DU admissions expose sorry state of ancient Indian languages
NEW DELHI: Five years and two degrees later, Pooja is unsure of what value her higher education in Sanskrit will hold in the future. This is some of the many concerns worrying the 23-year-old Pooja, who initially wanted to pursue a course in history, but took up Sanskrit after failing to make the cut in her preferred subject.
As a fresh batch gets ready for Delhi University and other universities across the country, questions on usefulness, viability and the way forward trouble those who want to pursue ancient and Indological languages like Pali and Prakrit.
Pooja rues the limited number of career opportunities that follow a degree in Sanskrit but has also fallen in love with the language.
"People keep asking me what I will make of a degree in Sanskrit in today's time. One can either become an academician, a translator or take up some job in the media industry," she said. "But as I started studying the subject, I realised Sanskrit is a beautiful and liberal language," added Pooja, who did her bachelors and is completing masters in Sanskrit from Delhi University.
According to Pankaj Mishra, an associate professor of Sanskrit at St Stephen's College, the diminishing interest in the language is due to the few job opportunities with miserable pay. "Translators are paid as low as Rs 200-300 per page, which is less than what a daily wage labourer gets," Mishra said.
Out of 69 colleges in Delhi University that offer arts and commerce courses, only 29 offer courses in Sanskrit. Vidya (name changed) was keen on pursuing Sanskrit further after studying the subject till Class 10 but missed out on the opportunity in Classes 11 and 12 because she did not have adequate information about the availability of a Sanskrit course.
Vidya, a visually-challenged student, has now taken admission to Sanskrit honours in Miranda House college this year. She is also concerned about her course books being available in braille.
According to an official from the Buddhist Studies department of Delhi University (DU), about 125 out of 234 seats in the masters course remain vacant every year. The department also offers certificate courses in Pali, the language in which several Buddhist texts were originally written. KT SS arao, head of the department, said religion-language association also influences students' decisions to pursue a subject.
"Why should Sanskrit invariably be linked with Hindutva? Pali is inherently linked to Buddhism, but why is Buddhism in this country linked to the scheduled castes?"
In his view, Ambedkarite leaders have hijacked Buddhism to create the perception that to be a Buddhist is to be from a Scheduled Caste. "But Buddhism has no such thing as caste," he asserted.
Acknowledging the sorry state of these languages, particularly Sanskrit, the governments of Delhi and Haryana have taken several measures to revive interest in the subject.