Neglected by India,
Revered by World
By Someswar Bhagwat
In this era of fake news it is difficult to believe, even for a journalist whose staple diet is news, a telecast that Saudi Arabia, the land of Mecca and Madina where Islam was born and which is the strongest advocate of Sunni Abrahamic Islam, Saudi Arabia has recently begun teaching of Sanskrit language and Ramayana and Mahabharat in its schools. It could be true as it was on the Wion channel of Zee which may not fake news despite it pro-Hindu slant.
On the same day as the Wion video went viral some newspapers carried two other items on Sanskrit, the normal congue of India now called as a dead language. One is that a New Zealand MP of Indian origin, Gaurav Sharma took his oath in Sanskrit.
Another said that a Brazil woman, Gloria Arirs, told the United Nations, that the Vedas contained rich knowledge of astronomy and mathematics and that the Bhagavad Gita should be recognized as a treasure-house of wisdom. She runs a School of Veda near Rio de Janeiro.
Sanskrit was the mother of more than 850 of the 6500 languages in the world. The Asiatic Society of Britain says even classical languages like Latin, Greek and Gothic drew .
I remember meeting the world famous English writer H.S. Raja Rao (Kantapura) who lived in France and later the US, at the first World Kannada Conference, Mysore, when he went up to his room on the top floor of his hotel to bring and show me an American magazine with a cover story saying that Sanskrit was the language most suited for computers.
The School of Buddhism, Peking University in China, has a Sanskrit Department headed by Satyavrat Shastri and many Chinese are learning it as a world heritage language.
