Kaga Bhushundi ji was in my balcony, cawing raucously like any other crow of the mortal world. ‘Kagaji,’ I asked, ‘what’s wrong with you? That’s not the way you speak with me.’
Kaga Bhushundi SpeakEth
Suman K Sharma
‘Caw-caw, caw-caw, cawwwwww…. I am a crow and I speak crow-tongue to my fellow crows. “Samujheyee khag khag hi ki bhasha” – birds follow only birds’ language – it is there in Shri Ram Charit Manas. What’s your problem, hain? I will talk in any language I like.’
‘My problem is that I’m not a crow. If you go on cawing like this, then go, join your feathered kin. This is not a place for you. A talk has to be shared by two parties – the speaker and her audience; or else it’s so much noise. Why should I stand your noise?’
‘Son, you are being rude to me. What you utter you think is sat bachan, and what I voice is mere noise! If you can’t follow the speech that comes naturally to me, why don’t you learn it?’
‘Kagaji, now you are talking like Jayalalithaa.’
‘Who is she?’
‘Jayalalithaa is the chief minister of Tamil Nadu. She has raised a misplaced objection to the celebration of ‘Sanskrit Week’ from 7 to 13 August. The idea is to promote Sanskrit among children of the CBSE-affiliated schools. All State Governments have been asked to conduct similar programmes at various levels in their domain. Jayalalithaa says Tamil Nadu has a rich culture based on Tamil (spell it ‘Tamizh’ as the Tamilians do and then try to pronounce it!), which too has an age-old tradition.’
‘But why do you say Jayalalithaa’s objection is misplaced?’
‘First, Kagaji, if the Union government wants something to be done in the institutions that it controls or runs, how can the chief minister of a state butt in? Second, Tamil is already the prime language in Tamil Nadu; the HRD ministry circular in no way diminishes its prime stature. Talking of culture, it is Sanskrit and not any other Indian language that binds us all in one string from Kashmir to Kanyakumari and from Gujarat to Gauhati. And in the field of science, Rick Briggs, a NASA scientist, proposed that Sanskrit could be an ideal medium for Artificial Intelligence (AI) ….’
‘Next you will say, son, that it was Sanskrit that enabled the Vedik scientists to build vimanas to fly and cars to move from place to place on the power of mind and that the grand acharyas of Ayurveda had developed in that remote past a technique of assisted reproduction, preserving fertilized human eggs in big pitchers of pure desi ghee to mass- produce sons at will!’
‘I am amazed at the derisive tone you adopt towards the glories of our past – you of all the people, Kagaji, who has lived through those haloed times!’
‘That’s exactly why I should know better. Being proud of one’s past is good, but not to bedeck It with the flourishes of one’s present. As for Brigg’s proposition, nothing has been done about it ever since it was made some thirty years ago. Sanskrit is a natural language, while AI is all about mathematics. There the matter stands. ‘
‘Whatever that be, Sanskrit can impart a sense of discipline and creativity to the young minds. True to its name, it is ‘sam-krit’ – that which is perfectly done. The sound of its vowels and consonants remains unaltered; unlike English, for instance, in which ‘a’ is pronounced differently in ‘ask’, ‘ash’ or ‘paste’; and ‘g’ has two different sounds in a single word like ‘gigantic’. The dhatus – root words – given by the sage Panini at the end of his master-piece, Ashtadhyayi, together with the 90 forms of each verb and 21 forms of each noun, give the learner a limitless scope of expression.’
‘Son, I agree that learning Sanskrit has its advantages. And so does the knowledge of Tamil, which is perhaps the only language in the world to have been in constant use for the last 2200 years. But to my mind, the priority should lie somewhere else. Why do we learn a language, any way? To be able to communicate; to understand each other. In Bharat today, people from one part have to resort to their own versions of English or some other link-language to be able to talk to their compatriots from another part. Jammu and Srinagar are the twin capital cities of the same state. Yet, how many people of Jammu origin can understand – leave aside speak – Kashmiri? And why should Mahatama Gandhi’s writing a couple of words in Tamil become such a remarkable moment in your history? Because, son, you people have become little islands. You take pride in your own dialect and deprecate that of your fellow countrymen. It is time now to build bridges of the spoken word across the counrty.
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