As we discuss the mainstreaming of Samskrit in India and its growth across the world, I do believe the relevance of Samskrit to each of us in our everyday lives needs to be critically examined and addressed.
Yoga teaches us that every human being is a combination of Mind, Body, Energy and Intellect. The relevance of anything in our lives has to be relevant to one or more of these dimensions. If something is well-balanced across all four dimensions it becomes more mainstream and integrated with our lives and issues out in thought and action.
Let me take this framework and apply it to my life, my generation and the next generation in mainstream society in the context of Samskrit.
Mind This is the intellectual context of any issue to each person. If something is intellectually stimulating and interesting, each of us will spend more time in it. Samskrit gives us access to what is without any doubt the richest treasure trove of wisdom mankind has accumulated over thousands of years. However I would argue that it needs to be made available to those that do not know it in a language and form they may, and that distilled wisdom must be re-interpreted into actionable intelligence to be of relevance in our everyday work. In this context a possible model could be for each of the Samskrit universities represented by their Vice Chancellors at this table to take the responsibility of choosing an area of focus and specialization and research it to connect the knowledge of our scripture to global universities and modern disciplines like economics, mathematics, yoga, comparative religion, philosophy etc.
Emotion This speaks to the emotional connect between anything we choose to invest our time in and ourselves. Without this no creative force can sustain over a period of time. There is a huge emotional connect between the language and all it represents. The special status accorded to it under Section 351 of the Indian constitution as something that must be protected and nurtured in order to be able to access our thousands of years of history, culture and tradition captures this connect. The success of Samskrit Bharati in getting over one crore Indians to devote their time to speak this language is adequate proof that the emotional bond is strong and growing. I love the language.
Energy Here it is important to ensure that all our energies are positive, well connected and well directed and come from a wellspring of hope rather than giving room for various fears and apprehensions that slow the growth of any initiative, person, society or nation. All the universities and various people and institutions should come together and collaborate using modern tools like the internet in a well directed way to get optimal results from this connected energy that is driving all of us to take time off from our busy schedules and come together on a Sunday morning.
Body For each of us a large part of our waking life in a typical week day is spent in economic and social contracts. I would argue that this takes up about 80% of my own waking time every day. Anything I do has to be relevant to these two contexts.
The economic context for Samskrit is weak. As things stand, there is not much of a future except in priesthood. However this also indicates a huge missed opportunity. Indian corporate houses, high net worth individuals and universities all over the world are extremely interested in funding research, documentation and translation that focuses on Samskrit and its treasures. As more of these connections are made (today a framework for this collaboration is lacking) the opportunities to earn and support oneself from Samskrit as one does in the case of any other language in the world will be huge. The opening up of the higher education sector presents to all of us a huge opportunity in this area.
Then it comes to the social context I have a submission to make which will point a finger at the past. No social initiative can grow and sustain if it ignores 50% of its constituency. The gender ratio in the leadership and constituency of institutions that have take it upon themselves to grow Samskrit must be more balanced than it is today. I hope we begin to see many more women around tables like this in future years.