teaches Sanskrit

at Columbia University, and it made me weep. Listen to the report’s first

paragraph. ‘As recently as 50 years ago, India could boast of a cadre of

scholars in classical studies (defined here as research based on textual

materials—literary, philosophical, religious, historical, etc. — produced

prior to 1800) who were as skilled as any in the world. In the time since,

this class has diminished to the point of extinction.’

 

The report predicts that in less than ten years, classical studies will have

died in all Indian languages unless the HRD minister initiates a move to set

up at least one Indian Institute of Classical Studies. The report makes the

point that if we can invest in IITs and IIMs by the dozen, then we can

surely fund one Institute of Classical Studies. This report was prepared for

a Mumbai industrialist who is trying to set up such an institute with

private funding. But, in the end, if government and universities do not make

a concerted effort, nothing will change. There will be no Indian scholars of

classical studies left in India. Those that there are will be in foreign

universities.

 

 

 

Already, as I have mentioned before in this column, the best translations of

classical Sanskrit texts are those that have been done by foreigners. I am

at the moment reading Sheldon Pollock’s translation of the Ramayana and have

no hesitation in admitting that I have not read a single Indian translation

that comes anywhere close. Thanks to the American billionaire who funded the

creation of the Clay Sanskrit Library, nearly a hundred classical Sanskrit

texts are available in excellent English.

 

If Kapil Sibal wants his name written in letters of gold in the history of

Indian education, he should just make the Clay Sanskrit Library’s books

available in all our universities. Then, since higher education comes

entirely under his Ministry, he needs to find out why our universities are

not producing scholars of classical studies. Why do none of Delhi’s

universities have a single professor of classical Hindi literature? Why was

it impossible for the University of Chicago to find a single scholar of

Telugu literature in ten years of trying? Why do Maharashtra’s universities

not have a single serious scholar of classical Marathi?

 

The most important question of all is why has the HRD Ministry not invested

in an Indian Institute of Classical Studies? The state of classical

scholarship is so dismal that we need such institutes in every state if we

are not to end up as a country that loses all sense of its past.