{"id":116778,"date":"2018-03-24T11:24:38","date_gmt":"2018-03-24T05:54:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/globalpress.hinduismnow.org\/?p=116778"},"modified":"2018-03-24T11:24:38","modified_gmt":"2018-03-24T05:54:38","slug":"taking-sanskrit-common-household-hindu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/?p=116778","title":{"rendered":"Taking Sanskrit to the common household | The Hindu"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>J. Ahmedunnisa, studying LKG, speaks\u00a0<strong>Sanskrit\u00a0<\/strong>fluently. So does her mother Sabiya, who developed interest while dropping her child at the spoken Sanskrit camp.<\/p>\n<p>There are 540 children like her in\u00a0<strong>Tirupati\u00a0<\/strong>with no prior exposure to Sanskrit, who can now speak the language with ease, thanks to the social responsibility initiative by the Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeetha (RSVP), a deemed university under the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development. The programme was launched last year with a mere 30 students, which grew to 120 in a week and branched out to 17 centres across the city, with a strength of 541.<\/p>\n<p>Children keen<\/p>\n<p>Sanskrit suffers from three-pronged stigmatisation \u2014 that it is the language of a social sect, difficult to learn and is a \u201cnon-living\u201d language. \u201cBy reaching out to children of diverse social strata, we have cleansed the negative image with one stroke\u201d, RSVP Vice-Chancellor V. Muralidhara Sharma told\u00a0<em>The Hindu<\/em>. The idea was originally conceived by Samskrita Bharati, a pan-India voluntary organisation working to revive Sanskrit, which RSVP has implemented at the micro level with impeccable perfection.<\/p>\n<p>Divided into two groups \u2014 below Class V and above Class V \u2014 the children are taught spoken Sanskrit through hundred-plus rhymes, animated cartoon series, language games, drama, skits, group dance, etc,. \u201cThe teaching is based on speaking and listening, just like how one\u2019s mother tongue is learnt. The focus is not on reading and writing the script at this stage,\u201d says coordinator Prahlad Joshi. Students, including many from Muslim and Christian families, visit the \u2018Bala Kendra\u2019 during weekends with great interest. The \u2018infectious enthusiasm\u2019 spread to several parents, who are also learning the language.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll the inmates speak Sanskrit at least in seven houses in Tirupati,\u201d confirms Kiran Bhat, who is in the team of 20 trainers formed to take the language beyond the campus.<\/p>\n<p>Focussing on vertical as well as horizontal expansion, Prof. Sharma wants to launch new batches to accommodate more children, even while exposing the \u201cyoung achievers\u201d to higher aspects of Sanskrit to sustain their interest.<\/p>\n<p>SVBC Chief Executive Officer N. Muktheswara Rao, Sanskrit Promotion Council (New Delhi) Director Chand Kiran Saluja, Samskrita Bharati Secretary Dinesh Kamat and its State head Upadrashta Venkataramana Murthy (Vijayawada) were floored by the kids\u2019 eloquence at the first anniversary held on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>J. Ahmedunnisa, studying LKG, speaks\u00a0Sanskrit\u00a0fluently. So does her mother Sabiya, who developed interest while dropping her child at the spoken Sanskrit camp. There are 540 children like her in\u00a0Tirupati\u00a0with no prior exposure to Sanskrit, who can now speak the language with ease, thanks to the social responsibility initiative by the Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeetha (RSVP), a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116778"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=116778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116778\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=116778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=116778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=116778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}