In a tiny flat in a rundown alley in New Delhi, Rakesh Kumar Misra is working against the odds to bring India's ancient Sanskrit language to the country's millions. The 4,000-year-old classical language was traditionally used by Brahmin intellectuals and Hindu priests. Rarely spoken as a mother tongue in India, Sanskrit is often dismissed as a dead language. But Misra is undeterred, spending up to 12 hours a day hunched over his computer, translating and writing articles for a weekly 16-page newspaper in the script.
Hopes of a Sanskrit revival, long pushed by Hindu hardliners, have been rising since Prime Minister Narendra Modi stormed to power at last year's general election. Several ministers, although not Modi himself, took an oath of office in the revered language and a national "Sanskrit week" was later declared to promote its teaching in schools.
The first Sanskrit movie made in more than two decades (and only the third ever) was shown at IFFI in Goa. Vinod Mankara, director of "Priyamanasam", about a 17th century-poet from the southern state of Kerala, said he hoped to secure government help to show the film overseas to "mesmerise foreigners" with the language. But the focus on Sanskrit has sparked a debate about its role in India, which has 22 official languages, many spoken by sizeable minorities. Critics fear Hindu hardliners are promoting Sanskrit as a way of imposing Hindu superiority on the country's religious and linguistic minorities.
Mankara has rejected criticism that his film promotes Hindu ideology, calling it "pure art". It comes at a time of raging controversy over whether the Modi government is failing to uphold India's tradition of secularism and diversity, amid rising fears of growing intolerance towards Muslims and others. Education Minister Smriti Irani, responsible for promoting the language, denies the right-wing government has any hidden agenda and describes Sanskrit as the "voice of India's soul and wisdom". But she faces an uphill battle popularising it in schools, where it is offered as an optional language, and where some believe it's linked with India's past not its future.
"There are a lot of languages on offer and it's difficult to deliver it everywhere," KC Tripathi, head of languages at the National Council of Educational Research and Training, a government body that advises on school curriculums. Tripathi said the council was forming a new education policy, at the Modi government's request, that includes updating and improving the way Sanskrit is taught in schools.
Only 14,100 people speak Sanskrit as their main language, according to the latest census figures, less than one percent of India's 1.25 billion population. Still used in Hindu prayers and chants in temples, Sanskrit is the root of many but not all Indian languages and descends from the Indo-Aryans. It was used thousands of years ago by India's intellectuals whose manuscripts covered everything from philosophy to astronomy and medicine, not unlike Latin or Greek in the West.
Ramesh Bhardwaj, head of Delhi University's Sanskrit department, the world's largest with 4,000 undergraduate students said he is disappointed the government has not done more to revive Sanskrit, including making it compulsory in schools, so younger generations can understand India's roots.
Misra, who draws no salary for producing his newspaper, one of only a handful in India and distributed mainly outside Hindu temples, is under no illusions about the scale of his task. But he said India, like any country, cannot progress without all its people, not just its elite, understanding its past. "It shouldn't just end up becoming a language of textbooks and research."
